Our Western Wonderland

Only in retrospect could I see the shape of my journey.  I traveled up the eastward side of the Rockies, across the Bighorn Basin, then a short way down the Rockies' west flank before heading homewards.  I never anticipated the incredible variety of terrain and geology our western lands would offer. 

(note:  This post grew too long! My point was to show the variability of the terrain in this relatively small area.  Just cruising through the photos will give you the gist.  In later posts I'll describe more of the how and why, in addition to this overview of where.) 

When I embarked with my Capri camper, I had only a vague notion of where I was headed.  I didn't want a specific itinerary, but there were four books that gave some shape to the trip.  John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley offered the notion of just going to see what's out there.  John Galvin's The Meadow, an all-time favorite, aimed me toward southeastern Wyoming, with Tie Siding as a focal town.  In the introduction to The Daily Coyote, Shreve Stockton's passion for the land around Ten Sleep, WY, attracted me like a magnet.  And in This House of Sky, Ivan Doig's descriptions of the old ranching life in southern Montana transported me in time and place.  Also, I heard about the big white water festival in Salida, CO, so that became an early destination.

I was delighted at every turn by our beauteous west, from high deserts to towering mountains.  The late spring rains ensured that green was the dominant color, even in Wyoming in July, and despite one night of snow.

Spring greens enhanced northwest New Mexico's dramatic effect, where colorful sandstones were originally  sand dunes, beaches, and mudflats from the time of the dinosaurs.  Though not uplifted by tectonics, like most of the Rockies, these smaller ranges represent the southern reaches of that vast mountain region:

Colorado's Great Sand Dunes are still very much alive.  Their sands, including the tallest dunes in North America, incessantly travel back and forth, east and west, as the prevailing winds switch between the uplifted Sangre de Cristo Range, to the east, and the volcanic San Juan Mountains to the west.  The sands originated as sediments in huge valley lakes; the lakes dried and the sands accumulated in a curve in the Sangre de Cristos:

Northwards I drove through Colorado's high valleys rimmed by those spectacular mountains that give the Rockies their name.  They were predominately uplifted during the Laramide Orogeny (a tectonic mountain building episode),  but along the way I learned they are actually wonderfully  complex in their origins:

The views from above Tie Siding, CO, gave me a sense of the high meadow that, in Galvin's lyrical account, enchanted its owners over several generations:

Wyoming's plains then enchanted me:  Space and stillness alive with birdsong: 

The Rockies are composed of many discrete ranges; among these are high valleys and vast plains.   Wyoming's plains are basins depressed as surrounding mountains rose, later to be filled with seas (whose tidal actions created a lilting lumpiness in some areas), and still later filled and flattened with eroded mountain sediments:

The Bighorn Mountains, an eastern spur of the Rockies, expose rocks that have endured since the Cambrian, half a billion years ago:

The Bighorn Basin lies to the west.  Even within its flat reaches, surprises are hidden up side roads like Alkali Flats Back Country Byway.  This is dinosaur country, where you can walk beside tracks over 160 million years old: 

And beneath the horizon Devil's Kitchen is a very big and very gnarly hole in the ground, surrounded by lush ranch lands:

While the Bighorns consist of basement metamorphic rock, limestone, and what's left of eroded sedimentary layers, driving out of the basin into the Absaroka Range is altogether different.  It's actually a volcanic field that has weathered into fantastical spires and hoodoos:

The drive through this range into Yellowstone National Park is as beautiful as it gets.  Yellowstone has the mixed blessing of sitting top the hotspot that has led to at least three tremendous explosions of volcanic materials, which form the Abasarokas.  The geysers and colorful, steaming pools lie atop this devastation, hinting at future possibilities.

Southwards lie the Grand Tetons' spectacular peaks.  After uplift, the Tetons were sculpted by glaciers.  Their grandeur is indescribable...and impossible to capture on 'film':

Across a valley of farmland and marshes, Logan, Utah, sits at the base of the Wasatch Range on the western edge of the Rockies: 

From there I headed west and homeward, but not without a final, wonderful surprise on a lonely back road in northeast Utah: