We drove a
couple of hours today to visit our last stop while we are parked in Rapid
City. Devil’s Tower is actually in
Wyoming so we stopped at the Wyoming Visitor Center to gather some information
on our next adventure which will be a one night stop in Buffalo, Wyoming before
moving on to Cody, Wyoming for a week.
The inside
of this place is pretty awesome.
This statue
draws a crowd, had a hard time getting a picture of it without a person in the
picture too.
That is our
destination in the distance. The tower
rises 867 feet from its base and stands 5112 feet above sea level. The area of its teardrop-shaped top is 1.5
acres.
Devil’s
Tower was designated by President Theodore Roosevelt as the nation’s first
national monument. We used our senior national
parks pass to get in free. A carload is
normally $20. If you want to see the
Tower but don’t want to pay the fee there are several pullover areas along the
highway leading to it where you can get some fantastic photos.
This is the
tower from the visitor’s center. Based
on the rocks that can be seen today, scientists have different interpretations
of the Tower’s geologic history. But,
they do agree on two points:
1. The Tower is composed of previously molten
rock, which formed approximately 1.5 miles below the earth’s surface when magma
pushed up through the sedimentary rock layers about 50 million years ago.
2. Over millions of years, erosion
stripped away the softer layers of sedimentary rock, exposing the Tower as we
now see it.
There is a
1.3 mile paved trail around the base that could probably get you some good views.. I
could tell Greg wasn’t even considering this since the temperature today was
90+ degrees. However, I was thinking I
could do 1.3 miles, I might try it even in the heat.
Then I saw a
sign that said “after a steep first 100 yards, the trail becomes moderately
rolling”. That “steep” part was starting
to make me wonder if it was worth it.
Then I saw a
sign that said “do not approach the rattlesnakes”. I was going to the car!
I personally
think that the views of the tower are better from a distance. We took a gravel road up to the Joyner Ridge
trailhead and got this beautiful shot.
There is a
black-tail prairie dog town just inside the park entrance. We caught this little guy checking things out
as we left the park.
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