This means something! Welcome to Devil’s Tower National Monument. The FIRST National Monument and also the film site for several movies including Close Encounters of the Third Kind. We watched the film last night to be prepared! We learned that the campground we were staying at was the “Dark side of the moon” landing sight!
The campground had a cool playground that E and I spent all of our free time at.
I loved the climbing dome. It became my battle arena.
I could have stayed on the merry go round for hours!
Shh. Don’t tell my friends I am such a goof!
We had a nice site right by the playground and the front of the park.
You could see Devil’s Tower from the campsite.
In the morning we headed up to The Tower (they don’t use the word Devil’s to refer to the tower). We stopped at Prairie Dog Town. Boy were there lots of them out and about. Even hundreds of babies!
The town seemed to extend forever into a huge field.
Enough prairie dogs for now. Time to head up to the mountain for a guided ranger hike.
We had an excellent guide who knew a lot of the history of the area. We saw many prayer flags ties in trees from native americans who use the area as ceremonial grounds.
It was neat to see the prism like structure of the rocks.
The guide kept stopping and listening. She heard ceremonial drums. We stopped several times but no one else could heat them. I finally figured out it was my water bottle bumping my leg and making a drumming sound.
Our hike took us all around the base of the tower. We learned that you were allowed to rock scramble up to the tree line. We begged and pleaded to go.
I am the blue dot in the middle.
Up up up I go!
The bounders are quite large!
E and I made it to the tree line and then headed back down.
VICTORY!
Keeping with our strange weather we had more big storms pass through.
We went out to dinner to celebrate Mom’s 40th birthday! We had a great meal and came home and called it a night. E and I played at the playground until dark.
Oh yeah, we got our Junior Ranger Badges as well.
  
Happy 40th birthday to Mom!