Pictures & Comments From Wyoming And South Dakota

Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam

Where the deer and the antelope play

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word

And the skies are not cloudy all the day

How often at night where the heavens are bright

With the light of the glittering stars
Have I stood there amazed and asked as I gazed
If their glory exceeds that of ours

[...more...]

By Dr. Brewster Higley (1873, since modified in modern versions), it is the State Song of Kansas.

It's actually a very pretty song...:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_YK7ebcZ2o

Every time I read those last two lines it brings a tear to my eyes (yes, I just read that crying by men has become unfashionable, but tough shit).  "Have I stood there amazed and asked as I gazed, If their glory exceeds that of ours".  As a lifetime fan of astronomy and natural sciences, I can say in my case, yes, their glory does exceed that of ours...

I already knew before we went on our trip that I would have a wonderful time, as I had been to a tiny corner of Wyoming over 30 years ago when I worked in the oilfields.

I have already discussed Yellowstone, Noreen Firearms and our search for the K-T Boundary in my most recent articles.  This one finishes with pictures and comments that most other tourists will not write about.  Hey!  If you want to see pictures of Old Faithful and Mt. Rushmore, Google 'em!  Or become a "friend" of my wife on Facebook!

***

After landing in Jackson, WY we then went on for three nights in Yellowstone.  After those three nights we traveled NW to Bozeman, MT for our meeting with Noreen Firearms.  On the way, I got a hint that Montana was in many ways my kind of place: Speed Limit 75 mph on Interstate 90!

Personal freedom is taken very seriously in all of the places we visited.  Privacy; live and let live.  Private ranches everywhere (some owned by California / Hollywood celebrities, most of them loathed (hear me Ted Turner?  Jane Fonda?)...)

People were very friendly and kind to us in the places we visited.  They did not speak "with an accent", hah!, about as American as they come!

And the buffalo steak..., mmm...  Tough meat but flavorful.  Perhaps best in burgers though...  Same comment for elk steaks, tough but tasty.  Mmm...

***

Our trip to Cody, Wyoming went mostly through breathtakingly beautiful Montana (an old friend, Nick M, hi Nick!  I hope you get to see this!), into the Great Plains (hilly there) and then for an hour through Wyoming via rural two-lane roads (65 mph, yeah, have to love it!).  It interested me that you could tell almost immediately that Montana was a little different than Wyoming (no dis, just a little different looking).  I will never forget that stretch from our exit off I-90 to Cody...

Here is a pair of pictures of the small Cenex oil refinery in Laurel, Montana, just off of I-90 (hey, I told you these would be different pictures than those of other tourists):

I was only able to get these two pictures (above of the entrance and some storage tanks) before their security came by to run me off.  A refinery, especially a podunk one in the middle of nowhere, you might ask?  Yes, I studied a bit about oil refineries when working long ago...  Refineries are a part of infrastructure, which I have always admired since I was a  child.  Below is the distillation column as well as other equipment (to raise octane in gasoline, make heavy fuel oil, kerosene & diesel, etc.).  The little gray vehicle at the left was our Chevy Captiva, which we liked (!), we drove it over 1500 miles.

I will never forget the countryside between Laurel, Bridger and Belfry there in Montana.  A picture would insult the scenery, trust me...

***

We spent two nights in Cody, Wyoming (Cody, WY; Bozeman, MT; Sheridan, WY; and Denver are all located at  4000 - 6000 feet above sea level).  Cody is famous for being "Buffalo Bill's" main stomping grounds, he is almost worshiped there...  There was little of interest for me however in Cody.  Lots of tourists, it is perhaps the main way to drive to Yellowstone Nat'l Park.  (Al though I did get to do a round of Tai Chi at the elementary school playground).  From Cody, we crossed the northern end of the Bighorn Basin before we crossed the Bighorn Mountains themselves.  We saw a "workover rig" along the way.  A workover rig, like the name would imply, is used to maintain already drilled and producing oilwells.  They are not as big & impressive as real drilling rigs (we did not see any drilling rigs on our trip).  You can tell this is a workover rig because of all the guy wires holding it in place.  And of course the light-duty kind of "look" to it.

We also passed a bentonite plant.  Bentonite is a very fine type of shale (rock made from mud) that was used in drilling fluid (aka "mud") for oilrigs when I was younger.  Bentonite is added to the water to make it thicker, yet it flows well and is "well behaved" (no surprises, no corrosion, etc.).

