Devil's Tower, and more Wyoming sites

Rather than a blog entry for each stop, this is an entry with LOTS of photos from our travels over the previous months.

DEVIL'S TOWER, WYOMING

Amazing lava dome in NE Wyoming that is left over after years and years of erosion of the topsoil around it.

WYOMING COAL TRAINS

Four tracks with coal cars loaded with coal from the Wyoming coal mines. Two going in each direction. One loaded, one returning empty. All day and night. Over 100 cars each. Amazing production.

AYERS NATURAL BRIDGES

Sweet little park with a natural bridge over a stream and small lake. 

SACAGAWEA GRAVE SITE

When we planned this summer's route, I thought it would be interesting to visit this gravesite. Over the years, we've visited a few memorable grave sites like Shoeless Joe Jackson, Hank Williams Sr., Steve Prefontaine. All of them very moving.

FANTASTIC WYOMING CLOUDS

Every day we had clouds like this....stunning.

WIND RIVER CANYON

We've gone through this canyon before in years past. It's about 25 miles long. But each time we've done it, we're in the motorhome and it's very difficult to pull over to take it all in as well as to take any photos. This time, we travelled in our pickup and took our time. It's really an amazing canyon between Shoshoni and Thermopolis, Wyoming. 

You can see the semi-truck and cars in the distance for scale. 

Some of the rocks here are over a billion years old. This whole area got lifted up around 75 million years ago. Same time as the Rockies were formed. 

We'll try to keep our travels more up to date as we've been to the Big Horn Mountain, Big Horn Canyon, the city of Cody, the Chief Joseph Byway, the Beartooth Highway, Heart Mountain and Yellowstone already. In the meantime, please enjoy this one.

Steve/Kim/Katie

Having a ball. Over 15 years of travel and not tired of it yet.

Mount Rushmore, South Dakota

 ...not to brag or show off, but this is our 4th time visiting Mount Rushmore. Like so many places we visit, one or two times seeing them is not enough. They just get richer each time we take it in plus; there's always more depth and history that is learned each visit. Mount Rushmore is like that. You have to just sit on a bench and marvel at it.

Oh, and it's free to see it. Just a nominal parking fee.

That is a monitoring device to track rock movement.

Very creative way to depict the pupils.

Great photos showing the scale of the wall

This was the original intent, but it proved to be too large of an undertaking

Looking back at the history is very fascinating...to see how it progressed.

work in progress

This was the next intent, to have them with jackets but funding ran out. Good thing they started at the top and not the bottom !!

Aerial view of construction.

Work in progress. Jefferson was supposed to be to the far left as you can see, but the rock was unstable, so they "flattened" it out and moved him to Washington's left.

here's the rock face before carving. what a difference!

Also, there's a mildly strenuous walk that goes to the base where all the chips fell after sculpting and blasting and then you can visit the Borglum studio to see how they manage the scale from model to real-life.

inside the studio with original work

LOTS of steps

Great upward view from the trail shows a whole new perspective

The entrance to show perspective

Here's a couple of links should you want to read and see more.

https://www.nps.gov/moru/learn/photosmultimedia/photogallery.htm

https://www.nps.gov/moru/learn/index.htm

and one about the main sculptor and his son, who took over the project when the dad died.

https://www.nps.gov/moru/learn/historyculture/gutzon-borglum.htm

and one from youtube.

https://youtu.be/kH0Yw0R84i0?si=mj13BcmeuVPGPPlk

If you ever have an opportunity to visit, go early in the morning to get a good parking spot and less people taking selfies and getting in your photos. It gets crowded. 

thanks for viewing.

steve/kim/katie

Here we are on our first visit! 

Gotta include Katie...not at Mount Rushmore!

If you post a comment, please add your name at the end so I know who you are because they all come through as Anonymous.

The Badlands of South Dakota

 

After going through some cold weather in Wisconsin and southern Minnesota, we finally got to the Badlands National Park in South Dakota where it was 65 during the day but over 35mph winds! 

Soooo, what’s with the name "Badlands"?

For hundreds of years, the Lakota people have called this area mako sica, which literally translates to “bad lands.” When early French fur trappers passed through this area, they called the area les mauvaises terres a traveser (‘bad lands to travel across’).

Can you see why it is called "bad lands to travel across"? 

Let's look at the layers in the Badlands and see how they came to be over the last 77 million years. If you really are interested in more detail, this site is a great reference:

Geologic Formations: How Badlands Buttes Came to Be (U.S. National Park Service)

The Pierre Shale, which forms the bottommost layer of the park’s geology, was deposited 75-69 million years ago. It was laid down by a shallow inland sea known as the Western Interior Seaway. This seaway stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean, covering most of the modern Great Plains in shallow, warm water.

On top of the Pierre Shale sit the Yellow Mounds, which are just an altered version of the Pierre Shale despite their striking differences in appearance. After the Western Interior Seaway drained North into the Arctic Ocean, the leftover shales weathered into soils.

The Chadron Formation, consisting largely of light gray claystone beds, was deposited about 37-34 million years ago across an ancient floodplain. 

The Brule Formation, deposited 34-30 million years ago, represents a cooler and drier time in geologic history. 

Above the Brule lies the Sharps Formation, the youngest geologic formation of the park at 30-28 million years old. The base of the Sharps Formation is the Rockyford Ash, a volcanic tuff formed from ash that came from eruptions in the Great Basin, where Utah and Nevada are today.

In order to see the Badlands, there's a 20+ road that takes you from east to west, or west to east with many pullouts where the views above can be seen. 

This hill looks pretty solid but....

....here's what it looks like close up. It's all crumbly and like popcorn.

Here's a few extra photos to give you a sense of how wonderful this place is to visit.

Also, if you're in the right place at the right time you might see these guys....

We've been here twice before, this being our third visit and it's better each time. Hope you enjoyed this quick look at The Badlands of South Dakota.

steve/kim/katie

oh, some oddities along the interstate were pretty cool too.