This towering monument stands 865 feet. Its was the nations first national monument dedicated by Teddy Roosevelt in 1906. Indian legend says that one day while the tribe camped nearby, a bear started chasing a group of girls. They jumped on a rock three feet high and began to pray, “Rock, take pity on us; Rock save us”. The rock heard them and began to elongate itself upwards, pushing them higher and higher. The bear clawed and jumped at the sides of the rock, broke his claws and fell to the earth. The rock pushed the girls into the sky where they are to this day in a group called the seven little stars (the Pleiades).
When you look at the tower it looks as if it has been clawed by a bear. The campground we stayed at was a KOA. We were going to stay in the park at their campground, but when we went through it we saw we couldn’t fit. They didn’t give any length limit on their website so the KOA was the only alternative. However that evening they did show the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” so that was kind of cool to watch it while looking at the tower!
Before you get to the visitor center you pass through Prairie Dog Town. Its just an open field but there must have been hundreds of them all over.
We moved on to Rapid City on Sunday. We had reservations starting on Monday but I was able to get them changed so we could go in on Sunday. So now we are settled here at Hart Ranch, an RPI park. This is the nicest park we have ever been to. Totally paved roads, and cement pads. We are here for 2 weeks now to explore the area.
We stayed at Hart Ranch on their 3 day special but they put us in the poor section of town and we were not impressed. If they want to sell people on their park they should put those folks into some of the nicer sections. At least that's my opinion and maybe things have changed since we were there. How is the motor home behaving? You are going to have a great time in the Black Hills. If you get to Hill City at lunch time - try out the Alpine Inn. We loved it.
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