Devil's Tower: This means something

I've been having the hardest time getting signed into Blogger the last few weeks; my internet doesn't like this site I guess. So I had over 300 pictures from our Christmas trip, which I edited down to about 190, 2/3rds of which I'll eventually print out. But don't worry, you don't have to see all of those.

Today, however, I would like to share a little side adventure where we went to Devil's Tower. You know, where the aliens arive in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind? My dad being the movie lover that he is, I've already been to this fascinating location at least three times, but the kids and Joseph had yet to experience the Spielburgesque landscape that is Devil's Tower.

When we surveyed our atlas (we're not hip enough to have a GPS, and probably never will be) we discovered that it wasn't too far off of our return route at all! In fact, it is just sixty miles over the border from South Dakota, imagine that.

The first order of business was to view the monolith through the free binoculars...



Even though it was really right in front of us, no magnification necessary. This is much more interesting in the summertime, when the sides are crawling with mountain climbers! And it doesn't show up well in the photos, but in the winter the rock has a lot of algae growing on it, giving it a distinctively green caste.



Then we had to go for the ubiquitous family-photo-in-front-of-famous-landmark, but I couldn't find anything to put my camera on that would hold it at the right angle to capture both the family and the tower, so we settled for two separate ones. I like the angle of the photo I took..but Jonah's grin in the photo with me is so cute! As are his fancy pink boots.



The main attraction at Devil's Tower, besides the rock climbing, is the mile or so long path that snakes around the base of the tower, surrounded by boulders and Ponderosa Pines. It's really quite pretty, and while the beginning was a little icy, we thought we'd be okay going around. (Okay, I told Joseph we'd only go about halfway, but that's just silly, isn't it?) While most of my photos are from the warmer side of the trail, the shadow side of the walk was thick with snow and ice! several times, the kids fell on their bottoms or slid for a bit. Luckily there weren't too many steep spots.



Despite all the snow and ice, Jonah loved every minute of it! There was barely a moment that he didn't have a big grin on his face, and he kept stomping along soldier-like in his boots.



Joshua is our usual party-pooper, and while he did whine and cry a bit during the second half of our hike, I really think he had fun too. Even though he was scared of falling in the ice. Which he did. Several times.




Elora has always loved climbing and hiking, and she was in heaven! Especially when I let her get up on some really big rocks so I could get a picture. In my mom's photo album, there are several pictures of myself on the huge boulders here. Who could blame me for wanting to recreate my childhood? As long as she didn't fall right? Heh. And when she fell and slid on the ice, she couldn't stop laughing and kept trying to make it happen again.



At one point, there was a beautiful viewpoint where we could see way out over the surrounding terrain. It was so beautiful in real life, I was dissapointed that my camera couldn't really capture it, no matter how many pictures I took. At least the kids got to see it!


You can't really tell, but off in the distance the sun was glinting off the fields of snow, reflecting brightly. It was pretty cool. And the sky was more colorful. Much.



Joseph kept looking around for the field where the spaceships landed, but to no avail: it doesn't really exist. He also kept saying, "This means something" at every oportunity..I suppose it would've been funnier if I didn't have to hear that statement repeatedly from my dad throughout my childhood.



Though I admit I said it too when I called my family to tell them where we were. What, wouldn't you?