Greetings from St George, where I’m back at now.
I had a good weekend. I more-or-less took a break from MTBing to give my legs a rest and instead attended the Green River Rock and Mineral Show.
Before I took a break from MTBing, on Friday I did a supply run up to Grand Junction / Fruita in Colorado. After picking up some things I went to the 18 RD trails in Fruita to get some riding in.
I had fun. The “PBR” (Pumps, Bumps, and Rollers) trail is one of my favorite flow trails anyway (up there with Copper Harbor’s “The Flow” and Sedona’s “Canyon of Fools”). All in all after a good ride I decided my legs needed a break. Good timing too, because of the rock and mineral show.
The first event was a talk by the Utah State Geologist, Jim Kirkland, about the geology and fossils of the area. It was good and I learned things. So, the Moab area has had a lot of U mining. Do you know how U gets places? Volcanoes. It’s in the ash. Most places the U dissolves out of the ash, eventually to the sea, but the Moab area had the right climate and geology for it to instead form minerals and stay in the ground.
The next event, Saturday morning, was a dinosaur tracks field trip, conveniently starting at the trailhead by my campsite.
It was also good. I’m more of a geology person than a dinosaur person, but I still enjoyed it. I learned some things. Did you know that standard practice for copying dinosaur footprints is to take stereoscopic photos of the site, use those to build a digital model, and then 3D it?
After the Dino Tracks hike I decided I didn’t have any interest in going back to Moab, and instead broke camp and did the short drive over to the Crystal Geyser near Green River. Not only is it a free campsite, but there’s a geyser! It’s one of the few cold-water geysers in the world. It developed (in it’s current form) after people tried to dig an oil well in the 1930s.
See here for more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Geyser
Great thing about this geyser is it’s cold, which means you can get very close to it and photograph the super beautiful stepped travertine terrace formations. Here’s a small number of the photos I took.
After taking many photos of the geyser I headed back into town for an evening of karaoke with the Rocks and Minerals people. It was fun. I’m not much of a singer, but I enjoyed preforming American Pie.
In attendance was almost the entirety of Green River’s (pop ~1000) 20-something scene. Most of the attendees were either festival organizers or their friends, only a few geologists or rockhounds. That was a bit disappointing, but I don’t regret going. Being around a group of people was a bit weird (esp the evening), but I enjoy social every now and then. I suppose.
Sunday morning was another field trip, this one to “Fossil Point” led by a BLM paleontologist, Greg McDonald. It too was good. I got to see and touch fossils. That was cool. :)
I took a lot of photos here too.
There were a lot of fossils there.
I found one fossil fragment on the ground, and as per Federal law I put it back there after I photographed it.
It felt odd to be able to touch these with my bare hands after being in many museums where that was very much not allowed.
After the field trip I headed back to Green River to hang out with the festival people for bit. After that and actually walking through the museum I got on the road to St George. After being told by several people that I really should take the scenic route back, I did. I’m happy about that. Utah is crazy beautiful.
I visited my first National Park so far on the trip yesterday. Capitol Reef, in central Utah. It’s beautiful… but not that different than the rest of Utah.
Passing through the park, it was time to cross the mountains.
This involved driving over a 9,600' pass, where of course there’s still snow. Shortly thereafter it started snowing.
Through the mountains, it was time to drive through Grand Staircase Escalate NM. It was also beautiful. Utah is crazy beautiful. Have I mentioned that?
From there the drive took me to Bryce Canyon NP, which I camped just outside. By that I mean, I found a nice free campsite only a few minutes from the park, and 15 minutes from one of the main overlooks. I’m very surprised that exists.
That said, it was about 8,000' up, and there was snow on the ground.
My excitement was a bit tempered by looking at the forecast, which was for snow and a low of 26F (tonight it’s something like 16, which is why I’m not there).
This morning it was indeed snowing, but it was ok because it was beautiful. After breakfast I got on the road to St George, where I am now.
This is a very long post. I think I’m done now.
