Mon, 6/23/08

Devil’s Tower, WY: Devil’s Tower was our first National Monument—designated by Teddy Roosevelt in 1906. So, Wyoming has the first National Park (Yellowstone) and the first National Monument (Devil’s Tower). We had another storm during the night—a pretty fierce one. It rained hard for about an hour. Hail too. But this morning dawned clear and sunny. So we drove over to the visitor’s center and hiked the tower trail which goes along the base of the tower through a beautiful boulder-strewn pine forest. Climbers come here from all over the world to climb this monolith. But, during the month of June there is a moratorium so the various Indian tribes can perform their sacred ceremonies and leave their prayer bundles. We saw several prayer bundles along the trail and encountered three Indian women performing some kind of ceremony. The Indians still consider this a sacred place. Indeed, this is an unusual formation formed when molten magma was forced into sedimentary rocks above it and cooled underground. Over millions of years erosion of the sedimentary rock exposed Devils Tower and accentuated Little Missouri Buttes just to the west. A beautiful day today—85 degrees. We leave tomorrow morning for the Custer Battlefield at the Little Big Horn in Montana.