Dusty Jeans & Genes - Part 6 - Dinosaur National Monument - Sound of Silence Trail

Sunday, 22 April 2018

Before leaving Dinosaur National Monument and heading for Nine Mile Canyon in Utah, we took some time to hike the 3-mile long "Sound of Silence" trail.

The first part of the trail was a fairly easy walk up a "wash" (dry stream bed).

The rock layers in this part of the park have been folded and scrambled.

Layers of crumbly white rock (looked a lot like grains of quartz, but it was soft and powdery) were interleaved with the red sandstone.

The back part of the trail was along a wide high valley between two ridges.

This aged juniper reminded us of the bristlecone pines we saw in Great Basin National Park last year.

The trail back to the trailhead was a steep climb down these rocks. Interesting!

Dusty Jeans & Genes - Part 5 - Dinosaur National Monument - Petroglyphs & More

Saturday, 21 April 2018

In addition to fossils, Dinosaur National Monument has some spectacular geology, scenery, and petroglyphs.

A petroglyph along the trail that connects the Visitor Center to the Quarry. Drawings such as this must get "UFOlogists" really worked up about alien sightings!

More petroglyphs in the same area.

Petroglyphs along Cub Creek Road.

Turtle Rock is one of the landmarks along Cub Creek Road.

A panoramic view of Split Mountain above the Split Mountain campground. The Green River carved a canyon through the rock and literally split the mountain in two.

Dusty Jeans & Genes - Part 4 - Dinosaur National Monument - Quarry

Saturday, 21 April 2018

Dinosaur National Monument was the source of several complete dinosaur skeletons in the early 20th Century. Since Andrew Carnegie financed the expeditions to this site, many of the skeletons can now be seen in the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. When the demand for more Apatosaurus, Camarasaurus, Allosaurus, etc. skeletons diminished, the site was made a National Monument, and the bone "quarry" was put under roof to preserve the remaining specimens in a museum setting.

The remaining mountainside was enclosed in a glass-and-steel structure.

A wall of bones is visible from two viewing levels. Some of the in situ fossils are available to touch and view up close.

The mountain still holds a lot of bones of many species.

The bones are all jumbled up. Presumably the animals were swept down river in floods and accumulated on a sandbar. Mostly large animals are found. Fossils of smaller animals are scarce, since they were more easily swept along in the rushing water.

The slope is somewhat unstable. Electronic strain gauges recently have been attached to cracks to monitor changes in the rock wall.

Dusty Jeans & Genes - Part 3 - Too Cold!

Saturday, 21 April 2018

We wimped out last night and stayed in a motel in Cheyenne, Wyoming. As the evening approached, it became clear that the temperature would drop below freezing, and the precipitation would be frozen.

By morning, our truck had about 2 inches of snow covering it.

The first three hours of driving were through snow and ice. Not fun!

But by the time we approached Dinosaur National Monument on the Colorado-Utah border, the precipitation was gone, the temperature had risen, and the sky was blue.

Dusty Jeans & Genes - Part 2 - Kansas Rocks

We drove north through central Kansas just to visit two parks with unique rock formations. Both are just a bit off I-70 near Salina, and worth the detour.

Mushroom Rock State Park

At just five acres, this is the smallest state park in Kansas.

The park's namesake. The top of the mushroom is a concretion of harder sandstone than the "stem".

The "mushroom" and nearby rocks. The right-most "two" rocks (actually just one when you get closer) is called "Devil's Oven", but we thought it looked more like the head of a whale.

Sue in the "oven".

Another mushroom-like rock.

This formation was officially called "Pulpit Rock", but we thought it looked more like a tooth.

Yet another rock at Mushroom Rock State Park -- a puffball?

Rock City

About 50 miles north of Mushroom Rock is another collection of sandstone concretions in the same Dakota Sandstone formation.

The impressive collection of rounded rock concretions at Rock City.

Lon is walking between the rocks. This gives a perspective of just how big they are.

Trees were growing in the midst of the rocks. Sometimes the tree even split the rock in two as it grew.

Erosion eventually split this rock in half.

The "Doughnut" rock. The hole is big enough for a small adult to squeeze through. (Watch your head!)

Dusty Jeans & Genes - Part 1

We're on our way on a cross-country road trip to California (and back, of course).

We stopped by Martin's home in Arkansas, where he took his "new-to-him" truck on a cross-country 4-wheel trek through the woods and buried his front wheels in a muddy uphill. We left before he got the truck pulled out.

The next night we camped at Kanopolis Lake State Park in Kansas, where we had a nice sunset.

The wild turkeys were quite active and vocal at the park. We saw two toms trying hard to impress a group of four hens.