Park Units 72, 73, 74: Devil's Tower National Monument, Jewel Cave National Monument, Mt. Rushmore National Memorial

LA to NJ Road Trip: Day 4

Devil's Tower National Monument

7/31/16. We drove 3.5 more hours across the desolate Wyoming landscape this morning to arrive at Devil's Tower. The dramatic build up for this monument was terrific! Coming down one of the many hills, the huge tower appears out of nowhere. The WOW factor for this park unit was terrific. It's hard to imagine that the tower is made from a magma flow 5 million years ago.

 According the NPS website, "The magma which formed Devils Tower cooled and crystallized into a rock type known as phonolite porphyry. It is a light to dark-gray or greenish-gray igneous rock with conspicuous crystals of white feldspar. Hot molten magma is less dense and occupies more volume than cool hardened rock. As the rock cooled, it contracted, forming hexagonal (and sometime 4-, 5- and 7-sided) columns separated by vertical cracks."
What is so amazing about this monument are the very obvious crystal columns. They are so different than anything we've seen before. It's a great place for rock climbing and we could see many people climbing the 1200 foot tower. It's also at 5,000 feet elevation, (the average elevation in Wyoming is 6700 ft. so we have gotten used to being a little out of breath!) At the base of the monument lives a colony of prairie dogs that were ridiculously cute. They reminded us of The Land Ride at Disney, ha ha!

Jewel Cave National Monument

We finally crossed into South Dakota and stopped at Jewel Cave. We knew we'd be too late to get tickets to visit the cave on a Sunday, but we are planning to go into Wind Cave tomorrow instead which is part of the same system. 

We explored the rest of the grounds that are open without a ticket, including the historical opening of the Jewel Cave and the log cabin and improvements made by the CCC in the 1930s. The most interesting thing was the frigid air coming out of the cave! Amazing how the air can flow so strongly from the cave and be so cold.

We were delighted to see some bighorn sheep on the hill as we left the monument. 

Mount Rushmore National Memorial

Our last stop today was at Mt. Rushmore. We were very impressed with the Black Hills (and so glad to get out of the dry plains) and the rock formations towering above like huge fingers. 

We actually thought the carvings were smaller than we expected and we have some reservations about how the rocks have been defaced by these carvings, but the memorial surrounding the area itself is lovely and patriotic. 

We left the area exhausted but looking forward to tomorrow's adventures!