The forested hill immediately surrounding the Devil's Tower spire is littered everywhere with large boulders. The paths that circle the tower zig zag in and out of these piles of rocks making for some interesting walking. Since the tower itself is a volcanic remnant, it has a striped appearance that looks like it was scraped with a fork. Slivers of the tower periodically break off and fall to the forest below creating these mammoth rock piles. This is probably another idea why it's a bad idea to climb it. Of course, when I visited, there were no less than three people climbing the tower that day. *shrug*

The prairie dogs found along the road leading to the tower have been fed by tourists so much they will come right up to your car to beg. When Wendy and I visited, I got out to have a look (since I had never seen a prairie dog before) and several of the critters walked right up and tried to bite me. No good. Stay in your car.