Gee Gee Gee It Is Geology

 Colorado, Utah
Nov 152020
 

November 15, 2020

Today began with a drive from Palisades, Colorado to Arches National Monument in Utah.

Driving 139  in Colorado

We took the 139 which is all part of the Dinosaur laden area of Colorado.  When one drives for miles without seeing another car you either become fascinated with the geology, or you turn on rock and roll and go with it.  We chose geology.  I had purchased the Roadside Geology of Colorado and of Utah, I read Pam drove.  We don’t understand half of what we learned, so I won’t bore you with the details, but I will throw some of it out, as it is part of what makes this part of the US so absolutely gorgeous and interesting.

We began with a long drive through vast spaces ringed by book cliffs.  The valley holds oil, gas, and oil shale.  During the boom times, there was a lot of activity in this area, it is all gone, and the remnants have been moved out as well, giving us the beauty without the commerce.

 

We crossed into Utah and the WOW factor began.  Our first Wow was the Dewey Bridge.

The Dewey Bridge was originally brought in pieces from Chicago in 1916 and assembled across the Colorado River. For a short period of time, it was the second-longest suspension bridge west of the Mississippi. It was designed to support the weight of 6 horses, 3 wagons, and 9000 pounds of freight.
The bridge featured an all-wood deck measuring 502 feet long, 10.2 feet wide from support to support, and 8 feet wide from rail to rail. The bridge also consisted of two metal towers, a run of seven cables on each side of the bridge deck, and cable anchors. The old Dewey Bridge was restored in 2000 and then burned on April 2008 by a 7-year-old playing with matches.

Then we began driving with cliffs on both sides and the Colorado River to our right. This is where the sandstone begins.  We took 128 to get to our hotel for the night, The Redcliffs Lodge.  The trip begins with Dakota Sandstone and a lot of uplifting, tumbling, and tossing about of the rocks that make up this area.  A little further along one begins to encounter Entrada Sandstone, then they begin to layer atop each other.  There is a lot of discussion of the fact that this all took place from the Quaternary to the Precambrian ages.  If you want to know more I highly suggest you grab the book, it makes Utah amazing, but it is highly complicated as well.

We finished our day with a several hour walk to see some of the arches of Arches National Monument.  We headed to the far end of the park called Devils Garden and saw Landscape Arch, Navajo Arch, Partition Arch then continued to hike to the Double O Arch.  We gave up at that point, it is a wonderful hike, but we felt we had seen what we had come to see, many will argue that by not finishing the loop we cheated, but we were happy.

Landscape Arch

Double O Arch

Navajo Arch

A stop on the way out of the park at a small area called Park Avenue and onto our hotel.

Park Avenue

Here is the rest of what we saw, that I do not believe needs much explanation.

Pronghorn frolicking in the open space

The small mountain range – the La Sal Mountains – are visible for miles, even from Colorado

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Walking on Rock Rims is a large part of getting to the Double O Arch

This blue was rather stunning. It is called desert varnish and is a result of iron mixing with manganese. It normally looks black, but catching it in just right in the sun, made it worth photographing.

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The Three Gossips, a name I figured out before ever seeing the sign.

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The mountains around our hotel.

 

I also shot a few in Black and White

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We have plans to go back tomorrow to catch Delicate Arch and then on to the next adventure.

 

 

Dinosaurs

 Colorado, Utah
Nov 142020
 

November 14, 2020 – Day 4

Today was spent searching dinosaurs and geology.  We began at Dinosaur National Monument.

The park contains over 800 paleontological sites and has fossils of dinosaurs including Allosaurus, Deinonychus, Abydosaurus, and various sauropods.   As the ranger so poetically put it, when the University Paleontology departments come to dig, it is like hitting the grocery store.  There are three aisles of oceanic fossils and 8 aisles with dinosaur bones, what is your pleasure today?

Many of the perfect, intact bones went to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, as it was Earl Douglass, a paleontologist working and collecting for the Museum that discovered the site in 1909.

Visitors can see the bones at the Quarry. There is a covering over a large excavation where you learn all about the area and you can even touch the bones.

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This amazing collection of bones is due to a drought. The dinosaurs came looking for water and died by the dry river beds.  Once the rains came the dinosaurs and other ancient animals were carried by the river system which eventually entombed their remains in Utah.  Then an upthrust of earth sent them to the surface.

You can take a short hike and see bones around the site, outside of the Park Service structure

Douglass wanted this area to be preserved, he wrote to the head of the Smithsonian at this time saying   “I hope that the Government, for the benefit of science and the people, will uncover a large area, leave the bones and skeletons in relief and house them. It would make one of the most astounding and instructive sights imaginable.”

And he got his wish, the area around the quarry was declared a national monument on October 4, 1915.

A two hour plus drive, part of which was on Stegosurus Highway put us into Colorado over the Douglass Pass at 8,205 feet and snow on the road when we were in the shadows.

In Utah Highway 64 is the Stegasaurus Highway.  Here it crosses Brontasaurus Way in Dinosaur, CO

Our next stop was the Colorado National Monument. There are many ways to enjoy the park, but a drive through the park on Rim Rock road is an easy way to take in most of the beauty. While absolutely stunning it is the geology that makes it so. The park has three different groups of rock and sediment. The oldest rocks are Early to Middle Proterozoic gneiss and schist, including the Ute Canyon Stock. Overlying these are mostly horizontally bedded Mesozoic sedimentary rocks, including the cliff-forming Wingate Sandstone. Overlying these are various types of Quaternary unconsolidated deposits such as alluvium, colluvium, and dunes. If that sounds too technical so be it, but just know it is gorgeous.

Balanced Rock is a 600-ton boulder that has been perched on a pedestal while most of the rock that once surrounded it has weathered away.

The Coke Ovens are named because of their similar appearance to conical-shaped coke ovens built to convert wood into charcoal. These huge domes are made of Wingate Sandstone and are the remains of earlier monoliths that lost their protective Kayneta caprock.

This is Independence Monument and it is all that remains of what was once a continuous ridge. The relentless erosion of the massive Wingate Sandstone has left this 450-foot high monolith with its protective sandstone caprock of Kayenta Formation. On the 4th of July local climbers go to the top and plant an American flag. This has been a tradition since John Otto first began exploring and creating trails through the area.

In the Windgate Sandstone cliff-face, there are arches and windows in the area that are formed when cracks cause blocks to fall out.

Some fun shots from the day

Fat Tire Raptor by Rand B. Hillyer in downtown Fruita, CO

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An interesting sculpture in Palisades, Colorado

The odd street naming of Paradise, Colorado