For me, I was very much looking forward to crossing the Bighorn Mountains (we chose Highway 14A because it had a higher pass: 9400 feet).  I know NO ONE personally who has driven across the Bighorns.  The Bighorn Mountains, FYI, are an "almost" isolated range of the Rockies, they just barely connect up with the rest.  Here is a picture of our approach to the valley up into the Bighorns:

The gray-green bushes near the road and near the fences is the nearly ubiquitous sage brush found all over fairly arid Wyoming.

Up, up up.  This picture is pretty much the last view to the west (Bighorn Basin) prior to crossing the pass, I estimate that we were at some 8000 feet here:

The Absaroka Range is visible along the horizon.  It was the Absaroka Mountain Range that was broken up by the Yellowstone Supervolcano.  It was getting cold up there...

I did not know that there was an interesting site along the way up near (just west of) the pass.  The "Medicine Circle" was constructed by unknown Native Americans some 700 years ago.  Many of the tribes came.  Some believe that there is astronomical significance to the circle and spokes, but the stars' positions have changed, relative to the Earth, since it was built.  Native Americans still come, and put "fetishes" (items of religious significance to them that we know little about).

The only people allowed "inside" the posts are Native Americans with a permit...   There in the background is our little Captiva!  It was cold, our SUV's thermometer told us (35 degrees F).  Elevation: approx. 9000 feet.  Read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_Wheel_National_Historic_Landmark.

After such an interesting ride up into the Bighorns, I was prepared for a less interesting descent (into the Powder River Basin).  Wrong!  The government (Wyoming?  USA?) kindly marked some rock formations along the way coming down.  This picture shows rocks lain down in the Ordovician Period (430 - 500 million years ago).  During the Ordovician, the only life on land that primitive green plants and fungi... (wikipedia has a great article on the geologic time scale here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_time_scale)

People interested in geology (like moi) like seeing things like faults (showing and earthquake happened long ago...), you can see the fault near the left edge of the photo (the brown rock bed). this from the same Big Horn Formation (Ordovician).

A few hundred meters down the road .gov was kind enough to label the Darby Formation (Devonian Period, younger than the Ordovician rocks, the Darby was laid down from about 360 - 400 million years ago (the figures from .gov and wikipedia differ slightly).  "Normal fishes", the first trees and the first insects (no wings) first appeared in the Devonian...

You can see the start of the Powder River Basin beyond the sign.  Physical geographers may differ on whether the "Great Plains" start here, or further east (just beyond the Black Hills of SD and WY).

[Sidebar: My last article was on the K-T Boundary, some 65 million years ago.  The above rocks are very much older.  After the Devonian Period came the Carboniferous (lots of coal beds all over the world), and then the Permian.  I wrote in my article that it is estimated that the K-T Event killed off some 25% - 50% of the species then living on the Earth.  Well, there was an earlier event even worse, the Permian Mass Extinction, which killed off an impressive 90% of all species then living.  It is not clear what happened...]

What a day!  That drive from Cody to Sheridan (near the base of the Bighorn Mts. to the east) was one of the most interesting drives ever for me...

***

The next part of our journey was two days later, crossing the energy-rich Powder River Basin (with HUGE coal reserves, and their coal is low in sulfur compared to coal from West Virginia, they also produce oil there).  Here is a small coal-fired electric power plant near Gillette, WY:

And how do coal-fired plants get their coal?  By trainz, bitchez!  We saw several "unit trains" hauling only coal during our trip.  At one point, with nothing better to do, my wife and I watched one go by (no camera...), she decided to count the cars: 123 of them all hauling coal...  This one (just two engines) was not as long, perhaps some 80 cars.

We arrived that same day in Custer, South Dakota, up there in the Black Hills near Mt. Rushmore).  I saw something that I had thought had gone extinct!  But, no, here is a picture of a Sinclair gas station in Custer, and we all thought (Jim) Sinclair was a dinosaur (smile,,,):

Now all I have to see to revive my youth would be a "Pure Oil" gas station...

The next day we went to see Mt. Rushmore, my wife (and every other decent photographer has that one covered better than I could).  I took this one in the other direction, towards the Great Plains that stretch from the Black Hills of South Dakota all the way east to Ohio...:

OK, my wife did take ONE touristy photo of me, this one in Badlands National Park (South Dakota):

***

After our two day visit to SD, we drove towards Denver, to catch our flight back.  We went looking (again) for the K-T Boundary in the SE Powder River Basin, but did not find it.  So, we passed through some tiny towns in Wyoming along the way.  Why I did not stop to take a photo of the sign of Lost Springs, Wyoming (population: 4) I do not know, I must have been crazy to pass on taking that one...

