We just got back last week from a great Wild West vacation thru the states of Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, S. Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa... before settling back in the "flatlander" state of south-central Illinois !!!
We went to see all the usual "gotta-see" sites like Yellowstone and Ol' Faithful, Pike's peak, Mt. Rushmore, the Rockies, and the Badlands... but we also kept our eyes out for some possible fossil hunting areas whenever possible !
Here are some pictures from our great 2-week-long trip... watching for fossils all along the way !
Our BIG trip begins... and it turns daylight as we cross from Missouri into Kansas !
"Fossil
Fever" begins to grow as we start seeing rock outcroppings and
different striations of layers as we pass thru the Kansas countryside.
We finally make it to Colorado Springs, CO and Pike's Peak...
and it's off to the "Garden of the Gods" and some rock climbing and fossil hunting !
The guys get into the rock climbing mode and are amazed by the surrounding mountains !
Oh those silly "flatlanders" from flat old Illinois !
There's just got to be some fossils here somewhere !
Here they are searching around a promising area...
oops... they got chased out by a park ranger...
who said there were rattlesnakes right around there yesterday !!!
This is a giant chunk of petrified wood from some swamp oaks at a small National Park in central Colorado.
After
leaving Colorado Springs, we stumble onto a "You-Find-It" small-scale,
fossil quarry where (for a modest hourly fee) you can split shale layers
of big rocks and expose prehistoric bugs and leaves found between the
thin rock layers.
You start with a pile of rocks... and make it into smaller rocks by splitting them edge-wise !
"Old Eagle-Eye" here was just finding them already broken open or laying in the pile... and getting some good ones, too !
What in the heck am I even looking at ?!?
I guess there really is something between those rock layers !
She's hard at work and deep in concentration...
carefully exposing her million-year-old "treasures" to the light of day !
And she finds a nice wasp fossil ! That's a keeper for sure !!!
The guys find "near-museum-quality" specimens of a fossil wasp and fossil plant... 2 more good keepers !
Any
promising roadside rock pile... or outcropping that wasn't fenced...
became a stopping spot in hopes of finding fossils or gem rocks !
The land was gorgeous and a rock hunter's paradise... if you could get access to the "good stuff" areas !
Another rocky pile... another roadside stop !
Out in the middle of nowhere... OK, the high-desert of central Utah... was the U-DIG Fossil quarry !
And... it was super-cool and fun to do... but, it was sure a workout for us all !
The quarry ends up being only one mile from "Death Canyon"... which kind of had us worried a bit !
A half-day of bending and cracking rocks was a tiring but worthwhile adventure for us all !
There were Trilobites almost everywhere you looked !!!
Not just the impressions either... but the actual mineralized & molded Trilobites...
that could pop out of the matrix and were often collector- and jewelry-quality.
Finding
our way back out of the Utah desert, we stumbled upon a "fossil" of
part of America's "darker past"... a deserted patch of land that used to
be a Japanese-American Internment Camp for Japanese-American families
in the USA.
Once World War II broke out in 1941, they were rounded up and sent to 1 of 10 camps like this one.
This
one was the Topaz Mountain encampment... there is a memorial marker and
remnants of old foundations, rusty cans and metal, etc. ...and someone
had twisted some of the old barbed-wire into the name "Topaz" and
attached it to the fence surrounding the area.
A desolate and somber place in the middle of nowhere !
Hey guys, I thought I heard a growl or something... what's that moving in that cave behind you ?
Yellowstone was amazing to see... with it's wild animals and the geologic formations everywhere !
BUT... there again, we couldn't find and keep any fossils from the Park areas !
So we had to search outside of the Park gates and along ditches... which weren't so fruitful for us.
This beach at Yellowstone was cool, but didn't yield any fossil rocks to take home.
We made a quick visit to the Custer Little Bighorn Battlefield...
and a storm began brewing in the wide-open, Montana, afternoon sky.
In
June of 1876, Lt Col George A. Custer and his ill-fated cavalry
troopers died where these markers are placed on what has since become
known as "Last Stand Hill".
Dozens
more headstones are scattered along the ridge top of this open, rolling
hills area of the Black Hills... marking where many of Custer's
troopers fell under the overwhelming rush of Native American warriors.
