It's called Devils Tower, but God made it.

Here it is the beginning of August and we've only just taken our second camping trip of the year! There have been other vacations in there though, so I really can't complain.

This trip was to Devils Tower in the Black Hills of Wyoming. Levi, our future volcanologist, has been hankering to go there since finding out it's our nearest volcano (one possible explanation for the monument is that it's an old volcano flume; another theory is that it never actually erupted, but magma pushed up toward the earth's surface, cooled, then pushed up again and again, shoving the enormous pillar higher and higher). Another plausible explanation (that you won't see on any signs around the tower) is that God just made it that way. Any way about it, it's a hugely impressive sight to see!

We got there late in the evening and were greeted with this sunset silhouette.


Come morning, we awoke in this beautiful camp setting. And to top it all off, there were no mosquitos! Not a one! There were, however, thousands of grasshoppers. Do hoppers eat skeeters, I wonder? This would explain much.


Several trails wind around the monument. Saturday we hiked 1.3 miles around the monument and saw quite a few climbers scaling it's vertical sides. I'm sure the climbing would be exhilarating, and the view from the top breathtaking, but there is NO WAY you'd ever get me down off that thing without either a helicopter or a big club to knock me out with.



On Sunday we hiked 1.5 miles on a loop that wound around a prairie dog town. Although the signs say not to approach or feed the animals, the prairie dogs' bravery testifies to a few people trying to get friendly with them. * Picture further down.



Here's one of the critters now.


Wyoming's Black Hills really are a beautiful sight. Red rocks, clear rivers and tree-covered hills make it a place we would have liked to stay longer.



Epilogue: On the way home, the van broke down a few miles outside of Spearfish. We got a tow truck to haul us the ten miles to the Spearfish City Park parking lot where we had many hours to burn while awaiting our rescue vehicle -- Dad and Mom H. Now, being stranded for five hours with four children may seem awful, but God was so good to us. The park we waited at boasts a Million Smiles playground, lots of shade trees, green grass and a stream, and it's adjacent to the D.C. Booth Historic National Fish Hatchery where we were able to feed the fish, tour some of the old buildings, look around an old fish-transporting train car and see a boat that once navigated the Yellowstone River for fish eggs. We still had food in the cooler, so come dinner time we enjoyed a hotdog picnic at the park. Whiling away five hours was never so enjoyable!

At last Dad and Mom arrived and towed us safely back home... not without event, but safely nonetheless.