Devils Tower National Monument

We camped one night at Devils Tower. The campground was great; there was finally grass and we had a great view.

One of the Indian legends about how the butte came to be goes like this:

There were 8 children playing, 7 sisters and 1 brother. Suddenly the boy became dumb; he trembled and began to run on his hands and feet. He became covered in fur and his fingers were sharp claws. Where their brother once stood, now there was a bear and it began chasing the sisters. They came to the stump of a great tree and the tree spoke to them, telling them to climb up. As they climbed, the stump rose out of the ground just beyond reach of the bear that was trying to kill them. The bear reared against the tree and scored the bark all around with its claws. The 7 sisters were born into the sky and became the stars of the Big Dipper.

I thought that this was great because when you look at the tower, it does look like it was clawed. The whole site is considered sacred to many Indian tribes and we were able to see some of the prayer scarves that they hung on the trees at the base.

What should have been a short 1 mile hike around the base took forever because of stubborn little boys. When one wasn’t whining, the other was screaming and neither wanted to walk. I was really wishing that some stump would take me up and away from them for a while.