A Close Encounter with the Devil's Tower

June 27th, 2014 -  Day 28

Devils Tower National Monument - a key setting for the movie Close Encounter of the Third Kind
1977 Science fiction thriller by Steven Spielberg.
In 2007, it was deem " culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress,
and selected for presentation in the United States Library of Congress.  I can't figure out why. 

 Next stop, Devil’s Tower National Monument.  Norm once again chose a great campground, Devil’s Tower KOA residing right as the base of the monument!  Wow!  On the drive there, we went a little out of our way to Belle Fourche, Wyoming to stand at the spot determined to be exactly in the middle of the United States of America!  The website directions were extremely poor, and we had to turn around in some farmer’s drive. 

Unfortunately, the center of this great nation is not here, but 20 miles away.
We need to start reading the fine print.

We we arrived where all the “hoopla” was….. we learned the actual, honest to goodness “spot” was 20 miles out, on a gravel road, which was all mud from the storm the night before!  UGH!

We didn't come to see a “pretenda spot!”  We took some pictures anyway, and continued on.

There are two geological features that loom up out of the prairie that are considered sacred places to the Lakota and other tribal Indians.  

Looks like a bears been scratching this to me....

One is the Devils Tower in Wyoming, and the other which we did not see, is Bear Butte in South Dakota. 

The Lakota legend tells of two Sioux boys who wandered far from their village. Mato the bear, a huge creature with gigantic claws wanted to eat them for breakfast.  The boys prayed to their creator to help them.  The legend goes on to say they rose up on a great rock.  The bear tried to get up from every side, clawing at the rock leaving huge scratch marks as he did.  He became discouraged and came to rest northeast of the Black Hills to what is now called Bear Butte.  

As we arrived at the campground, we saw very dark skies, and thunder in the distance.  We flew around setting up, then raced up the hill to the National Park ( just across the street ) to try to do the short 1 mile hike around the base before the storm.

An incredible campsite view at KOA Devils Tower

I was a little worried about the skies, and didn't want to be caught in a thunderstorm on the mountain top, so I asked what appeared to be a child ( anyone under 30 seems like a child now ) if they could check the weather radar to see where the storm is, and determine the danger.

She looked and replied, “ Oh, yeah, there definitely is thunderstorms all around, but it doesn't look like hail, so you will be fine.  I would go”, she said.  Well, hey, she’s a kid.  Do I trust her?

Well, Norm is a guy, which is only one step smarter than a “kid” and he wanted to go.  So we went. 

The Devil’s Tower up close and personal is, for the lack of a better word, “awesome”.

It just looms up out of nowhere.  We took a million pictures, ignoring the rumbling that was, if we listened, getting closer.

While we were dallying at the ½ mile point, it REALLY got dark.  Everyone was saying what a horrible storm is coming.  We hustled, jogged, huffed and puffed our way back to the car before the rain began.

As soon as we got to the car, the sky’s opened up, and incredible winds kicked in!  When we got back to the motorhome we pulled in the slides, and unplugged the electric as the earth shook!

An hour later, the sun came out.  Strange weather in these hills!

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Most folks over 50 remember the movie “ Close Encounters of the Third Kind “ that was filmed here at Devil’s Tower.  The campground plays the movie every night for it’s visitors, which is pretty cool.  Unfortunately the speakers broke last week, and we could not hear a thing.  I sat in a wet chair and got my undies soaked,( which is really high on my "hate" list ) so left after about 45 minutes.  Norm stayed until the sky opened up again, about 15 minutes later.