Listing Through Life

Devil’s Tower is cool, but if you’re not a rock climber, there isn’t a lot to do there. Even the park web site, under “Things To Do” only lists hiking and looking at a sculpture of smoke.

We spent a couple minutes in the visitor center, then hiked the 1.3 mile paved trail around the base. I took a ton of photos because, well, there was this gigantic rock tower RIGHT THERE and taking pictures seemed like the thing to do. But the pictures all look pretty much the same, so I will only post a sampling. Trust me, these are all separate photographs, taken as we made our way counter-clockwise around the tower from the visitor center.

Turkey Vultures and Rock Doves circled the plateau.

The base trail was high above the surrounding plains, and we occasionally got a view. This one is looking east back toward the Black Hills.

There was at least one guy climbing the tower this day. You can see his red shirt near the edge.

The hike was easy, the view was impressive, the weather could not have been more pleasant and the company was amazing.

Supposedly, some people find the tower sacred. There were prayer flags tied to trees along the trail.

After we circled the tower, I ran back to the car and got the chair. It was hard to find a place for a photo — the tower was so large and so close. But I finally settled on this shot.

And that was about it. We paused to look at the prairie dog town near the entrance, then headed back to South Dakota.

As we drove from Belle Fourche to Devil’s Tower it occurred to us that we were thirsty. The next town on the map was Aladdin, but it didn’t look like there was much to it.

There wasn’t. The town was pretty much just this store which has been around since 1893 or so.

We wandered around inside for a few minutes, bought drinks and junk food and headed west. It wasn’t long before we got our first glimpse of Devil’s Tower.

The little bit of Wyoming I saw out the car window was stunningly beautiful.