The Road to Sturgis - Part 3

It's Monday and we're checked into our hotel room in Deadwood, South Dakota. Tomorrow morning I'll be driving up to Sturgis for John Farnam's Urban Rifle Class, but today we had our last day of sightseeing.

We spent the night before in Hulett, Wyoming, in a cozy little A-frame at the Hulett Motel after spending the day at Devil's Tower. 

 
Seeing Devil's Tower in person is an experience I find difficult to describe. My rational thoughts tell me that it's a unique formation of igneous rock formed by millions of years of erosion, but seeing it simply stunned me into silence. I'll the photos speak for themselves:

As you hike around the tower, you experience seeing it from different angles, the sun casts different shadows, the wind blowing through the forest, the wildlife – it creates a truly extraordinary experience.

After leaving the tower, we spent the night in Hulett, more a ranching town than tourist town. It does have two local museums that are worth checking out. The Hulett Museum and Art Gallery has a nice collection of Devil's Tower memorabilia, dinosaur bones, and of course – some guns!

The other place, called “Rogue's Gallery” was billed more as an antique shop, but had an incredible display of artifacts from the Indian Wars and settlement of the Great Plains. Among these artifacts were a large collection of Indian guns, some of which may have seen action at Little Big Horn.

FBI evidence seized after the 1973 Wounded Knee occupation.

This revolver was used in a notorious local murder.

Guns captured by Indians and used in the Indian Wars.

In the morning, we headed out for Deadwood, with a short stop in Aladdin, Wyoming. The Aladdin General Store has been in business for over 100 years.

Just outside of Aladdin, we stopped to see an old tipple from the Aladdin coal mine. The tipple is an inclined series of chutes for sorting coal.

After checking out the tipple we stopped for breakfast in Belle Fourche, South Dakota where there is a monument to the geographical center of the United States.

We also checked out the Tri-State Museum, which featured the mount of a local infamous wolf, “Three Toes” who killed thousands of dollars worth of livestock and terrorized the locals for over thirteen years.

And of course, no museum would be complete without memorials to its local veterans, including a pilot from the Doolittle Raid. 

I have to admit, seeing the same type of uniform you wore in the service in a museum makes you feel kind of old:

Our drive to Deadwood took us through the beautiful Spearfish Canyon. While it may have taken a little longer, it was worth it for the breathtaking scenery:

Bridal Veil Falls

Once in Deadwood, we did some local sightseeing, including the Bullock Hotel, the site of the No. 10 Saloon (where Wild Bill Hickok was killed). 

Deadwood's historic Main Street.

 

We also headed up to the town of Lead (pronounced LEED) to see the Homestake Gold Mine. The mine's now closed, but it's home to a particle physics laboratory, where experiments are being conducted to study theoretical particles over 4000 feet underground (you can't do this sort of thing on the surface because of cosmic radiation interference). 

The original mining pit is over 1000 feet deep - deep enough to swallow Devil's Tower!  The actual mine itself goes over 8000 feet deep. 

Tomorrow, I start the class, which is the whole reason for this trip. But getting here has been half the fun!