So we left off in northeast Wyoming at Devil's Tower, having made the decision to go south. We got a late start the next morning, as we were no longer on a set itinerary. The majority of the day we spent driving through Wyoming. We basically cut straight across from the northeast corner to the southwest corner. Below is the revised map of our trip:
Wyoming is an interesting state. It is divided up into isolated mountain ranges with large basins between them. What was surprising to me though was although it's not a desert, how brown and dry it looked in most places. There are a lot of natural resources though - there are lots of mining operations in Wyoming and you can see a lot of open pit mines and rigs from the interstate. Wyoming produces the majority of the coal in the US, which surprised me. We pulled over on the side of the road to check out this coal mine:
When coal seams catch on fire naturally - usually by lightening strike - the seam is burned to a red color and forms a resistant unit. This is referred to as "clinker." Because it is more resistant to weathering than the surrounding sedimentary rock, it forms the caps of mounds of rock. Wild coal fires in the Powder River basin of Wyoming were reported by Lewis and Clark during their expedition west.
It took most of the day to drive across the state. We ended the day at Fossil Butte National Monument, which was one of our stops in our original itinerary for the drive home. Fossil Butte is in the southwest corner of Wyoming, close to the borders of Utah and Idaho. We got to the visitors' center just a few minutes after it closed. The park ranger was heading to his car as we pulled up and upon seeing our vans, asked if we were from UT. When we said yes, we were from UT's geology department, he told us that he had been a master's student in our department years ago and reopened the visitors' center for us! Fossil Butte is known for the amazing fish fossils that come from there, but as I saw in the visitors' center, ALL the fossils - plants, fish, other animals - are equally amazing and beautiful!!! This site was a lake that had hosted many species of land and aquatic organisms. For some reason, which I believe is still unknown, the fish all died very suddenly, resulting in huge numbers of fossils in each layer of rock. Lakes are good places to preserve fossils are they are low energy environments and the rocks that form in them are fine-grained, so it is easy to see the fossils. Visitors to Fossil Butte can pay $40 to go out to the rock units and take home as many fossils as they want. Unfortunately, because we got there so late, we were not able to do so, but we did do a short hike up to the quarry where the scientists collect fossils. Here are some of my favorite fossils from the visitors' center:
This is me in front of the quarry rock layers. Note how thin and perfectly flat the layers are! This is characteristic of lake deposits. Also note how many layers I'm wearing! Dinner time in the Rockies is pretty cold!
We camped that night at Bear Lake, Utah. This was the view from our campground the following morning: so pretty! And look at the snow!
We hit the road in the morning after some tasty pancakes made by Cassaundra and Caycee:
A few miles down a pretty, windy, mountain road from our campground, we stopped to get a look at Bear Lake. Megan, me, and Felicia in the parking lot in front of the lake:
Northern Utah in a word was BREATHTAKING. The Rockies are "rockier" here than in the parts of Wyoming we saw and are all topped with snow. We drove by the Utah State campus and I almost got out of the car and transferred on the spot!! It's in such a beautiful location. I think most of our students were the most excited for southern Utah, which was also very cool, but northern Utah was amazing.
Got to go prep for my second lab section of the day! Next up: Utah traverse!
Happy trails,
Sarah
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