The Big Parks Trip: This Is NOT Where Close Encounters of the Third Kind Was Filmed.

On our 9000 mile tour of the western US, Captain Winnebago drove and moi –– his trusted Snactition –– ran the maps. Except for this one time...

We had just spent a couple of halcyon days at what turned out to be one highlight of the highly-lit trip –– Custer State Park.

We aren't fond of the historical figure, but his namesake chunk of land in the Black Hills of South Dakota? Really wonderful. More about that anon.

But to the point. From Custer, our next destination was Badlands National Park in North Dakota. More or less due north.

Parked between the two spots is the axis mundi of motorcycle fans: Sturgis, SD. Biker bars and black tee-shirts. Not to our taste. 

Take the western route around Sturgis, and you can get to the Devil's Tower National Monument.  Take the eastern side, and you pass a state park named Bear Butte.

​Captain Winnebago has a dry sense of humor.

​He rarely indulges in age-12 bathroom jokes, unlike some others he could mention, but after perusing the map, he was unable to stop calling the place Bare Butt State Park.  

We had to go to Bare Butt State Park.  How could we not?

Like so many serendipitous moments while traveling, this came out of nowhere and delivered what we hadn't even thought to expect.

The Devil's Tower was on the Big List of Parks.

To be honest, I'd kind of thought of doing a mashed-potatoes and gravy dinner before heading to the Devil's Tower.

Maybe, you know, start intoning the five notes (re mi do do si), to get us in a Devil's Tower kind of mood.

But if you've gone off in search of America, isn't it just too too much to visit something just because of its movie reference?

​A Spielberg movie no less?

Still, it was on the list, and I didn't actually notice that we were going to drive the opposite way round Sturgis, such was the joy of hearing Mr. Linton say "Bare Butt State Park" again and again.

Like Devil's Tower, Bear Butte is an incongruously tall mountain in the midst of the high plains. It's mysterious and magnificent. However, Bear Butte is still in use as a spiritual center of Native American culture.

​Unlike nearly everywhere else we went, Bear Butte State Park was staffed by Native Americans, managed by Native Americans, and visited largely by Native Americans. 

I grant you, one day of hiking does not an expert make. But there's plenty of data for me to form some theories.

Considering how enormous the Great Plains turned out to be, it's heart-breaking to see what dusty little corners are left for the First Peoples. 

Oh, I know, it was war. But more than that, it was the dreary series of treaties and small pox blankets and  "assimilation" campaigns. Heavy sigh.

Bear Butte State Park has a trail up the mountain. It's a pilgrimage for some: climb the Butte for prayer, for a vision quest, to commune with the ancestors.  

On the lowest section of the trail, offerings of tobacco wrapped in colorful cloth hang from the trees.  

Signage along the way advises visitors to the park not to clean up the scraps of tee-shirt or bandana fabric tied to the branches of the trees.

These things are not trash.

Bear Butte, South Dakota

Nearly everyone we saw –– the shirtless dark-haired boys pelting down the trail at top speed, the elderly ladies in skirts assisting one another uphill, the dressed-up middle-aged couple wheezing asthmatically, the young family way way up the trail carrying their littlest up the ladder-stairs –– looks to us as if they don't need to be reminded of the mountain's significance. ​

Before reaching the summit, there's a saddle where you can look for miles in every direction. You can see four states, though the big colorful Rand-McNally lines are not quite visible.

If you were watching, you'd probably be able to see enemies approaching for a long time before they arrived.

​The wind blows right up the Butte from all directions. It's eerie. And beautiful.

And it reminded us, for the next six thousand or so miles, that these astonishing natural wonders we treasure were also sacred ground for cultures that came before us. Even if people stopped leaving fabric gifts tied onto the branches like Tibeten flags, fluttering to the heavens.​