Advertisement
Published: September 10th 2006
Edit Blog Post
First in this trio of wonders is
‘The Badlands’, and take it from me, this place is like nothing else on earth. Many a poet has tried to encapsulate the awe of this place into words…all have failed miserably as words alone cannot describe or prepare you for the sheer weirdness of this unique natural spectacle.
The experts consider The Badlands to be a pocket sized version of the Grand Canyon, although we can’t confirm that as yet…if the Grand Canyon is even half as impressive as The Badlands we are certain to experience geological perfection.
Without meaning to sound like a geek, (I read all this in a book) but also not denying the fact that I am…some 35 million years ago the whole area was an ocean, many millennia later it became a marsh into which a whole host of animal and plant matter became trapped and subsequently decayed leaving successive layers of interesting stuff. This interesting stuff then all became covered in volcanic ash from a nearby volcanic episode…the whole process then repeated itself leaving us with layer upon layer of interesting stuff covered in volcanic ash. Soon enough, the whole area dried out and solidified…over
the following millions of years erosion has slowly eaten away at the softer layers of stuff to reveal the spectacle we can see today! Amazing! The different colourful pastel layers visible within The Badlands are such things as sand, silt, animal and plant residue, mud and gravel…all of which combine to create the truly amazing spectacle dubbed by some as lunar sandcastles, however I prefer the title of ‘Hell with the Fires Out’ as given by early settlers.
We gave ourselves two days to explore hell with the fires out, and it was a truly excellent adventure. We did some hiking, some exploring and then some more hiking. The park has an access all areas policy which is rare, it enabled us to explore to our hearts content…and then some. Enough from me…I will now let the photographs do the talking; unfortunately they really don’t do the park justice - you will just have to see if for yourself to believe it.
Secondly…and a few hundred miles further west is
Devils Tower. In a nutshell, this marvel is an inside out volcano, however, for the Sci Fi fans out there it is so much more! Devils Tower, despite
having been a national monument for exactly a hundred years, was made truly famous by Spielberg in ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’. In the film, Richard Dreyfus was lucky enough to have experienced a fleeting alien encounter…after the encounter Dreyfus was left with a compelling vision of a place that he was inexplicably drawn to. The poor chap lost his marbles, his job and his family trying to figure out “what the hell is going on!” It transpired that Dreyfus was not the only chap who was experiencing the compelling need to go to Devils Tower…many more people were also sharing the same vision…to find out how this story ends, watch the film! It is a Sci Fi masterpiece…albeit a little bit wet.
As you may expect…ever since watching the film I have also been strangely drawn to Devils Tower, I felt a little tingle run down my spine as we came up over the hill and saw it for the first time. It really is a marvelous place, again as per The Badlands, like nothing else on Earth. The Tower is also a very sacred place for Native American Indians, many of their artifacts and prayer offerings
are evident around the entire base of the monument, this further enhances the feeling that Devils Tower is a very special place. Visiting the monument is something I have always wanted to do, it was a good day, it was a tick in the life box day.
Finally, and somewhat of an unexpected stop off in the middle of the Bighorn Mountains was the
‘Medicine Wheel’. We stumbled across a short paragraph about this place in one of our USA guides; as it sounded reasonably interesting and marked the halfway point in our day of driving we decided to stop off and take a look.
To get to the Medicine Wheel we had to drive up a precarious dirt road clinging to the side of the imaginatively named ‘Medicine Mountain’, you can decide which came first. The dirt track led to a very rustic visitor centre located about two miles from the Wheel; from there on we had to hike the rest of the way. It all made for a very exciting build up!
The purpose of creators of the Medicine Wheel itself remains a complete mystery. Quite why ancient people would hike up a mountain and
build a strange wheel like object out of flat stones has been lost to the sands of time; however, scholars suspect that the fore-fathers of the local Native American tribes built it as some sort of mystical astrological device or sun worshiping temple. Even further reinforcing the mystical nature of the Wheel, Native Americans still use the site to perform religious ceremonies on a daily basis…all very intriguing! To the casual observer…aka me… it appeared to be very similar in purpose to Stonehenge, albeit on a much smaller scale and on top of a mountain. All of the above aside, the views from the mountain were truly majestic and well worth the rather strenuous hike!
As a final thought…despite Spielberg’s best efforts, this place is far more likely to experience an alien visitation that Devils Tower… However, I suspect that they have already made themselves a home in The Badlands…Take Me, Take Me!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.164s; Tpl: 0.018s; cc: 14; qc: 57; dbt: 0.0741s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb