Devil’s Tower View Campground & Monument June 9-11, 2025

We left Custer State Park on Monday, June 9th and drove 2 1/2 hours to Devil’s Tower View Campground for a two-night stay. This is little more than a grassy gravel lot with 8 or 9 electric-only sites.

After we set up Nomad we drove about a mile to the Diamond Bar at Devil’s Tower (though it’s not technically at Devil’s Tower) for some lunch, then took a quick trip into the Devil’s Tower Monument itself to scope it out for our Tuesday morning sunrise visit the next day. We also picked up some souvenirs at the Visitor Center and got our National Park Passport Book stamped.

I did a sunrise hike around Devil’s Tower Monument back in May of 2016 when I was deployed to South Dakota and staying in Rapid City. I was really looking forward to sharing that experience again with Cindy.

Hiking The Tower Trail at Devil’s Tower Monument

Tuesday morning we were up at 4:15 am for a quick breakfast then drove to the Visitor Center, arriving at 4:50 am for a 5:12 am sunrise. This is (to me) the best time to hike the trail and visit Devil’s Tower as virtually no one (well, we DID see 4 guys leaving the parking lot to go hike a more strenuous trail) is there at that time of the day. It is SO peaceful and uncrowded. Cindy and I were the only humans on the trail that morning.

The Tower Trail is 1.3 miles in length from one end of the loop to the other, not counting the .3 miles from the parking lot to the trail head. It was still light enough before actual sunrise to navigate the trail and take some photos.

We reached the eastern-facing side of the tower just as the sun was coming up over the horizon. As we sat and enjoyed the first yellow rays of the sun hitting the side of the tower, we were joined by a trio of nearby deer foraging for breakfast. They were very brave and did not run away when they saw us, but just kept on grazing and occasionally looking up at us while we filmed and photographed them.

The Tower Trail is paved but not flat, with lots of ups and down as you make your way around the base of the Devil’s Tower Monument. It took us about 90 minutes to make the complete circuit since we stopped quite often to take photos and a few times to catch our breath. I don’t remember it feeling quite so strenuous a decade ago, lol.

NOTE: I had a video to accompany this post, but the program kept crashing while I was editing it. As soon as I can get it put together I will add a post with just the video.

Native American Prayer Cloths and Bundles

The month of June is a special time of remembrance for some 20 American Indian tribes who know the monument as Bear Lodge. The park asks that no one climb Devil’s Tower Monument during the month, so Cindy did not get to see how amazing it looks to see climbers ascending or descending on the sides of the tower.

In addition, during June the trees and bushes are covered in prayer cloths and bundles that are tied to branches by local tribe members in remembrance of loved ones. Visitors are asked NOT to touch the prayer cloths/bundles and some even regard the taking of photos of their prayer cloths/bundles to be disrespectful.

So we were careful not to take specific photos of prayer cloths/bundles; but you may see some in photos that we had taken of Devil’s Tower Monument during our hike. I regard those as incidental rather than specific shots.

Cindy even tied one to a branch in remembrance of her mom and we DID take a photo of that since it was hers to place and she wanted a photo record of it.

World Champion Hoop Dancing

We went back to Nomad and crawled back into bed for a couple of hours (we’re not used to getting up at 4 am, lol), then relaxed until we went back to Devil’s Tower Monument for a 1 pm demonstration of Hoop Dancing led by World Champion Hoop Dancer Jasmine Pickner Bell and her family.

We were a few minutes late in arriving because the line to get into the monument was unbelievably long for that time of day. But fortunately we caught most of the program and demonstration at the Visitors Center Pavilion.

Ms. Bell is a member of the Crow Creek Dakota Sioux Tribe and is a pioneer in the formerly male-dominated tradition of Hoop Dancing. Her message is one of unity and healing in her performances. She has performed in Austria, Switzerland, Germany and at venues like the Kennedy Center (guess she WON’T be invited back to perform there for a while), as well as for celebrities such as Muhammad Ali before his passing.

After the performance, Cindy really wanted to tell Ms. Bell how much her and her family’s performance meant to her and I was able to get a quick photo of them together for Cindy’s digital memory frame.

We left Devil’s Tower Monument to drive 10 miles to fuel up Voyager, then returned to Nomad to get ready for our departure the next morning.

That night, appropriately, we watched the 1977 blockbuster movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, since it centers around Devil’s Tower Monument.

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