August 9, 2022 @ 13:13 MDT
Site Visit #45
We picked a really bad week to visit the Black Hills area of South Dakota. The annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was happening during our visit. I knew of the event but thought it was mostly confined to Sturgis. Nope. We shared the roads from Wind Cave to Jewel Cave to Mount Rushmore to Devils Tower with hundreds of motorcycles. Our overnight stays in Custer and Keystone were shared with even more motorcycles taking most of the parking and generating tremendous noise as they drove the streets.
Our early morning visit to Mount Rushmore had avoided many cycles for a while, but as we headed out of Rapid City and on toward Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming, the number of cycles increased.
Because of the number of visitors to Devils Tower, the park admission is actually paid on departure rather than entry. This is because only a short distance from the entry gate are several businesses, and traffic would back up blocking entry to these businesses. Now the backup simply extends back into the park itself.
The entry road actually circles about halfway around the tower before turning back on itself, arriving at a parking lot and visitor center. The park did a nice job of traffic control with people stationed at the parking lot entry and in the lots to direct cars (and motorcycles) to open spaces.
The area around the visitor center was crowded and noisy with no less than 200 motorcycles in the parking lot. We got our Passport stamps and headed inside the visitor center. Inside were some small exhibits explaining the formation of the tower.
My last visit to Devils Tower was around 6 years ago. At that time, we arrived early in the morning when the park had just opened, and took an hour or so to hike all the way around the base of the big rock. I would have considered doing it again, but a glance at the temperature – 99F – convinced me otherwise. I’m still technically recovering from my back surgery, though I am walking fine, and am less than two weeks out from a bout of COVID, so endurance in any circumstance is still lacking. At that temperature, I wisely passed.
On the way out of the park, we took a short side road that offered some different views, then stopped at a few pull-offs for some final photo ops. At one, we saw that we were next to another prairie dog town. The pups didn’t seem to mind us being there.
Steve
