Many Names, Many Theories, One Tower

After another day of driving, we arrived at the small town of Devil's Tower. It's right next to the first US national monument, Devil's Tower. We set up camp at Devil's Tower Campsite (notice a recurring theme here?) and set out for Devil's Tower. When we got there, the first thing we noticed was two climbers scaling the sheer walls of the rock formation. It was looking at those people in comparision to the tower that we got our first idea of the true size of the massive tower.
We went into the visitors center and learned some interesting things about the tower, like it is called either Devil's Tower, Tasi-o-e, or Rock Tree. Also, it showed wome theories on how it was formed. Some scientists believe that millions of years ago, there was a huge mountain were Devil's Tower is now. The tower would have been directly under the peak. Slowly, the mountain eroded untill only the Rock Tree was left. Another theory is that there was a large volcano, and Devil's Tower served as a cork inside the volcano. It would bottle up the magma untill there would be a huge eruption. Eventually, the volcano took itself out, bit by bit, eruption by eruption, untill only the Tower was left. The third theory comes the Native Americans. A boy had gotten bear medicine, and he turned into a gigantic bear. He killed everyone his tribe, except for his little sister. The girl ran and ran untill she came upon a herd of Bison, who she asked for help. The told her that they would hold of the bear for a little bit. The girl ran some more untill she came to a large flat rock, which told her to run around it four times. She did, and it began to grow up and up, untill it was out of the bear's reach. However, the bear kept clawing and calwing at the rock, leaving hug gouge marks into the Tower.
We then hiked around the base of Devil's Tower, then came back and visited Prarie Dog village, where hundreds of Prarie Dogs live. We came back to our campsite and started cooking dinner, which will be a choice between Chicken Stir fry, or Chicken Fajitas. At nine o' clock, we are going to go watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind with Devil's Tower in view! Tomorrow we will pack up and head to Cody!

Will Wesson
Devil's Tower Campsite
Wyoming