[Rockhounds] Re: South Dakota - Rapid City & Calcite vs. Devil'sTower

[Carol Carter-Wientjes]

Ok Pete, you're forgiven and my official excuse for the vague recollection 
is on being a teenager then and 1977 was the year John Travolta & Saturday 
Night Fever broke loose. So the only rock I was paying really close 
attention to was DISCO! (Bee Gees! Bee Gees!)

:-o hehe, Carol
and p.s. I still love Disco, great music to cab to!


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <pmodreski at aol.com>
To: <rockhounds at lists.drizzle.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2008 11:58 AM
Subject: Re: [Rockhounds] Re: South Dakota - Rapid City & Calcite vs. 
Devil'sTower


> Happy New Year, Rockhounds,
>
> Just catching up on reading the past emails, and I wanted to add my two 
> cents' comments about Devils Tower.? I was kind of surprised when BK 
> wrote,
>
>
>
>> Devil's Tower is cool, but it will probably be smaller than you
>> expect.
>
> Because Devils Tower sure impresses one (or, it always has me) as being 
> big and awesome when you see it, especially when you get up close to it.? 
> But this did inspire me to look it up on the internet.? I see that the NPS 
> website claims
>
>
> Devils Tower rises 1267 feet above the Belle Fourche River.
>
> But that's a bit of a stretch for the height, because the river does not 
> run right by its base by any means.? Looking at a map on topozone, with a 
> summit elev. of 5112', it looks like the base of the vertical part of the 
> tower is around 4500', so the real height of the pinnacle is something 
> more like 600'.? (Another NPS web page says
> "Devils Tower is 867 feet from its base to the summit."
> It obviously depends from where exactly you measure.)
>
> Likewise, when (I think) Tim added,
>
> "Yes, but there isn't room at the top to park a spaceship "
>
> I thought, hey, well the top looks pretty big to me, I guess it depends 
> how big your spaceship is.? Viewing things online again, the top looks 
> pretty big when you see pictures taken from the land below, as on the 
> National Monument homepage (the one that exaggerates the height), 
> http://www.nps.gov/deto/
> But when you look at a topo map, yes indeed, the true flat summit is 
> indeed quite small, it looks like it's only about 100x200 feet or 
> thereabouts.? Another website says that the flat summit is "about the size 
> of a football field"; that sounds about right.? You could still certainly 
> park a medium-sized spaceship there, and a really big one if you balanced 
> it just right.
>
> But what first got to me was when Carol C-W?asked,
>
> "Was Devil's Tower the famous formation that's an integral part of the 
> movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"? "
>
> To which I thought, good heavens, doesn't EVERYONE know that, second 
> nature?? Especially "rock people"?? Like asking what city the Washington 
> Monument is in?? But I have to remember, maybe the movie hasn't had as big 
> an impact on everyone,?and plus, can you believe, some people who may be 
> be on this Rockhounds list, might not even have been BORN when that movie 
> was released!? (Tis true, I checked the year--1977.? Time flies!)*
>
> *And now---to make sure Carol doesn't feel like I'm?picking on?her---I'm 
> going to admit something you'd never know if I kept it to myself; that 
> when I just searched for Devils Tower on topozone.com, the first time I 
> didn't come up with anything, because I searched for it as Devils Tower, 
> state = SD.? Ooops!? Well, it's sure close to SD, and people often visit 
> it as part of a trip to the Black Hills, hard to remember that the darned 
> thing is really in Wyoming (plus that was what was in the?heading of the 
> email thread--lots of excuses!)??????? ? : )
>
> Cheers, Pete Modreski
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan Silverstein <ajs at frii.com>
> To: rockhounds at lists.drizzle.com
> Sent: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 5:05 pm
> Subject: Re: [Rockhounds] Re: South Dakota - Rapid City & Calcite vs. 
> Devil's Tower
>
>
>
>> Devil's Tower is cool, but it will probably be smaller than you
>> expect.  They have a paved trail around it and I think it took us
>> about an hour at a leisurely stroll speed to walk around it.
>
> You can spend more time and get more of a view by following some of the
> climbers' trails up higher on the pinnacle, to the point where it really
> does become technical.  As far as I know, you don't need permission or a
> permit to do this, and it's way cool.
>
> Alan Silverstein
> -- 
>
>
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