Tuesday, 21 September 2021
My main concern on leaving the campground was to find gasoline. All the stations I passed on the interstate coming here seemed to either have high prices or be difficult to get to, so by the time I got here on Saturday, my gas level was pretty low. Today's drive wasn't supposed to be all that long, but I could see it'd be through unpopulated country and didn't want to be stranded.
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| today's route |
As soon as I turned onto WY-213 from the campground, I passed a field where there were lots of shiny new wheels, some attached to what looked like buggy frames. The wheels and frames were definitely not intended for automobiles but looked instead almost delicate, though I'm sure they were tough. I wondered if there were Amish in the area.
Lyman looked more like it was a Sunday morning than Tuesday because, when I came through about 10:00, there weren't many people around. I'm guessing this is definitely a farming town. I got some gasoline for the same high price I've seen elsewhere in this part of the state, so that will get me up to Fossil Butte today and back on the road tomorrow.
All around I saw lots of cows and sheep and some horses - even a herd of bison in a fenced field.
On the road
A short way down the road I came to the town of Urie, pop. 262 and elev. 6,768', where I turned north on 2 state highways. All through that drive, I saw signs warning of wildlife.
It started with a yellow sign showing a cow. That's the message. Meaning there's loose stock? Why didn't they just use the "loose stock" signs I've seen all over the state? Then I saw one of those leaping deer signs. Then 3 more, each saying the deer were around for the next 5 miles.
I drove on hills and in valleys, scrubland and grazing land, with junipers scattered around. The town of Carter, elev. 6,498, looked almost like a ghost town - there were a couple of apparently inhabited houses, but otherwise it looked like people had just walked away from a town. Lots of snow fences, sometimes with cows grazing around them.
Two bluebirds flew across the road, both making me feel happy.
I passed 3 bridges where signs said "Strong Crosswind Possible At Bridge Ends." Don't remember seeing that before.
I saw an antelope amid the scrub, then farther along an antelope grazing right by the road. Then another warning sign of "deer [picture] next 5 miles." I haven't seen many deer since Devil's Tower, but I've seen so many antelope I wonder why they don't get their own sign. Elk do. And pronghorns don't look like deer, so they'd be as recognizable as elk.
Then I saw a big bold sign saying "ATTENTION" and "Deer Crossing" and "Next 10 Miles." Then another one: "CAUTION" and "Watch For Animals On Road" and "Next 5 Miles." I don't know what usually happens around here, but I only saw those 2 antelope.
Fossil Butte National Monument
I can't find how many acres are set aside here, but this is a large tract of land. The drive from the main road to the visitor center was more than a mile, all of it on monument land. And I hadn't gone very far before I started seeing signs showing a timeline of Earth's development. They'd laid it out on a scale of 9" = 1,000 years or something, and since they started with the actual formation of the Earth 4.567 billion years ago, you can see the list was long. I'm not going to include all their notations, as some of them were too scientific for me, but I did find the relative positions of some events interesting, so here goes.
4.527 billion years ago: Moon forms
4.5 bya: core, mantle and crust form; early atmosphere
4.4 bya: continental crust; oceans
4.055 bya: oldest known rocks
2.6 bya: early ozone; bacteria on land
2 bya: oxygen in atmosphere
1.8 bya: Supercontinent Columbia
1.5 bya: Columbia breaks up
1.2 bya: true algae
1.1 bya: Supercontinent Rodinia
750 million years ago: Rodinia breaks up
635 mya: sponges; Earth covered in ice
600 mya: jellyfishes; fungus; protective ozone
510 mya: clams
500 mya: carbon dioxide at 20 times today's levels
oxygen at today's levels
420 mya: jawed fishes; arachnids
amphibians
400 mya: insects
360 mya: ferns
350 mya winged insects
290 mya: conifers
Guadalupe Mountains National Park [presumably what's now the park]
260 mya:
Mesozoic Era; Triassic Period; mass extinction (83% of genera)
250 mya: Supercontinent Pangea
220 mya: mammals; pterosaurs
Jurassic Period; mass extinction (48% of genera)
200 mya
Atlantic Ocean
Pangea breaks up
150 mya: birds; Dinosaur National Monument
110 mya: geckos; palm trees
70 mya: grasses
deer; horses; bats
50 mya: whales; Fossil Lake [here] dries up
dog & cat lineages diverge
40 mya: continents near present position
cats
bears
San Andreas Fault; hominid ancestors; grasses prosper
ducks
20 mya
10 mya: Gulf of California
dogs
Mt. McKinley
1st eruption of Yellowstone Caldera
Homo sapiens
begin recorded history
By the end of this timeline, it had wrapped halfway around the visitor center. And I've only shown some of the entries here. Interesting the order that things happened. And I'd heard of Pangea but not the other 2 supercontinents.
I'd read online that there's nothing much here for the average tourist (aka non-fossil hunter/rock climber types) besides the visitor center, but that itself was well worth the trip. And those comments were absolutely right. What's here looks like parched scrubland with lots of hills, and the visitor center is packed with fascinating fossils.
Here's some explanation of how all this developed:
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| This is the butte of the name. |
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| This is what it once looked like. |
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| Feasting in Fossil Lake |
So that's just the background, which helps understand where all this came from and is pretty interesting, but that's not what made my jaw drop.
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| This is on their brochure. |
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| This is what I saw. |
What's on display is a full-size skeleton fossil of an early crocodile - and it's really big. Unfortunately, it's opposite the entry full of windows, and this was the only angle I could take that didn't have glare blocking the image. Instead, it's got me reflected in the skeleton, which is why I'm including the photo on the left, showing what I was actually seeing.
Incredible amount of detail that was preserved.
Nearby were other full skeletons of early animals:
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| snakes |
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| an early horse (size of a smallish dog) |
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| caiman |
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| birds |
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| pond turtle hatchling (with a today turtle) |
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| pond turtle |
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| river turtle (extinct family) |
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| damselfly |
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| jewel beetle |
These are just a few of the many plants:
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| palm frond |
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| lotus |
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| palm inflorescence |
Nature's adaptations:
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| ancient palm with today's sage |
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| early member of the deer family (actual size, they say) |
And lots and lots of fish:
Predator-prey interactions:
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| Momma always said don't stuff food in your mouth. |
They had fossils showing tracks in the sand of fish swimming and worms burrowing, footprints, all kinds of evidence of animal activities.
When I first walked in, I almost thought I was in an art gallery; I have a wonderful work of art that's actually 3 real (though dead) rockfish that were painted on their sides and then pressed against the paper. The fossils here reminded me of the rockfish images, that showed their scales clearly and looked almost alive. Here, the fossils were so complete it didn't take much imagination to put skin, feathers or scales on them. When my brain finally processed that these were creatures that maybe millions of years ago were alive, I was stunned.
The visitor center has a variety of displays to show not only the plants and animals that lived here, but also what kind of world this was then (lush, tropical) and the science behind it. It's easy to see that a place like this might ignite a young person's imagination so much, they'd spend their lives in this field of study. I'm really glad I made the trip.
Back on the road
I took several photos of some of the land in this area.
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| When I talk of scrubland, this is what I'm seeing. |
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| Aren't these hills stunning? |
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| The colors were at least as intense as these photos show. |
When I turned off the highway onto the road to the campground, I passed an abandoned gas station and saw 7 or 8 mules tied to the roof-supporting posts. There was no one around and I couldn't see what they were doing there. Another of life's mysteries.
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