After being cooped up for quite a while during COVID-19, we decided to travel out west to some national parks where there were very few people and relative safety. One of the parks we visited was Devil's Tower, which is actually a national monument. The movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind made this monument more popular.

The tower formation was created millions of years ago when the area was mainly a sedimentary basin from a long-ago sea. During that period, there was what is called an igneous intrusion, where magma was pushed up into the sedimentary layer. Then, over an extended period of time, the sedimentary layer eroded away, leaving the much harder igneous rock forming the tower we see today.

The monument is also popular for rock climbing and is a sacred Indian area. Many Indian tribes in the area consider the rock sacred, and climbing is not permitted during June when sacred ceremonies are held around the tower.

We spent a couple of nights near the park in a town called Hulett, Wyoming. The first night we were there, we were able to get some lovely Milky Way photos. On our way back to the tower the next day, we passed this farm field where the farmer was in the process of cutting the hay and baling. He was cutting in strips that followed the border of the field and provided great curves leading your eye right to the tower. We made plans to return at sunset. Fortunately, we were greeted with some great clouds that provided some nice color in the sky.