***

Our last day was in Denver.  My wife stayed in the downtown area to walk the pedestrian mall thingie now so common in cities, while I drove out the Colorado School of Mines, just to check it out.  Mostly various kinds of engineering majors, very difficult looking material...

Early in the evening as we were getting close to Denver, we passed an ominous looking FEMA vehicle, it looked like a big bus-thing ("like Conway Twitty uses" -- V. Mix) with few windows...

Weed / Herb fans!

I had the chance to interview two local informants about the marijuana situation there in Colorado.  My first local contact was a recently released convict while in the restroom of a Denver McDonalds.  (He was tatted up and missing his two incisors, so he looked real enough to me in that role)  He told me that in January that weed would be freely available from the "medical dispensaries" to anyone!  Holy Cow!  Party on, dudez!  

My second contact was the Budget rent-a-car shuttle bus driver there at Denver Int'l ("DIA").  He said the same re January, that they would limit out-of-staters to 1/4 oz per day (which "SWIM" (look it up!) says is more than ample, as it is far stronger than it was 35 years ago according to "SWIM"...

January 1 looks like it will be a big day in Colorado!  LOL!

***

By the length of this article, I hope I have demonstrated the wonders waiting for one and all in the northern Rockies and the northern Plains.  A "Five Star" trip, highly recommended to anyone who has not been out there.

Hunting The Elusive K-T Boundary...

My wife and I are back from our great trip to Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and Colorado.  Usually when we travel, I let her make most of the decisions on where to go and how long to stay at each stop along the way.   But, this time, it was my trip!  So with some compromises with her, we did many things that she would not normally choose to do.  What we had in my favor, however, was the gorgeous and interesting scenery and other sights of parts of the northern Rockies and the northern plains.

My last two articles (Noreen Firearms and the Yellowstone Supervolcano), while both of interest to me, were not the expected highlight of the trip for me.  What I really wanted to see was the somewhat famous "K-T Boundary", a seldom seen rock outcrop (complete with iridium-rich sediment) that marks the end of the Cretaceous Period (from about 145 to 65 million years ago).  The Cretaceous was the last period of the Mesozoic Era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth (including the famous Tyrannosaurus Rex, as well as the familiar Velociraptors (both the Tyrannosaurus Rex and Velociraptors were in the movie "Jurassic Park"), also living in the Cretaceous was the Triceratops, more information the Cretaceous period and its flora and fauna is here at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous_Period.

This article hereafter is divided into two parts, the first part just below (finishing with the map) is slightly technical and explains more about the K-T Boundary and includes snippets and a map from an important paper on the subject.  The second part (after) describes our details (and pictures) of hunting the elusive K-T Boundary in Wyoming and South Dakota.

***

It is pretty well accepted now that the Cretaceous ended with a mass extinction probably caused. at least in part, by the approximately 6 mile diameter meteorite/asteroid that hit the Yucatan Peninsula some 65 million years ago (the "Chicxulub Crater").  There is ample evidence of dust and ash that were blasted into the atmosphere and later to settle all over the world (or at least the Northern Hemisphere).  The most commonly cited evidence is the "K-T Boundary" (Cretacous - Tertiary), but the stratigraphers (geologists who specialize in layers of rocks) now use the term "K-Pg Boundary" (Cretaceous - Paleogene Boundary), but it is still better known as the K-T Boundary.  Here is wikipedia's discussion of the K-T Boundary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%E2%80%93Pg_boundary

The fossils before and after the K-T Boundary are completely different!  It is believed that some 25% - 50% of the species of land animals became extinct (different sources have different figures).

The K-T Boundary itself is typically seen (where the dust settled on land) as a this black and white layer (usually between 1 cm and 2.4 cm thick) all over the world where good outcrops exist.  Over 100 such sites have been located, some of which are under the ocean now (but were on land when the impact occurred, the K-T Boundary was found when analyzing offshore drilling cores).  What is special to me is the very high amounts of Iridium (a platinum group metal, second densest metal that exists).  There is between 60 and 1000 times more iridium in the K-T Boundary formation than in most other rocks in the Earth's crust.

Here are the Conclusions from an excellent paper (that states that the authors, among others, were preparing a worlwide database on the K-T Boundary, in 2002): http://we.vub.ac.be/~dglg/Web/Claeys/pdf/Claeys-etal-02.pdf, by Phillipe Claeys, Wolfgang Kiessling and Walter Alvarez (the last a geologist who is famous in this niche), these Conclusions are with a gray background:

CONCLUSIONS

1. There are 101 K-T boundary sites (some representing multiple outcrops), all over the world, that contain ejecta debris.  This represents nearly 30% of all the sites entered in KTbase.  Of the sites that contain latest Maastrichtian and earliest Danian biozones, 15% (i.e., more than 50 sites) have not been investigated for ejecta material.

