I woke up to a beautiful view this morning. I had driven in pretty late and got my tent setup in the dark with the critters crawling all over me the previous night, but the moment I poked my head out of the tent I knew I was in for quite a surprise- a spectacular view of Devils Tower.
This was my first time in Wyoming. I was going to write a Wyoming joke here but all of the ones I googled were so mean that I won't. It's what you don't say.
Devils Tower is is over 1,200 feet tall and was officially made the nation's first national monument in 1906 by President Roosevelt after he had made a hunting trip through the Black Hills. From miles away it is a sight to be seen. Native Americans called it the Bear Lodge and to this day find it to be sacred. I hiked the loop around the base of the tower and scaled some of the large boulders at its base. Almost everywhere I went I saw Native American prayer flags and blankets tied on tree branches. I also saw a good ol' longhorn grazing in the meadow adjacent to the structure.
You're probably wondering...how did this form? Some say that it was a volcanic plug, the neck of an extinct volcano, or that it was trapped in a large mushroom rock that was then eroded over time. Who knows.
One thing is for certain...it's a ton of fun climbing up these rocks. I saw a bunch of climbers traversing the igneous pillars of the tower. And I even ran into two of my friends from the Wild Cave spelunking tour (shoutout to Martha and Jacob of New Haven!). Jacob was going to try his hand at scaling the walls. For me, I just crawled over boulders.
