Devils Tower

Having spent the night in the rather unwelcoming town of Sundance in northeastern Wyoming – although, it has to be pointed out that our motel room-cum-kitchenette had an oven, meaning we were finally able to use up our pizza ingredients – we made the drive towards Devils Tower and figured out that the correct jumping off town is Hulett, not Sundance.
The national monument was a bit of a detour, so we were glad to see a shock of rock shooting out from the horizon, assuring us that a stop was merited.
Although there are several theories as to how Devils Tower came about, scientists agree that it is an igneous intrusion, meaning that it’s basically magma that formed below Earth’s surface, later becoming exposed when softer surrounding rock eroded. Hope that’s right.
Devils Tower will continue appear to grow in height, but only because the ground around it will erode further.

The Native American explanation for the formation, which they call Bear’s Lodge, is a bit more fun. There are lots of variations to the story, but the crux of it is that a bear chased a group of young people up a big tree, which then transformed into a rock rising higher and higher out of the earth, enabling their escape. The bear’s effort was futile but left deep claw marks. The young people then rose up to the skies, where they now make up the Big Dipper, which is known as Mato Tipi La Paha

For everyone else, it’s a really big rock (1,267 feet tall) composed of hundreds if not thousands of column-like structures.

There’s an easy, mile-long paved trail around the Tower, allowing visitors to see it from all angles, while appreciating the Ponderosa pine forest as well as the massive boulders that have crumbled off through the millennia. It’s also a great opportunity to watch birds, chipmunks and the kamikaze climbers mounting the tower.

Badlands sky

We arrived at the Badlands, a range of lonely mountainous buttes rising up out of protected grasslands in western South Dakota, on a cold, windy, overcast afternoon, tired from a long drive along Interstate 90.

Cheered by the spectacle of the irregular, stripy landscape – formed by millions of years of erosion and housing an incredible collection of fossils – we were in no way prepared for one of the flashiest sunsets we’d ever seen.

Boring a small hole at the western edge of the duvet-like cloud covering, the sun snuck into the sky. It looked like a light switch had been flipped on, illuminating the peaks surrounding our very basic campsite located inside the National Park.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Soon, we saw Virga, the scientific term for rain that evaporates before hitting the ground, streaking down from the sky. And then a rainbow – Sophia’s first ever, long awaited rainbow. And then, as if that weren’t enough, the rainbow became a double – full- rainbow.

The crowd – which in this off-season numbered about ten – went nuts, pointing up into the sky, exclaiming superlative after superlative, pausing only to snap photos.

That night, we huddled with our fellow campers at the park’s amphitheater, where which offers nightly lectures. The park ranger delivered a lesson on the astronomy of the Lakota, a Great Plains Indian tribe. She explained the legends of local landmarks corresponding to what we know today as Custer State Park, Wind Cave and Devils Tower, as well as how they are seen to be mirrored in the sky as constellations.

By the end of the talk, which Sophia and Lulu had managed to sit through very patiently, the clouds had politely vanished from the night sky, leaving us a clear view of Jupiter, just near the moon. With the aid of the available telescope, Daniel, Sophia and I were all able to see four of the planet’s moons.