Thursday August 23, 2018 Devil’s Tower, Wyoming

The beautiful state of Wyoming welcomes us!!! Again, who wouldn’t!! We are on our way to see Devils Tower and Vore Buffalo Jump.

This is one of our first views of the tower.  It was named after military escort Col. Richard Dodge, who thought the Indians called it “Bad God’s Tower” which he modified to Devil’s Tower. The tower was not formed from a volcano. It is an igneous intrusion – which means it was formed underground from molten rock. Magma pushed it up through the surrounding sedimentary rock. There is cooled and hardened. And wala — Devil’s Tower was formed. And there is your science lesson for the day.

Here we are at the base of the tower. It stands 867 feet tall from base to summit. There is a trail around the base that is 1.3 miles long. Evie and I walked the tower trail. On the home stretch around we could see threatening skies and hear thunder. Uh oh!!! Walked faster we did!! We made it back in plenty of time. But, we were wondering about the climbers. There were about eight that we saw climbing and 2 or 3 on top. Hope they were safe. The climbers, who work in pairs,  use their hands and feet to climb. Periodically the first climber will place protective equipment in the rock, they no longer use pitons (metal pegs) and the second climber will remove it. They do not leave anything behind (but I wonder, does anyone check?). It takes about 4 – 6 hours to ascend the tower. The fastest climber, in the 1980’s, did it 18 minutes without ropes or protection. I know what you’re thinking!!!! I just won’t put it in writing.

You can see two climbers here. The person higher up is using their hands and feet to climb. Unbelievable. The top of the tower is about 1 1/2 acres. About the size of a football field.

Here is Grandma with her two beautiful granddaughters just before Evie and I walked around the base.

After all that hiking we were hungry. So, off to lunch we go. We got to talking to our waitress about living here. Her kids started school Monday. This year the school district voted to have school only 4 days a week with the school day being from 8 am to 4 pm. She lives on a ranch with her family.  She is so far from the school she has to drive her son to the bus stop, then he rides the bus for an hour and this is repeated for the return trip. So her son is gone from about 6:20 am to 5:20 pm four days a week. People are not sure what they think of this new schedule and how it will effect day care concerns for the little kids and sports for the older kids. They call snow days “weather” days.

After lunch we go to the Vore Buffalo Jump. It is a natural sink hole that was used by various Plains Indian tribes as a bison trap from around 1550 to 1800.

There wasn’t much to see at the hole as the University of Wyoming constructed a building that covered the base of the hole where the layers of bones and artifacts were.

Next stop – Best Buy – to buy the connector for the Blu-ray player to the TV so we could watch Harry Potter. 🙂 :).

Last stop  –  home sweet home!!!!