Decided to get off I90 and drive route 212 as we headed to Devils Tower. Nice 2-land road with very little traffic. Notice there isn’t an apostrophe in Devils Tower. The story is it was a clerical error and hasn’t been corrected to this day.
The landscape was prarie grasslands, rolling hills with some buttes in the distance. Notice the leaves are changing color, singular because we’ve only seen yellow.
Then off in the distance we could see our destination, Devils Tower in the Black Hills.
Doesn’t look so big there, right? When we got to our campground, Belle Fourche River, for the night at the foot of Devils Tower, we could see it’s imposing size. The tower rose over 1,200’ above where we stood at our campground.
The Tower is an astounding geologic feature that protrudes out of the prairie surrounding the Black Hills. It is considered sacred by Northern Plains Indians and indigenous people
We drove to the Visitor’s Center to get my stamp and then back to the campground because they were quite adamant about no dogs on trails. We had hiked around the tower the last time we were here and it’s a good hike.
Back at the campground we walked up a short trail to learn more about the spiritual culture of the tower and the area.
The above world peace sculpture is one of several sculptures in the world. This one is the Wind Circle sculpture, which is of white marble with a black base stands an impressive 12 feet tall. The artist designed it to evoke the image of a puff of smoke from a sacred pipe.
Initially, the sculpture was to be called ”Circle of Sacred Smoke.” The name was eventually changed to Wind Circle, a less controversial descriptor.
Thursday we’ll head to South Dakota.
I was thinking I don't know if I'd want that devils tower looking out over my campsite. But then you said it holds sacred significance for the indigenous people, so that's ok, haha!
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