2. K-T sites formed in shallow-water depositional environments are more commonly considered incomplete in terms of ejecta debris than deeper marine ones.

3. KTbase does not support a global regression at the K-T boundary. The hypothesis of a K-T regression stems in parts from the misinterpretation of impact-related coarse clastic or debris-flow units deposited in the Gulf of Mexico region. These coarse sandy units do not represent a transgressive sequence tract overlying a sequence boundary and are not related to a K-T boundary sea-level change.

4. The Chicxulub impact affected sedimentation within the Gulf of Mexico region and the Atlantic, probably all the way to offshore Portugal. This effect is reflected by the presence of coarse clastic units and/or breccia in deep-water settings and/or by the erosion of Upper Cretaceous sediments from depositional settings usually not prone to unconformities. The precise sedimentological mechanisms are not fully understood: for
example, it is not clear if debris flows are created by the seismic wave or ground shaking or by the tsunami waves generated by the impact. It is also possible that in some places, massive debris flows generated tsunami waves. Most likely all these processes acted together, leading to the chaotic sedimentation and
erosion occurring at or near the K-T boundary in the Gulf of Mexico and the North Atlantic.

5. The positive Ir anomaly has been recorded at 85 sites and appears to have been spread homogeneously all around the globe. Concentration does not vary systematically with distance from the crater. At proximal sites, the Ir concentration is diluted by the high amount of sediment put in suspension in the Gulf of Mexico’s water after the impact.

6. Shocked quartz grains appear more abundant and larger west of the Chicxulub crater, although the absolute size factor may strongly depend on the amount of material available for study. Nevertheless, as proposed by Alvarez et al. (1995) and Bostwick and Kyte (1996), the maximum grain size of quartz grains with planar deformation features seems larger in the Pacific than at sites located at equivalent distances from the crater in Europe.

7. KTbase demonstrates that a significant effort is needed to improve our knowledge of K-T boundary sites in South America, Africa, Australia, and the high latitudes ( 60 ). 

Preliminary examination of the K-T database in terms of the ejecta debris distribution and K-T boundary sedimentation shows that it is probably the most convenient and user-friendly method to compile and sort the huge amount of literature on the subject. Plotting the current data on paleogeographic maps indicates zones where further studies are required. The occurrence of impact debris must also be reported in a clear and quantitative manner (e.g., abundance per cm2 of sediments) before the distribution pattern of impact products can be understood.

The main advantage of the database is to point toward potential trends or characteristics in the data, which can then be investigated further. The information extracted from the database coupled with mathematical models will permit the documentation of the origin, transport, and deposition of ejecta material during cratering events. It is our goal to have the ejecta debris part of the database available through the internet in the near future.

Here is their map of sites that they examined for their database, note worldwide distribution of the ejecta.  The map is of the Earth as of 65 million years ago (note India), the "best" showings of the K-T Boundary are with the symbol of a circle with a dot in the middle:

***

There were three sites (two in Wyoming and one in South Dakota) that I thought we should try to find.  I was able to do a few hours of research (not that much, not enough as it turns out) to get a pretty good idea of locating one or more of these boundaries.  The two in Wyoming have the iridium-rich layer seen all over the world (above map), the one in South Dakota being a "marine" K-T Boundary, that is, a geologic record of a tsunami formed by the impact of the asteroid (65 million years ago, that part of S. Dakota was underwater).

The first one is in the SW Powder River Basin of central Wyoming (some 15 miles east of the Interstate 25 Exit at Kaycee).  I made an inquiry at the general store of Kaycee (a very tiny town) and was directed to see a rancher located near where the boundary is located.  So, I drove over to visit him, unannounced, and found him there at home.  The rancher knew all about it, he had several times hosted visits by geologists from one of the Colorado universities (but apparently not from the U. of Wyoming's unhelpful (to me) Geology Department however, LOL...).  He then told me that he had sold that particular parcel of his ranch to another couple, he gave me their phone numbers.  Ahh, rather than disrupt the lives of more people without having more information, I then asked him if the K-T Boundary was easy to get to (ideally by roadside or a short hike along the Powder River looking for an outcrop).  No, he told me, it was accessible only by a four-wheel-drive...  I thanked him for his time and told him I would not bother the new owners (and, of course, ask people I did not know to give me time and run their truck just for my curiosity...).  So, Strike One, but here is a picture of a bridge over the Powder River very near the actual outcrop of the boundary:

The type of outcrop to look for (Powder River), but not here!

