We awoke in the morning and headed down for some of the best breakfast of the trip. The Plaza Hotel is a historic hotel that was built in 1918 and was updated again in 1999. This place was really cool!
Located inside the Mineral Springs State Park you'll find this amazing hotel. The room we stayed in was small compared to others. It was still very nice with all the amenities right there. One of those amenities was the spring fed hot tub and pool.
The pool was closed but the hot tub was open. Water in it is a constant 122 degrees and never needs to be cleaned. No chemicals are used at all and it flows back out to the river.
We took a walk around to see what else was in this park.
From the hotel, a spring fed stream with parallel walking path made it's way down to the river.
A short walk along this stream and we found ourself at a bridge. This bridge is named the swinging bridge and I can confirm that is accurate. My co-pilot didn't want to partake in the bridge adventure. 😁
Once out on the bridge, you look down the river and are greeted by a huge shoulder of travertine! To make it even better, the hot mineral spring water is flowing over the side of it. SO many different colors from all the minerals.
The original spring isn't far from this bridge. There you'll find information about the make up of the land and some of the Indian history.
Before reaching the exit of the park you'll find this monster. It's constantly growing as more minerals accumulate on it. I think this might be more colorful than the riverbank travertine.
Here is a makeup of the minerals in the spring water here.
It's getting close to noon at this point and we need to get on the road. We headed East on I-90 and took in the sights. Soon we were at our next stop for the day.
Reaching up to the sky from the prairie floor stands Devils Tower. At 867ft tall this one was a must see.
The story behind the tower is very interesting. It's said that 7 little girls were out picking berries. A bear was chasing them and the gods rose the ground below them. The bears could not climb the rocks and left their claw marks in the sides. The little girls reached the sky and turned into the constellation Pleiades.
Another thing you'll see here is ribbons and strings tied to trees. Each one represents a prayer from one of the local tribes. They ask you do not photograph them and we were very careful to respect that. Here are some of the signs explaining it.
As we walked closer to the base we noticed something moving up on the rocks.
What is really going on??? There is a guy up dancing on the rocks while he waits for his buddy to catch up. He looked like he was making a TikTok video. LOL. If you look under him you can see his friend climbing up to him.
That was a fun stop and a perfect time for a travel selfie!
We jumped back in the RoadTrip Chariot and again headed East on I-90. We wanted to go check out Deadwood.
Today we got a hotel first and then went adventuring more. We found a spot to stay in Spearfish and unloaded.
Deadwood was disappointing. Mostly tourist traps and Casinos. We headed a little further past it and made it to the tallest spot in the area. Powder River Pass sits at 9666ft of elevation and still had plenty of snow on the ground.
With not much else happening we headed back to the hotel. I saw these cold snacks at the gas station and had to give them a try. Pretty good stuff!
That's a wrap for day 23. Here is our route for the day.
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