Devils Tower National Monument

In our travels over the past years we have passed Devils Tower twice without stopping. I had seen pictures of it and it just looked like a big rock sticking out of the top of a knoll. After leaving the badlands in SD I wanted to stop and do some gold panning in the Black Hills area. Last time we were here there was a creek just below a gold mine where we could do some panning. Problem then was it was our first try at panning and the pans were new and we didn’t know the pans needed to be broken in. So mostly at that time all we found were garnets. There are usually but not always garnets where there is gold. And now since we are gold panning experts (ha ha) I thought we might could find some. After searching on line and calling the RV parks in the area we found they were all $40.00 a night and up and the only place I found to gold pan were two gold mine tours. Where they charge for the tour and give you a small bag of concentrates to pan out that if you got all the flacks was worth fifty cents…. YUCK! What happened to “There is a creek out such and such road, go try your luck at gold panning”. Anyway we passed up Rapid City and stopped at an RV park in Sundance, WY. This is where the Sundance Kid got his name. We took the scenic route going the short 26 mile trip to Devils Tower and the long way back stopping at the geological center on the Nation in Belle Fourche, SD. Then back to Mountain View RV Park. An all day fun trip..