This Park Ranger... at the Little Bighorn Battlefield Memorial... gave THE BEST battlefield interpretation, of this or any battle, that I have EVER heard...
(and I've heard dozens of presentations during my military career and at numerous Civil War battlefields)!
He truly painted a visual picture for us that gave a VIVID & UNFORGETTABLE account of the battlefield terrain, the Indians' attacks, and Custer's disastrous actions that fateful day.
I
wish I had written down this Ranger's name... he certainly deserves
personal recognition for the story he delivers each day to visitors
concerning the Custer Battlefield.
(You
can sure tell he was a retired teacher & football coach... by his
knowledge and confident, forceful delivery of the facts !)
(If anyone does know this Ranger's name, let me know and I will certainly post it here ! Thanks.)
We stayed for a couple hours and had to leave as a storm passed through !
The
storm left an eerie background and a surprise double-rainbow arching
over the main memorial marker at "Last Stand Hill"... in the
Custer/Little Bighorn battlefield !
Eeee-Yikes !!!
The amazingly awesome Devil's Tower of eastern Wyoming !
Those 2 specks (1 red & 1 white) you see climbing
all over the giant, monstrous boulders at the base of Devil's Tower...
those are our 2 grandsons.
They never stopped climbing on something...
everywhere we went on our Wild West vacation !
Wow... look at the size of those rocky fossils !!! Pretty darn impressive, too !
Hey... Look at this fossil I picked up... it looks just like George Washington !
Don't look behind you guys... it's a deadly Roadside Raptor !!!
This was the stream behind our Deadwood, S.D. hotel... but no fossils jumped out at us there !
We next stopped at the Badlands of South Dakota... how super-cool that was !
While delayed outside of the Park's entry gate due to road construction...
we all went to the nearest hilltop and practiced looking for more fossils.
The Badlands looked like somewhere on another planet !
Even though we couldn't legally keep and take with us ANY fossils we found in the Badlands,
it was fun and exciting trying to find and examine some anyway !
The
grandkids had a ball... and often a real challenge... climbing and
exploring on this other-worldly landscape of the Badlands !
Near
the end of the afternoon, we walked around just off of the "fossil
trail" pathway in the Badlands... and we made 2 great discoveries !
This
first one looks to be a jawbone about 5 inches long with a row of dull
teeth... possibly a prehistoric mini-horse jawbone !
And it was solidly in the matrix... not loose at all.
Then minutes later, my wife found another embedded jawbone about the same size, about 30 feet away !
This one seemed to have sharper teeth... and maybe a double row of them...
possibly some kind of mammal carnivore !
Since they were off the beaten path, we thought of them as "our great discoveries" !
(Although I'm sure several others have spotted them by now, still frozen in their matrix...
but still pretty exciting finds for us !)
We didn't leave until it was almost dark and impossible to see any more fossils...
we were just so excited from finding those jawbones... and busy climbing over the rocks.
And we were treated to one last gorgeous Wild West sunset over the mountains !
A
side trip to Wall Drug was a must-do item... where they even had a
life-size, animated T-Rex head that roared, growled, snorted, and scared
the little kids every 10 minutes !
Hey, look... he found a 1,000 pound chunk of real petrified wood just laying around in the walking area !
A quick stop at Dinosaur Park in Rapid City, S.D.
...a free park for kids to climb on life-sized dinosaur concrete statues.
But,
of course, there was a "find your own fossils or gemstones" gimmick...
which was fun for the kids to do! (...even though it was a bit pricey
at $ 6.00 for a bag of sand with a half dozen small fossils in it.)
There was a "fossil and gem expert" standing by to help the kids ID their "finds".
This chart helped, too.
A fossil fish or shark vertebra was one of the cool finds.
There were fossil shark teeth and small brachiapods, too.
Hey guys, there's a big ol' dinosaur right there in front of you... why are you still looking at the ground?
Always on the lookout for fossils !
Our final stop on our way out of S. Dakota was along the interstate.
To look for... and we did find... several fossils for sale at this roadside flea-market !!!
Other
cool stuff too... Buffalo, elk, deer, and coyote skulls, knives, other
odd taxidermy items, and many, many odds-and-ends !!!
**********
Overall, a GREAT TRIP !
We just wish we could have found MORE Fossils... but, that is always the case !
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