On the way to give the devil his due, we left the Fairfield Inn in Gillette just after 8 a.m.  Devils Tower National Monument would be our first stop.  Named Devils Tower in 1875 due to a misinterpretation of a native name for the area, efforts have been underway for ten years to rename the 1,267-ft rock formation Bear Lodge—the actual Native American name for the monolith.  Sacred to various Native American tribes in the area, the dome was called Bear Home or some variation of that name for hundreds of years.

We found a letterbox outside the local library and drove to the cemetery where Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane are buried.  The letterbox hidden there was inaccessible today so we were leaving when a tall, friendly, silver-haired tourist noted our Georgia license plate and noted that he lives north of Atlanta.  A couple of sentences later we had reached two degrees of separation when it was revealed that, while a professor at Georgia State, he taught one of Ken's fraternity brothers in the 1970s.  Two more letterboxes near Deadwood and we finally had lunch about 4 p.m. at a National Forest Service picnic area atop Mount Roosevelt (named for TR, of course).

    

After seeing all the bikers moving across the country last month on their way home from one the world's largest motorcycle rallies, we wanted to check out Sturgis, this town of 6,883 people that can handle a guest list up to one million.  A month after the big event, the town appeared business-as-usual calm.  Yes, there were more tattoo parlors and motorcycle shops per city block than the average American metropolis.  But today things were quiet enough for us to stealthily find one letterbox and confirm the missing status reported on another.

     

One final letterbox in a rural cemetery near the wee village of Piedmont (pop. 222) and we called it a day as we rolled into the parking lot for the Rapid City Residence Inn.  Tomorrow we continue east toward home.