Devil's Tower

I'm sure you all remember the mashed potato sculpture in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Time: Entertainment

 And the spaceship:

Basement Rejects

 That really cool rock formation is Devil's Tower in Wyoming.  It doesn't have a top secret government facility at the bottom, though.  Actually it is a National Monument.

 

You can hike the trail that goes around it, as we did (lovely views).  If you are more adventurous, you can climb it. 

The tower was formed by the intrusion of igneous materal.  Everyone can agree on that much.  What they can't agree on is how that happened.  There are many theories:  It is an eroded laccolith (a huge mushroom shaped rock that does not reach the surface); It is a volcanic plug or neck of an extinct volcano; It is a stock (magma that cooled underground and is later exposed by erosion).

As the rock cooled and cracked hexagonal columns were formed.

No matter what process formed the rock, it was exposed by erosion.  The area around it contiues to erode, exposing more of the tower.  The tower itself also continues to erode so that it is smaller than it was originally.  Often rocks fall and land around the base of the tower.

 The tower has long been known to Native Americans and several tribes have traditions about the tower.  In the Kiowa and Lakota traditions, girls were out playing when some bears began chasing them.  The girls climbed on a rock and prayed to the great spirit who caused the rock to grow into the tower.  It was too steep for the bears to climb, but they left claw marks.

Wikipedia

The Sioux version is very similar, though it is two boys who are being chased by Mato the bear.  The boys were eventually helped off the new mountain by an eagle.  The Cheyenne version is more violent.  Most of the girls being chased by the bear are killed, but two escape to get help from two boys.  As the bear tries to climb the mountain, leaving claw marks, to get to the girls, the boys shoot arrows at its left foot (the fatal weakness).  The boys come close enough to hitting the foot that bear leaves never to return.

 The first documented visitors to the tower were members of Captain Raynold's Expidition to Yellowstone in 1859.  In 1875, Colonial Richard Dodge led an Office of Indian Affairs Scientific Survey party to the tower.  They came up with the name Devil's Tower.

In 1892 the tower became part of a US Forest Reserve, designated by Congress.  Later, in 1906, the tower became the first National Monument, thanks to Teddy Roosevelt.

 The first person to climb the tower (as far as anyone knows) was William Rogers in 1893.  With the help of Willard Ripley, he built a 350 foot ladder to the top and braced it by hammering stakes into the rock wall.  The he climbed it in front of a crowd of spectators and planted an American flag at the top.  Other climbers used the ladder until 1927 and part of it can still be seen, though it requires a telescope.

Wikipedia

The first to climb the tower using rock climbing techniques was Fritz Weissner in 1937.  It took him (and two companions) 4 hours and 46 minutes.  The most popular route, which has about 1,000 climbers a year (of all ages!), was determined by Jack Durrance.

George Hopkins parachuted onto the top in 1941.  Unfortunatley for him, his planned descent didn't work and he was stuck at the top for six days.  Food was dropped to him by airplane until climbers were finally able to rescue him.  He is the only person to get to the top without climbing.  Today, many people climb the tower, but it requires rock climbing experience and equipment.

Great Sand Dunes National Park

One of the most interesting and unusual national parks is Great Sand Dunes National Park.  Located in  Alamosa and Saguache counties, Colorado, the park is definitely worth seeing.  As you would expect, it is far from civilization, though there is a restaurant on the road just before the park if you get hungry.  It is called the Oasis and seems to me to be part of the experience.  I remember eating there, at least, which is more than I can say for a lot of places I've eaten on vacation.

The dunes are huge, which you don't really fully realize until you try to walk around.  I had visions of walking at the very top of the dunes, but I never made anywhere near that far.  It is super hard work (and great exercise) walking on even the flat part at the edge.  

It looks like it isn't far from the deck entrance to the hills of the dunes, but when you start walking it you realize that the distance is much larger than it appears.  I probably didn't even get halfway across the flat part before I was exhausted and gave up!  If you are more athletic than I am, you can hike across the top.

The dunes are about 750 feet high and very, very old.  Every day they look different as the sand is blown around by the wind.  While scientists are still learning about the dunes, it is generally accepted that much of the sand comes from ancient lakes that used to be in the valley.  Wind then blew this sand into the area it is in now, which is kind of a natural pocket in the surrounding mountain passes.  Opposing winds also blow the sand the other way, which creates the hill like parts.  You can read more (and see some helpful graphics) here.

Human history at the dunes also goes back a long way.  Native Americans have known about the dunes for hundreds of years, at least, with several tribes using the area for camping, hunting, and gathering.  The Spanish explorer Don Diego de Vargas passed through the area in 1694.  The first written mention of the dunes was in Zebulon Pike's journals in 1807.  As more people moved west, homesteaders began appearing by the 1870s.  By the 1930s, there were even attempts to mine gold from the sand.  The locals were scared that this might destroy the dunes, so they petitioned Congress to make the dunes a national monument, which they did in 1932.  The monument became a national park in 2000.