What an awesome trip! Four days of wonders for me to behold! We went to Fossil Butte Nation Monument in WY, Vernal, UT to see some dinosaurs, Canyonlands National Park, and Arches National Park! Woot! Woot!
Day 1: Our first stop was Soda Springs, ID. There is a man-made geyser there and it goes off every hour on the hour. The spring has built up a travertine terrace much like Mammoth in Yellowstone National Park. This terrace is much smaller. In the distance we could see a material that looked like lava. It was cool. Our next stop was some sulfur springs, and not like Yellowstone.
Our biggest stop of the day was Fossil Butte National Monument in WY. The road to the visitor center is a to scale Geologic Time Scale. The visitor center has gorgeous fossils and a lot of diversity. Then we stopped in a town outside Fossil Butte where the first JC Penny is and a really neat fossil shop. I bought one of the fossil flies there.
It snowed in the mountains on our way to Vernal, UT. We stopped later at the Morrison Formation to collect coprolites which are fossilized poop. In the Morrison Formation they are dinosaur poop. Some of them still looked fresh! The rain made the walk terrible. It was really muddy!
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| Soda Springs! The man-made geyser! |
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| Man-made lava? |
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| I give this geyser a thumbs-up! |
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| Delicious smelling sulfer springs! |
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| The source! |
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| Can I ride that turtle? |
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| Look at all these creatures at Fossil Butte National Monument in WY. |
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| What it used to look like. |
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| My new friend the crocodile! |
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| How they find and clean up the fish! |
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| Can you smell them? |
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| Insects are cool! |
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| It's huge! |
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| Yum? |
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| These are rarer than the fish and they cost the same! |
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| Just keep swimming! |
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| Ah! My leg! |
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| Our trailer was really old. |
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| I liked the lichen on this rock! |
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| The Morrison Formation!!! |
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| It looks like ice cream and it was like walking on soft melty ice cream. |
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| This was after wiping a lot of it off too! |
Day 2: We started our morning with a stop at the Dinosaur Museum in Vernal, UT. Dinosaur National Monument was closed and won't be open until the fall. The museum was a lot of fun! It had dinosaur to mammoths in it! One of best things in the museum was the wall of fossil leaves. The fake Morrison Formation was pretty special after our experience the day before and the geologist in the video also said that you needed to watch your step on the formation. Outside there was a dinosaur garden with painted life-sized dinos!
On our way out of town we stopped and looked at the Vernal, UT LDS Temple. There were tulips in bloom all around it. Our day ended with setting up our campsite near Moab, UT and eating delicious food. We were able to head out to a dinosaur trail before the sunset. The trail showed what bones could look like while it was still in the rock.
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| The fake Morrison Formation in the Museum!!! |
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| Me and a Dino! |
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| Who doesn't want a wall of fossil leaves in their home? |
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| I think this was a rhinoceros horn. |
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| He's happy to see ya! |
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| I wish I could ride him. |
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| Eternal battle! |
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| Cute little baby dinosaurs! |
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| This T-Rex has laser beam eyes! |
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| I'm not sure what it was but it sure was cool! |
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| My beautiful coloring! |
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| Vernal, UT LDS Temple |
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| Our campsite. |
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| The Greenish rock is an anoxyic environment (plant roots) and the red is an oxygen rich environment! |
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| This was cool because you could see the dinosaur in the rock! |
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| Bone marrow! |
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| Isn't it beautiful? |
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| I'm glad that rock didn't fall on anybody! |
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| It was so pretty! |
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| A wall built by Native Americans! I wonder if they saw the dinosaur bones? |
Day 3: The day started with talking about the Uranium mines in Utah. We didn't have time to go and see them though, there were many other adventures ahead of us!
Canyonlands National Park was beautiful! There were breathtaking views everywhere and you didn't have to go very far to see them. We unintentionally went on a 3-mile hike but we saw some very spectacular sights! We had lunch at the Upheaval Dome. Which is made from combination of a meteor impact (which happened when it was still under water) and uplift. It is unique because the fractures in the rock are curved and not straight like everywhere else. After leaving the Island in the Sky we when to a stop called Dead Horse Point. It's named for a bunch of dead horses that were found there. Cowboys used to herd wild horses to the point because there was a narrow neck of land that they could barricade and then pick out horses to tame. Something must have happened to the cowboys because they didn't come back one time and the horses that were stuck on the point died of thirst.
After that stop we went to Arches National Park. There were a ton of people. It was hard to park anywhere! We stopped at Double Arch briefly. We hiked to Landscape Arch and then to Delicate Arch. Despite the beauty of the place, we were grumpy because someone had forgotten the food. But every bit was an adventurous experience!
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| Uranium! Uranium used to be mined here, in the grey rock. |
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| Fossil ripple marks. |
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| The first view of Canyonlands National Park! |
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| It was like a postcard! |
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| No, these aren't Coco Puffs but sand concretions! |
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| It was a really interesting landscape with the red sandstone and the snow capped mountains in the background! |
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More concretions and canyons. |
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| Crytobiotic Dirt! |
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| The upheaval dome! It is created by a meteor impact and uplift (salt diapir). |
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| No one else wanted to climb up there. |
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| Meander bend stuck in its place by tectonic uplift at Dead Horse Point. |
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| Geology is like cake. |
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| First photo of Delicate Arch. I will buy this poster one day. |
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| Arches National Park here I am! |
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| Double Arch which could also be known as the Indiana Jones Arch. Look at all the people! We had a hard time finding a parking spot at this stop. |
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| On the way to Landscape Arch. |
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| This is where the trail ends now that parts of the arch have fallen. |
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| More rock! |
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| More trail! |
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| Slicken-slide! |
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| Mud cracks! |
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| When I looked at the Delicate Arch I was amazed when all the scenery and lighting looked exactly like the magnet I wish I had bought! |
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| Again, look at all those people! |
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| The gang! |
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| Is that Indiana Jones? |
Day 4: Day 4 was mostly travel but we manged to stop and admire coal seeps. We also stopped at a waterfall that went over a really nice layer of conglomerate rock. The last major stop was the Thistle Landslide near Spanish Fork, UT.
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| Coal seep! |
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| Waterfall on the side of the road in UT! |
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| Conglomerate! |
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| I had to have a very convincing argument for my professor to let me run across the highway to take this picture of the Thistle Landslide. |
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| Windmill, windmill. |
