Thursday, July 11, Day 80
Today we are headed to South Dakota, but not before going through a little northeast corner of Wyoming. I never noticed their welcome signs before - a Cowboy and the Devil's Tower.
We've seen lots of logging operations along this trip. This one, near the Black Hills, logs timber from that dark forest behind it. It is the dense, dark color of these forests that gave the Black Hills their name. The forest is mostly pine, with Ponderosa Pine being predominant.
Beautiful rolling hills as we head a little west, looking to the horizon for the Devil's Tower.
And there it is! Geologists still can't agree on how it was formed. It may have been the core of a large volcano which thrust upward, surrounded by sedimentary rock. The sedimentary rock then eroded, leaving this monolith behind. On a more mundane level, the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" was partly filmed here, causing an increase in visitors, which number about 400,000 per year.
There is red sandstone and siltstone surrounding the rock. It's really all quite startling landscape -- the red and the green, with this large gray rock in the middle.
That little river is the Belle Fourche River, which is credited with wearing away the sedimentary rock around the Devil's Tower.
Incidentally, the town of Belle Fourche, population 6,000, is credited with being the "Geographic center of the 50 States." I wonder how many geographic centers there can be?
This picture gives a greater idea of the rock and its relation to the surrounding area, including the Belle Fourche River.
There are lots of Indian tribes -- Arapahoe, Crow, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Lakota, Shoshone -- who consider this rock part of their spiritual culture. Most of the native names include a reference to bears -- Bears House, Bears Lair, Lodge, Tipi, Rock. Devil's tower was a misinterpretation of the Indian name which turned into the English name Devil's Tower. The Indian cultures don't have a "Devil" per se. There are also many legends on how the rock was formed. Here is my favorite:
According to the Native American tribes of the Kiowa and Lakota Sioux, some girls went out to play and were spotted by several giant bears, who began to chase them. In an effort to escape the bears, the girls climbed atop a rock, fell to their knees, and prayed to the Great Spirit to save them. Hearing their prayers, the Great Spirit made the rock rise from the ground towards the heavens so that the bears could not reach the girls. The bears, in an effort to climb the rock, left deep claw marks in the sides, which had become too steep to climb. (Those are the marks which appear today on the sides of Devils Tower.) When the girls reached the sky, they were turned into the star constellation the Pleiades.
Devil's Tower is visible from so many places. It is hard to take your eyes off it. Theodore Roosevelt loved this place, part of his Western venture. In 1906, he made it the first declared National Monument.
It isn't too far from Devil's Tower before you are in South Dakota. In the Black Hills, there are Southern Hills and Northern Hills. The Southern Hills contain Mt. Rushmore, Wind Cave, Custer State Park, Crazy Horse, Mammoth Site at Hot Springs. The Northern Hills contain Sturgis and Deadwood. Kind of lopsided!
Those sandstone and siltstone formations continue for a long way. The green grass parts to reveal this really red soil. It's very pretty.
We arrived at the home of my cousins Sandy and Virgil Jundt in Rapid City South Dakota. Sandy's father Sam was my first cousin, son of my Uncle Elmer Williams. We were fortunate in that their grandsons Logan and Camden were visiting. So we got to meet them, too!
Virgil and Sandy originally come from Minot North Dakota, but they have made their home in Rapid City for a long time. Virgil built that huge barn behind them, which houses his prized pickups, motorcycle and a Fifth-Wheeler. He is a great mechanic and builder and has lots of projects in which he takes great pride. Sandy has retired from many years in the banking business.
We were so excited to see wild turkeys in their backyard. Virgil feeds them and the deer, and they aren't a bit shy, except during hunting season!
The deer was a little more retiscent, peeking through the trees and then eventually settling in the grass, never taking its eyes off me.
I was fascinated by the local paper, the Rapid City Journal. One article was concerning Johnny Depp's offer to purchase the land where the Wounded Knee Massacre occurred and give it back to the Lakotas. The asking price for the 40-acre parcel is $3.9 million, plus another $1 million for another parcel. The seller says it's a package deal. Depp's movie, "The Lone Ranger" had recently opened. Interestingly, the Lakota say they don't want him to buy it at that price. They claim it is an inflated price and they have already overpaid for other land they consider to be their sacred lands. Instead, they want him to give them the money so they can buy a lot of other places to add to their reservation. I will have to see how this comes out!
In the same issue of the Rapid City Journal was this article about Kevin Costner offering 1,000 acres he owns in Deadwood, which had been slated for a resort, including a steam-fired passenger train and championship gold course. I think he got involved here after his movie, "Dances with Wolves. " He owns a lot of other places -- bars, casinos -- in Deadwood.
Here's Sandy with her two grandsons. It was their first extended visit alone with Grandma and Grandpa. They had lots of great plans! The boys were laying Solitaire, both with actual cards and on the computer. And, they had a Facetime visit with their parents.
I didn't get a picture of me and my cousins on this trip, so will use one from our visit earlier in the year when they took their fifth wheeler to Lake Meade for the winter. It's really great, meeting twice in a year, after so many years of never knowing one another. It sure is good to have family!
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