Travelog post for: Tommi

Hi there!

Today we left South Dakota and went even further west, into Northeast Wyoming. You can’t imagine how beautiful the landscape was, but maybe you can catch a glimpse with this view over Salt Creek somewhere in Wyoming.



But our final destination was another National Park: Devils Tower was the first declared United States National Monument, established on September 24, 1906, by President Theodore Roosevelt. But among the local Native American tribes, the tower is called Bear's Lodge. One of the first official explorers of the area misinterpreted the name as “Bad God’s Tower” = “Devil’s Tower” and the surveyors of the following generation stuck to this name.

The name Bear’s Lodge is connected to a story that is different in details, but quite similar in general among all tribes: A group of kids was chased by a bear and prayed for help. And help came when the rock they were standing on rose up to the sky. This saved the children – and it explains the structure of the tower still visible nowadays since the bear tried to climb the mountain and therefore carved it with his claws. You can see this story in the painting:



Science would say Devils Tower was caused by eruption of a volcanic hotspot. Basically, it is a rock pimple. And a very outstanding one: rising dramatically 386 m above the surrounding terrain and, in general, the summit is more than 1500 m above sea level. But it is not really one solid mountain, but made up of single columns.



If you have never been to Wyoming, but cannot suppress the feeling Devils Tower looks familiar to you, chances are that you are very interested in movies: In Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) aliens land here. But not when we visited.

All the best,
Tommi