Dinosaur Depot

By the time we reached Canon City, the snow had turned to very wet slush. The Dinosaur Depot Museum on Highway 50 offers a small display of bones that have been excavated from the Garden Park Fossil Area, which is just north of Canon City. Most of the remains are from the late Jurassic era, and most of them now reside in the National Smithsonian Museum. Types of dinosaurs that have been found in this region include: Theropods (carnivores), Sauropods (quadripedal plant eaters), Ornithopods (bipedal plant eaters), and Armored Dinosaurs (plated plant eaters). There are volunteers on site, eager to answer any questions, and the "Discovery Room" upstairs provides entertainment for younger crowds.

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Following the Arkansas River Home

We stayed in Salida over night, and awoke to snow the next morning. This caused us to change our plans a little by cutting out a side trip to Garden Park Fossil Beds where the road might be impassable. Visibility was limited during this part of the trip.

Mt. Princeton Hot Springs

The time had come for the weary travelers to soak in the hot springs at the base of the "Chalk" Cliffs. There was a small cover charge to have use of the heated creekside pools until closing time.

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White "Chalk" Cliffs of Colorado

These cliffs aren't really made of "chalk" but of crumbling white quartz monzonite that looks like chalk. To get there, we drove south from Buena Vista on Highway 285, and then west on Chalk Creek Drive (County Road 162) to the base of Mt. Princeton. It was too snowy on this particular day to explore the cliffs, and we were still exhausted from our earlier march through the fossilized redwood forest. We were happy to take pictures from the car, and quickly head over to the Hot Springs.

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Collegiate Peaks Overlook

Incredibly unbelievable views from the Collegiate Peaks Overlook near Buena Vista. After seeing this, my traveling companions and I were wondering "just what makes Pike's Peak so special?" This is like six Pike's Peaks! Photos do a poor job of showing just how gorgeous this location is. See evidence of glacial activity, alluvial fans, and a grayish spot at the base of Mt. Princeton...




How did these vast mountain ranges get here? Geologists are still puzzled because this mountain range occurs so far from a subduction zone. It all started with volcanic activity 300 million years ago. The volcanoes rose out of the shallow sea off the coast of Laurentia. Over the next few hundred million years, collisions on the western coast of the North American craton most likely resulted in an unusually flat angled subducting slab that forced the Rockies upward through layers of ancient Pennsylvanian and Permian sedimentary remnants.

South Park

From the Florissant Fossil Beds we continued west on Highway 24 over Wilkerson Pass. We stopped at the South Park overlook to snap these pictures. What a view!! What exactly is South Park (besides the coolest cartoon to feature Colorado)? It's a huge Rocky Mountain basin that was once a freshwater lake at a time of local volcanic activity.

As we sped along Highway 24 over South Park, we saw the Collegiate Peaks approaching in the distance.


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Florissant Fossil Beds Natl. Monument

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Admission to the National Monument was $3/person. The monument is located off Highway 24 just south of the town Florissant, about an hour drive from Colorado Springs. Take a hike on a self-guided 1 mile trail to get a closer look at some fossilized redwood stumps. Looking at these snowy pictures makes it hard to imagine that during the Eocene (35 million years ago) this place was a humid lake and shoreline teaming with insects, fish, mammals, mollusks, birds, towering redwoods and cedars. How were these giant stumps preserved? Volcanic eruptions spit ash and lava all around the region, blanketing the forest and quickly burying the lower parts of the tree trunks. The trees died, but their stumps remained protected and preserved. Below is artist Rob Wood's depiction of what Florissant looked like 35 million years ago.

Introduction

Spending my lifetime at the base of Pike's Peak makes it easy to take extreme scenes like this for granted.

As a student in an introductory Geology class, I've been given what I think is the greatest assignment of my college career so far: to plan and execute a field trip! Anxious to see as much as I can, I've mapped a 200-mile loop beginning and ending with my home town, Colorado Springs.

After perusing Halka Chronic's "Roadside Geology of Colorado," Ralph and Lindy Hopkins' "Hiking Colorado's Geology," and online resources like Google Earth, and MapQuest, I can now say that I feel confident in the overall plan.

I'm fortunate to have with me three good companions for this journey: my fiancé, my sister, and my brother-in-law. Providing the weather holds out for us, the trip will commence the day after tomorrow. We're hearing reports that there may be snow...