PapaMarshall

Day 1 – 10/23 – On the Road Less Traveled

We headed out this morning. After gas, coffee, and a stop by the library (to return some books) we were on the road by 9-ish.  Not bad since we had no particular goal in mind.

The first part of the trip is familiar – hit the freeway and head east.  However, the normal route takes us thru Ogden and up the Ogden canyon to Rock Springs.  But WAIT!  There’s another way.  If you got thru Poki and leave I-15 at McCammon you can take the back way (on US-30) and rejoin the freeway at Little America.  This is the way we used to go when I was a lad – before the interstate system had come west and we used to go east each summer.

This route had the added advantage of taking us past 3 of the Ireland Bank branches that I had never seen before:

Lava Hot Springs
Soda Springs
Montpelier

While we were in Montpelier we took the opportunity to visit the National Oregon/California Trail Center.  While it was closed for the season, the facility is shared with the Forest Service so the doors were open and we took a few minutes to look around.

Back on the road we crossed into Wyoming and made for our next stop – the Fossil Butte National Monument.  It was almost closing time when we got there so: 1) there were no other visitors around, and B) we got the ranger all to ourselves.  We talked geology, continental drift, horses (how theirs compare to those at Hagerman and John Day), Turtle tails, and such.  It was a very informative 45 minutes and my brain hurts.  We did take a couple of pictures of the area.

Fossil Butte in the background. Note the “timeline” on the railing. It actually starts at the park entrance with signs marking the earth’s formation and extends thru present day – all to scale. The “recorded history” marker is half of one of the arrow markers.

 

Note the layering of sediments in this old lake bed.

 

This is “big geology” country and we could spend weeks getting the right sun angles on all sorts of really cool formations.

Formations just east of Green River

Tomorrow we make for the Denver Airport where we pick up Kim and Spencer and whisk them off to Colorado Springs.

Till then…

R

4 Comments

  2. C – Traveled thru Lava Hot Springs where, growing up, our church would hold a church picnic & swim every summer – and David gashed his head open exploring a cave.
    C – When in Montpelier we tried to visit the Butch Cassidy museum but it was closed for the winter. Then stayed in Rock Springs and found out that is where Butch got his name – he was originally a butcher for the town.

  3. C-At the Fossil Lake visitors center I found out for the first time that there have been 3 previous supercontinents to Pangea (which is the one that cracked into our existing continental plates)!

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