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of leafy trees , a stark contrast to the forbidding badlands . The only vehicles I encountered were other bikes .
Off of Wyoming Route 24 , I spied in the distance a weird mountainous shaft soaring into the sky out of the flat earth , looking completely out of place . This bizarre monolith is called Devils Tower , an ancient religious site for Native Americans and now a national monument . It was also a setting for the movie , “ Close Encounters of the Third Kind .”
After hiking around Devils Tower , I rode back to the Black Hills to visit the Crazy Horse Memorial . The monument to the legendary Lakota chief is staggering in size , dwarfing Mt . Rushmore . The sculpture was started in 1948 and remains unfinished 70 years later , though work continues , attested to by the dynamite blasts up on the mountain .
Above : The unfinished Crazy Horse Memorial .