DEVILS TOWER, WYOMING

En route to Yellowstone National Park, we stopped by Devil’s Tower at Wyoming. The whole friggin ride to Yellowstone was a lengthy 11 hours drive. 11 hours on the car! Omg! It’s like sitting a plane ride that can take you to Europe or further. Therefore, a stop to visit some famous monuments along the way would be good and hence, Devils Tower. When I first saw the brochure of Devils Tower, I thought it looked vaguely familiar. Like I’ve seen it somewhere before. So I digged deeper into my brain and ah-ha! It used to be on “Aspects of Physical Geography” by Marianne Cheong. My secondary o-level geography textbook. I remember studying it before and omg I finally am going to see it in real life. It’s like the whole thingy just jumped out of the textbook or like I walked into the picture inside the textbook. Never imagined that I would actually see such stuff.!! I remembered that the textbook used to have a section that is devoted to just the photos (with color one k!) of such landforms. And when I was a young, innocent little girl in SCGS, I never imagined myself seeing such things in front of my eyes. Now at age 21, wow I finally saw something that I learned in my textbook. So cool! Devil’s tower has a little myth to it, something that was quite interesting but was never written in the textbook.

Found it in the little brochure and everyone in the car took turn to do English Oral with this short paragraph hahaha bored people…

“According to the Kiowa, seven little 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 Great Spirit to save them. Hearing their prayers, the Great Spirit made the rock to 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.”

What I learned in Marianne Cheong is that Devils’ tower is actually a volcanic plug. Cool stuff. Haha And near devil’s tower, we spotted some red rocks. Puzzling how such red rocks appear there. Wikipedia says these rocks were laid down in a shallow sea during the Triassic period, some 225 to 195 million years ago. Wowww. Like how bloodly long that is. Oxidation of iron mineral then caused the redness of the rocks and this rock layer is known as the Spearfish Formation. Hahah so cool right and all along I thought I was just snapping some cool photos of red rocks without realizing they are actually like super old rocks. So cool. Can u imagine! The rocks were actually there like some 100 million years ago, and some 100 million years later, we were there to see it. Went a bit mad after that and we started camwhoring as usual, taking up the entire road doing emo shots etc, hahaha behind every picture is like dunno how many NG shots la.

nancy looking like an idiot. the very very old red rocks...

Then we continued our little road trip to the famous 2012 place, Yellowstone National Park. Getting there wasn’t an easy thing and it was really a test of my lousy driving skills man. I had to drive through Blackhorn National Forest and Shoshone national forest which was like omg la. Highway 14 leads to the east entrance of Yellowstone and is really NO JOKE, especially when winter isnt really over in Wyoming, or so it seems. It was really stupid, I was just wondering why are the roads so winding and why are we keeping going uphill. Was still waiting for the downhill part to come when it suddenly dawned on me that there was no downhill coming anytime soon cos we are actually driving into the mountains. So on and on, I drove, and as my ears started popping, the season changed dramatically too.

From sunny sun sun with clear blue skies at the bottom, rain started falling halfway through the journey and when I finally reached the top at 8437 feet, it was snowing like nobody’s business. Driving on snow wasn’t fun at all. The brakes just didn’t listen to u, and the steering wheel would just sway on it. Ice and snow isnt fun. It was totally all white in front of me. Could have a nice christmas feel to it but I had no freaking idea what was in front. Worst drive ever. Then the sides are filled with christmas pine trees that paved the way for doom if u were to drive off it. And u dunno where the boundaries are. I wished I took a video of that drive man. And I must say when I finally approached downhill and know that the worst is over, the feeling was just phew man and the best part was this amazing scenery that was awaiting us.

The exit from blackhorn was filled with valleys and framed with red rocks that kept me awestrucked. It was like a prelude to what was coming up at Yellowstone. I never knew such landforms actually existed man, it looked like it just jumped out of a set from a Hollywood movie. It really gave me an insight to Mother Nature, like how freaking powerful she can be and just how tiny and puny we humans really are. But I didn’t had hands to capture that picture perfect scenery. Wasted. So that’s what humans do, when they cannot go through a mountain, they go round it, and that was a hell of an experience man.

At the next gas station, Royston loo took over the shift and conquered Shoshone Mountains. Test of drving skills for him too hahaha. Maybe it was the adrenaline rush or I was plain relief that my shift was over, I was damn high afterwards and made lays and chubs do our crazy S.H.E impersonation. Chubs is just damn good at rapping and nancy never fails to stun with her sudden mad moves. We witnessed how green meadows and blue sky can turn into snow mountains with snowstorms and then to valleys and more never-ending mountains. One of life’s most beautiful picture was captured here at some unknown and far away place from Singapore.

nice blue skies and green meadows with cows roaming around...

leaving blackhorn national forest ...

approaching shoeshone mountains..good luck royston!

snow snow snow and more snow..

We then, reached the entrance of Yellowstone National Park, Cooke City, Montana. Cooke city is not a city. It is just like those small little towns in the middle of mountains that will experience the full power should mother nature unleash any of its power at that area. It just seems so wonderful to open ur window/door everyday and the first thing u see is the towering mountains and first thing you breathe is the fresh mountain breeze. But if anything happens, u ll be the first one to die too. The town was real quiet by the time we reached. Looks like some murder or horror story could happen there and no one would know if u disappeared in there.

But when we entered this small restaurant to get some food, the people there were nothing but full of kindness and hospitality. Advised us not to enter Yellowstone at that time of the night cos roads would have been closed cos the bisons sleep on the road at night. And thus, we are stucked just outside Yellowstone. So near yet so far. And it’s a friggin -6 degrees outside the car and with only one georgia tech hoodie to keep warm. Yellowstone tmr! Woohoo!