Devils Tower (Devils Tower, Wyoming Post)

Today we visited Devils Tower National Monument.  It is really cool, as it is like a giant rock tower in the middle of nowhere.  

Passed down by Native Americans, here is one story of the creation of Devils Tower.  "One day, an Indian tribe was camped beside the river and seven small girls were playing at a distance.  The region had a large bear population and a bear began to chase the girls.  They ran back toward their village, but the bear was about to catch them.  The girls jumped on a rock and began to pray to the rock, "Rock, take pity on us; Rock, save us."The rock heard the pleas of the girls and began to elongate itself upwards, pushing them higher and higher out of reach of the bear.  The bear clawed and jumped at the sides of the rock, and broke its claws and fell to he ground.  The bear continued to jump at the rock until the girls were pushed up into the sky, where they are to this day in a group of seven little stars (the Pleiades).  The marks of the bear claws are still there yet."  

If you want the scientific explanation for the tower,  it is the core of a volcano that has been exposed by millions of years of erosion from the Belle Fourche River and weather.   About 50 million years ago, molten magma was forced into sedimentary rocks above and cooled underneath.  The sedimentary rock eroded leaving Devils Tower standing 1,267 feet above the river that formed it and 5,112 feet above sea level.  The area of the top is 1.5 acres, and the diameter of the base is 1,000 feet. 

  

Devils Tower stands 865 feet high from its base.  

Although you cannot quite see them in this picture, there are several people climbing up the side of Devils Tower.  

SQUIRREL! :)

A macro of the bark on a tree.  

The red rock eroded away by the Belle Fourche River at the base of Devils Tower.  

A prairie dog at play. 

We are currently on our way to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.  Earlier we stopped to let Timber run and she chased and was chased by a Pronghorn Antelope.  Later, Karen's blog Where's Harvey the RV will have a video of this chase.