Go to the first day HERE.   So after the night with no sleep, the 4 hours of morning sleep, I'm now here at Devil's Tower Sunday afternoon.

Carrying my camera and gear was quickly kicking my butt around this thing.

I tried to get up next to it, but the boulder field kept getting the best of me. This easier route above didn't get you as good of a view as the others would, so I didn't bother with it too much. Like last time, I was amazed at how misleading those boulders are. Looks like an easy stroll to the base of the thing. Wrong. At least wrong when you worry about one moving and pinching your leg. Many are as big as a car. You have to pick your route wisely as you try to go through them. I got way up there the one time, then had a hard time figuring out an easy way back. The first image on here probably shows the boulder field the best. You still don't get a feel for the size of them though, or how far it is. So many of them just look like they are ready to royally mess you up with any small movement. Man, that would be a horrible story if there was ever a big earth quake there during tourist season. You can look up those tubes on the side and see how they are just itching to fall. Those falling combined with the ones on the ground moving, well it wouldn't be too pretty I'm sure.

Night now! Early on I could see the Milky Way was even brighter than the night before. I'm parked in a pull off thing on the main road in the park. There's some campers to the south there.

An accidental shooting star. I'm sure I saw over 10 of them there the first two nights. I was just trying to frame the shot for the star trail image. This reminds me. I've never seen so many satellites in my life. Seems like every time I turned around I was watching another one fly over. There were thankfully very few jets flying through.

This is 27 5 minute images stacked in photoshop. They were taken at F3.5, 200 ISO. If you look real close you can see an iridium flare about half way down to the lower right from the center of th spin. You can tell it is one since it goes from faint to bright back to faint so evenly. Shooting stars like to get brighter then end like the image before this one. I've now caught at least 3 iridium flares, but never seen one with my eyes. I get another one down the page further. A few things happened while shooting this. First was probably the desire to be quiet for those camping in the area. I tried to make zero noise. Then about 12:30 some Harley comes rumbling in! Forever he chugged into the park and to wherever he was camping. I was thinking, boy I bet everyone here loves you right about now. The place was actually packed. Out by the entrance there must have been 50 kids playing on the play sets they have. Just a ton of campers and families there. My biggest fear, other than Sasquatch pulling me out through my window in the darkness, was bumping my horn while messing around in the car. I about did it several times. That would have been a big "DOH" moment. Speaking of Sasquatch, I know he's in there. I was talking on my cell phone early on and heard some odd noise. I told them, I'm not sure what the hell that is, but if I had to give it a visual, I'd say it sounds like a baby Sasquatch. As "funny" as that was then, it was even worse later. Later I heard daddy Sasquatch laughing on and on. Serious! If you've ever seen "Short Circuit" the rhythm was a lot like when Johnny 5 was laughing wildly. It was like that, but a lower, animal tone. I'm shooting from my car, with the camera attached to the window(I had a run in with a killer prairie dog in the dark earlier). That helps, but still, my window is down! As "it" laughed, I begged quietly, "Please stop it." "Leave me alone...go get one of those kids instead." Up to this point, the only noise was wind through the tall pine trees up by the tower. It wasn't gusty, it was just constant. It was actually pretty cool.....was! Now it all just sucked. To top it off, I started thinking about the stinking bad parts of the movie "Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind". The dead cattle ...the early visit to the house. And here I am after all! Right next to the thing in the dark. Just me and Sasy(Sasquatch) kickin it. Oh and Sasy jr. It just wasn't a wonderful setting for ones mind. 4 hours of bad sleep, going on another all nighter, with nothing to do but watch the clock for the next 5 minute shot to start. My mind was thinking, hey you should be sleeping and having a nightmare right now...this will work!

Moon rising over Camp Killer Sasquatch.

I'm a genius I tell ya. Where to go at 3:30 a.m. after fearing death by bigfoot? Lets go right up to the flippen Devil's Tower. For as spooky as the place is from the road below, it's 100 times as bad up in that parking lot at night, "alone". We'll just say I rapidly took these and left...again from my car window.

By now I was spooked silly. I wanted to try another with my break lights on, to light up the trees some. I started the shot and quickly realized, better visibity isn't always a good thing! I thought, do I WANT to see if there is something up here? Hell no! I didn't need to know! I had the brake down and thought, ya, this is making it even worse. Oh, and I noticed that wind that was constant, did not exist when I got up there. Just like seeing isn't always better, hearing isn't either! God the fun one could have in a Gorilla suit up there, for idiots like me. It was still pitch black out, yet that looming Devil's Tower stood out against all those bright stars. It's a lot closer than it looks in this too. I am likely one block from its base. I also forgot to mention all the Turkey Vultures. They circle this thing all day long. Well at sunset I was up there and they were coming down into the trees. There had to be over 100 of them in these tree tops here in a small area.

