Our Family Trip 2015 : Devils Tower!

Day 4 of our trip found us at the Devils Tower in Northeast Wyoming!  It was a beautiful drive that morning with a little construction along the way, but not bad.  

We broke over the hill and saw the tower standing tall in the middle of the beautiful Wyoming Cattle country...

In the weeks before our trip, I assigned each kid to research and plan different parts of our trip. Then on the Friday evening before we left on our trip,
they did a google presentation on their part of the trip for the rest of us.  Grandpa and Grandma joined us too.

 Colter's part of the trip was Devils Tower.  He found out about the Tower and the area around it and planned for us to go on a hike around the tower.
So after a lunch in our trailer near the visitors center, he started off on our hike...

Just some different scenes from our hike...

There are things in nature that engender an awful quiet in the heart of man;

Devil's Tower is one of them. 

~ M. Scott Momaday (The Way to Rainy Mountain 1969)

Whereas the lofty and isolated rock in the state of Wyoming, known as the Devils Tower' is an extraordinary example of the effects of erosion...
a natural wonder... an object of historic and great scientific interest. ~ President Theodore Roosevelt

The Tower's remarkable structure, its symmetry, and it's prominence made it an unfailing object of wonder... once seen,

so singular and unique that it can never be forgotten.
~ Henry Newton, Assistant Geologist Newton-Jenney Expedition, 1875 

There is no place on earth quite like Devil's Tower.  It has long been a magnet for nomadic tribesman, traveling families, photographers.
And of course climbers.  This last group poses a problem, it seems, because they leave the class of admirers, turn ninety degrees
to normalcy and actually lay hands on that brooding fortress of rock... [we] define our world not from postcards but from the sweat of our brow.
~ Robert McGovern, Climber 1994

Watching some climbers who just reached the top of the Tower.  They were tiny specks way up there!

Rock Climbing at Devils Tower!

Another great adventure on our trip.

A "must see" if you haven't already!

And then we got back into the pickup and headed east!