We did a lot in our 2 week stay in the northern area of Flaming Gorge, southern WY. I won't be covering it all but here are a few more things we saw/did:
We pulled over one day while headed somewhere to watch a couple of cow
girls rounding up their herd:
Some of the cattle were a bit stubborn and did not really care how long we had to wait for them to move across the road. Actually looks like they are blocking us on purpose , doesn't it??;)
We had to go to a fossil quarry to see if we could unearth an ancient fish fossil or two. There are a few privately owned quarries in the state and you can go and dig, for a price, by the hour and keep all you find. They guarantee you will find something.
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| American Fossil Quarry |
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| these guys are doing the big stuff.... |
We hammered away on small pieces that were manageable for us. Note one of Mike's finds laying in front of him:
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| this is one I uncovered!! |
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| we took home 8 pretty nice looking fossils, to think they are 50-100 million years old!!! |
We also stopped by for a visit to Fossil Butte National Monument but you don't really see fossils in the ground here as they are left in the rock for preservation. You can see castings of many that had been removed previously before the area became a monument.
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| some of the amazing castings on display at the monument, most of the actual fossils are in private collections |
We had to make a short stop in the town of Kemerer and poke our heads into the original J C Penney
store
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| nice to be back in color rock country! |
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| caught this amazing pic of 2 sandhill cranes in a field, one with a vole in its beak! |
A nice hike on Ute Mountain took us up to a fire tower, no longer used but open to visitors:
The views from the fire tower were just lovely!!
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| so many big horns and so nice to see!! |
THe fossils are very cool! Great shot of the sandhill crane with the vole!
ReplyDeleteThanks Lisa, we have now preserved the fossils as best as we can but they are so fragile!! We will give them to family members to worry about now;) Really got lucky with that sandhill crane shot:)
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