Thursday, 1 June; Rapid City and Devil's Tower.

One day an Indian tribe was camped beside the river and seven small girls were playing at a distance.  The region had a large bear population and a bear began to chase the girls.  They ran back toward their village, but the bear was about to catch them.  The girls jumped up on a rock about three feet high and began to pray to the rock, "Rock, take pity on us; Rock, save us."

The rock heard the young girls' pleas and began to elongate itself upwards, pushing them higher and higher out of the bear's reach.  The bear clawed and jumped at the sides of the rock, but 

broke its claws and fell to the ground.  The bear continued to jump at the rock until the girls were pushed up into the sky, where they are, to this day, in a group of seven little stars (the Pleiades constellation). Marks from the bear's claws still line the sides of Devils Tower.

We drove to the park and got up close and personal with the Hill.  It is amazing.  This was also depicted in the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" which starred Richard Dreyfus and was a breakout hit for Steven Spielberg.  It was a good movie.

Anyway, we went on a nice 2 mile hike around the whole mountain.

President Teddy Roosevelt designated Devils Tower as the nation's first national monument.  The "stock" of the tower was formed by magma which cooled underground and was later exposed after millions of years of erosion brought about by the Belle Fourth River and weather.

The rocks and boulders around the base of the Tower are actually broken pieces of columns having fallen from the sides.  The Tower stands 865 feet high.  The park has 7.4 miles of hiking trails.  The Park allows people to climb the mountain, but since it is also considered a Native American Sacred place they ask that climbers refrain from climbing during the month of June. There were prayer blankets around the area.

 As we drove through the park we came upon the Prairie Dog Town where all the prairie dogs hang out.  Bella was especially interested in this part of the park.

We continued driving and went to Spearfish.  I wanted to show the town to Rob.  We wandered through the fish Hatchery and through the city park right next door.  

Rob took off his shoes and socks and waded into the river.  He said it was freezing. 

 We walked on.

Next we drove through the Spearfish canyon.  This time we hiked up to and took pictures of Roughlock Falls. It was also featured in the movie Dances With Wolves in their winter scene.

We continued our drive through Lead and into Deadwood.

The drive was nice.  We came upon one of the deepest gold mines in the country.

I was reading about the filming locations for the movie Dances with Wolves and discovered that Kevin Costner owns a casino/museum in Deadwood called the Midnight Star.  So, naturally, we had to stop in.

It was cool.  An old-time saloon with old time fixtures and all over the walls are pictures and clothing and memorabilia from many of his movies.  Field of Dreams; Dances With Wolves; Message in a Bottle; Body Guard, about 10 in all.  It was really cool. Not the sort of place that I could see him enjoying hanging out in tho.

From there we had dinner up on a roof.  

We drove back and went to bed.