Close, but no cigar...

Our next opportunity came up with a reported K-T Boundary at Badlands National Park, about an hour east of Rapid City, South Dakota.  The price I had to pay my wife was to visit Mt. Rushmore as well, but that was a small price to pay to see (and take a good picture of) the K-T Boundary.  Philip Stofer of the USGS published a paper (he mentioned upfront that it was tentative) on finding the boundary in Badlands.  He provided pictures and evidence in a convincing paper: http://geopubs.wr.usgs.gov/open-file/of01-056/of01-056.pdf.

I took a few pictures that pretty closely match Stofer's, I was looking for his "Disturbed Zone", the evidence of a tsunami affecting the area.  I was quite hopeful as Stofer said that this K-T Boundary was the most easily accessible in the whole world!  Here is a picture, description below:

Stofer's "K-T Boundary" is the slightly pinkish-white set of formations under the two thin white layers and above the bottom yellow ones.

But, the Park's resident paleontologist (a geologist specializing in study of ancient life and their environments), Dr. Rachel Benton wrote me that the "K-T Boundary" at Badlands has been disproven (her email to me, her comments in gray background):

Dear Mr. Mix:

Thank you for your interest in the geology of Badlands National Park.  Unfortunately the existence of the K/T boundary at Badlands National Park has been disproved.  I have attached two abstracts to professional geological societies that provide evidence that the disturbed zone we have in the park is too old and we do not have the early Tertiary rocks in the park.  Phil Stoffer is an author on one of the abstracts.  The authors still believe that the sediments preserved in the park are from some type of impact event but not linked to the K Chixculub or Manson impact.  Please let me know if you have further questions.

Sincerely,

Rachel Benton

Ouch!  Strike Two!  Three strikes and you're out!  (in baseball anyway)

We then went on to see if we could find the third boundary site, this one in the SE Powder River Basin (Wyoming), near Linch Creek and Doggie Creek.  Bruce Bohor wrote a few papers on the K-T Boundary in Wyoming, and found one at Doggie Creek:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/94516429/Bohor-etal-Dinosaurs-Spherules-and-the-Magic-Layer-A-New-K-T-Boundary-Clay-Site-in-Wyoming-Geo15-10-1987-4-pdf

Being zero for two so far, I was not hopeful that we would find a K-T Boundary at Doggie Creek.  The area is remote and as far as I can tell all the land is privately owned ranch land.  I did ask the postmaster at Linch Creek (another very small Wyoming town) for information about Doggie Creek and/or the K-T Boundary.  She did not know about the boundary, but did direct me up the gravel road (Wyoming 272) north of Linch Creek some 15 - 20 miles.  Bohor in one of his papers mentioned such features as a "prominent conical hill", an abandoned Post Office with gully nearby, and other clues.  But, they did not have ubiquitous GPS in those days, so I only had written text to go with, and some was incorrectly spelled, nor were the creeks marked along the remote small bridges.  Nonetheless, I believe that we did indeed find the "prominent conical hill" (the only one in the area that matched that description) as well as the apparently abandoned hamlet.  I went ahead and walked along a couple of creeks, one of which would likely be Doggie Creek.  This first picture shows the "prominent conical hill", so I felt fairly confident that we might find the boundary after all:

OK, so I got busy looking into the nearby gully:

The picture just above is typical of what I saw within some 250 meters of the road.  I did not want to go any further as this land IS privately owned.  The K-T Boundary in this area is supposed to be just above three thin lignite (low quality coal) beds, but I did not see (else, correctly identify) any lignite.  So, while it is very likely I was close again, "close, but no no cigar!"  Strike Three!

So, we were not able to find ANY of the elusive three K-T Boundaries supposedly in the scope of our trip.  I am consoled by three things:

1) the remarkable kindness of the people (scientists and local folks) from there

2) the absolutely beautiful parts of the countryside we went through, truly gorgeous, we saw this at Badlands:

3) the company of the best traveling companion I have ever had, here she is (the photo is a little dark because it was nearly sunset):

***

Soon I will write up the final article of this series of our trip, this one will have commentary and pictures of things that most tourists do NOT see, write about or take photos of.

Why don't you join us on the (mis)adventures of two tourists doing a trip like this...,  differently!