Close Encounter of the Devil's Tower Kind

Our friends, along with another family, were planning to head over to Devil's Tower National Monument in northeast Wyoming. They invited us to camp with them, which was perfect, since it so happened that was our next destination.

There is a campground near the base of Devil's Tower, so the tower's presence is constant. I wanted to show our trailer parked in the campground so you could see how close we were to it, but I'm afraid one of the guys couldn't stop goofing around.

We arrived mid-afternoon, hoping to secure a group campsite for everyone, which was the plan, but there was no way the group campsites would hold 3 RV rigs, so we took a site across the way, half price with our handy Senior pass. The others didn't arrive till well after dark, as they had workdays to complete before leaving home. Amazingly, they managed to squeeze two travel trailers and two pickups into one group site--in the dark!

Next morning, the Tower wore a halo.

Shortly before noon, we all set out for the visitor's center, 2 miles further up the road, at the base of the Tower.

And then we set out on the hike around the base of the Tower, about 1.4 miles. Our friends' daughter Emily, who had had foot surgery, actually tackled and completed the hike on crutches!  We paused near the foot of the trail for this photo op--actually, the kids kind of clambered up and demanded we take photographs, so we did.

The base of the Tower is strewn with huge boulders, and boundary signs mark where you may go without obtaining a climbing permit. About 5000 climbers visit this challenge every year, and there are, I understand, over 250 routes to the top, of varying difficulty. Our friends had tackled it, and Alan, the husband, had done so several times, sometimes all the way to the top; sometimes not. He had his climbing shoes with him and couldn't resist doing a little climbing on some of the rocks down in the "free" area. He is hoping that his entire family will share the achievement of climbing Devil's Tower sometime in the future.

There were a couple climbers on the far side this day. I only got a shot of one. From where we were standing, far below, we could hear every word the two climbers said to each other. Note to self.

There were some wonderful vantage points for looking out at the surrounding countryside (you can probably guess it kept trying to rain),

and the trees surrounding the base bore the scars of trial by fire.

The native people have different names for this volcanic extrusion. They call it Bear Lodge or any of several other names that reference bears. One version of the story is that one day 8 children were out playing, 7 girls and their brother, who turned into a bear and threatened them. They climbed onto a tree stump, and the tree stump rose high into the sky, saving them from their brother the bear. You can still see his claw marks on the sides of  it, and you can still see the 7 sisters, for they are now stars in the sky, the constellation we call Pleiades.

The next day was Sunday, and our friends had to leave for home, and work. The morning light on the Tower was beautiful.

 We decided to stay another day. We visited a nearby small town for fuel, and back at camp, we visited our neighbors in the prairie dog town.

As dusk closed in, we realized we were getting seriously low on battery power. It had never been below 1/3 before, and now it registered empty! Our water pump is really greedy of power, and I hadn't been monitoring it. The lone light we had been using was feebly yellow, so we switched it off and grabbed flashlights. Then I learned that the refrigerator, even though it was running on propane, could not run at all without at least some battery power. Great. We went to bed discussing how to bypass the new electric tongue jack in the morning.

It wasn't until the next day that we realized the tongue jack was the least of our problems. We have two large slides--how were we going to get them in? We got out the manuals and realized we might be in trouble. Then, Jan had the idea of going to a neighboring camper to borrow a generator. When the neighbor across the road fired up his generator and plugged us in, the slides came right in, and the tongue jack was able to do its job, too.

No, we're not going to rush out and buy a generator, but I sure see the value of it now. However, there usually is another camper around with one if we find ourselves in similar trouble again, which we don't plan to. So, for now the generator will just be on our wish list. But not at the top.