So I left the scariest location on the planet and drove about a mile down the road. I could not pass up this scene with the Milky Way shining above the road. Hell if I was getting out of the car now though! The last time I'd gotten out of the car I think a nearby prairie dog made a noise, scaring the crap out of me. Something made a noise close by. I told myself it was a prairie dog at the time. Later something broke a stick on the hill by me while doing the star trails. And now I just left the parking area by the tower. I just was not getting out for anything now. I even joked to myself I doubted I could walk that mile trail around the tower right now for 1 million dollars. At the time 1 million did not sound enticing enough to try. 1 mil would be great, that doesn't mean I can do something though! I joke with myself on that same bet when driving home late. I wonder if someone offered me a million to drive to Houston after I get home at 4 a.m(from any ol chase).... if I could actually do it. It would be pretty much impossible to stay awake and do. I felt just like that on this little "bet". I'd freak myself out and panic part way along that trail, just no way I wouldn't. Funny, you tell your mind to stop working against you and that just forces it harder. I started thinking about the Close Encounters movie earlier and did that. So anyway, rather than get out of the car to get the right angle, I park my car sideways across it. Like anyone was out anyway. I then configure the window clamp so I could tilt horizontal, then shut the car off.

Using the brakes again for light. Notice another iridium flare in the upper right. By the way, those are off brighter satellites I guess.

Moon climbing further. I should have done the star trail deal here. The problem was I wanted to be at 10mm and have the north star in the shot. That would maybe work here, but at 10mm the tower would look as small as it does in the one I got. This one I think was at 40mm. A person could find a closer location for this easy enough if you were willing to camp out in the trees. I gave it a brief thought durind the day. At night though, it was as laughable as anything ever spoken. I saw the episode of Survivorman where he freaked himself out in the everglades at night, I think it was anyway. I'd be like that all night long, lol. Something breaking a stick during the day, not a big deal. At night and it happens near you, and you can't see....well you're brain is screwed for a while if you want it to be or not. At least I know mine would be in there alone.

I got what I could from here before it was too light. I'm sort of kicking myself for not leaving more time to get a longer one here. By the way, now that it was getting lighter, I could so kick Sasquatch's ass. I was like, c'mon, where you at now? I just remembered something else. It was COLD. A blanket is in order next time. I had jeans on, a hooded sweatshirt, and a jacket. My window was down for the camera to be mounted on it. Car was off since the cam was mounted to it, and I wanted to be quiet. The tip of my nose was ice cold, just about. It was that and my knees/legs that were annoyingly cold. A blanket sounded horribly good after a while. I saw it got down to 43 there the night before. It probably wasn't far from that this night.

Well, I did not wait around for sunrise. I needed to get back to the motel and sleep. I think I slept from 5:30 till 10:30. I packed up my crap and left, shooting the tower on the way back to the badlands for night 3. I was torn on if I should stay here again and do the tower from that other location. My cloud forecasting was saying go east, even though current cloud looping said stay here. The current cirrus stream moved east, as mountain convection created more clouds later. The models did really well on that. It was a good thing I went back to the badlands since I was given a few hours of clear dark skies. There would be zero here.

See ya next time Sasquatch. For those wondering its height, it rises 1,267 feet above the surrounding terrain. The top is 5,112 feet above sea level. And it has a Lakota name: Mato Tipila, which means “Bear Tower”. Here are a couple of the stories from a wiki page: American Indian legends tell of six Sioux girls who were picking flowers when they were chased by bears. Feeling sorry for them, the Great Spirit raised the ground beneath the girls. The bears tried to climb the rock, but fell off, leaving their scratch marks on the sides. Another version tells of how two Sioux boys wandered far from their village when Mato the bear, a huge creature that had claws the size of teepee poles, spotted them, and wanted to eat them for breakfast. He was almost upon them when the boys prayed to Wakan Tanka the Creator to help them. They rose up on a huge rock, while Mato tried to get up from every side, leaving huge scratch marks as he did. Finally, he sauntered off, disappointed and discouraged. The bear came to rest east of the Black Hills at what is now Bear Butte. Wanblee, the eagle, helped the boys off the rock and back to their village. A painting depicting this legend by artist Herbert A. Collins hangs over the fireplace in the visitor's center at Devil's Tower. Great. I didn't hear Sasquatch. I heard Mato the monster bear! Yeah, it's a good thing that story wasn't part of my brain before I left there. At least I'm not the only "nut" with a story of a beast from there. I can still hear the laughing.   YouTube Video showing a time lapse of the still frames taken for the star trails.   Continue to Night 3 HERE.