A Quick Stop and a Monument

 

A Quick Stop and a Monument

The Grand Junction, CO, area has a few things to see, one of which is a very pretty National Monument, which has been somewhat forgotten by me.  The other thing is an interesting stop…..

The interesting stop was very close to the campground.  It’s called Dinosaur Hill.  In 1900, Elmer Riggs, from the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History, discovered the bones of a 70 foot long, 30-ton apatosaurus.  They returned in 1901 to excavate it, and it has been on display in the museum since 1908.  Jeff thought that was interesting, but what he wanted me to see was the mold of the femur of a diplodocus-like dinosaur.  The dinosaur was a 25-ton, 85 foot long, plant eating creature that lived about 151 million years ago. The boulder was once part of an ancient riverbed.  The image on the left is of the bone mold in the boulder – on the right is Jeff, so you can get a sense of scale as to how large the bone was!  The small yellow dots are tiny insects that were swarming in the space between Jeff and me.  We weren’t bothered by them, thank goodness!!

As we entered Colorado National Monument, we passed under 2 tunnels cut out of the rock formations above.  It’s pretty cool to ride under the tunnels and I tried to not think very much about all the sandstone rock overhead, which is relatively soft rock!!

The drive through the National Monument is along a road called The Rim Road.  The road was built to give people a sense of being up in the clouds with all the rock formations!  The image on the right is an image looking down on The Rim Road.  It looks small in that shot, so the shot on the left is a close up of a formation called Balanced Rock.

Another stop was for the overlook of Fruita Canyon.  You can also see part of The Rim Road in this shot.  The landscape views from this Monument are just breathtaking!

About two million years ago, water flowed into what is now the Monument.  Water flowed around a high rock wall.  Today, this wall is known as The Independence Monument.  A man named John Otto came to this area and fell in love with the canyon area.  He began to campaign to get this area protected as a National Park.  On May 11, 1911, President William H. Taft declared this area the Colorado National Monument.  To celebrate, he climbed the Independence Monument.  He then planted an American flag on the top of the Monument.  He repeated this for years, on every 4^th of July.  Today, every 4^th of July, climbers carry an American flag up the Monument, and stake it on the top.  You can see in the two images above how different the Independence Monument looks. In the image on the upper right, it looks like a tower on the right side of the image.  In the lower left, but again on the right side of the image, you can see how broad it is!  It’s all about perspective!

Even though these views are not formally part of what’s call The Grand View, I found them to be pretty grand!!  The trees, rock formations and sky all combine to great a wonderful view!!

Here is the Grand View, and it is!!  Off to the far left of this image is a small part of The Interdependence Monument.  In the foreground is an interesting rock formation with a different type of rock at the top of the formation (Kayenta), and another below it (Wingate).  Behind it is a rock formation that used to be connected to The Independence Monument many, many years ago.

As we came around a bend in the road, we came across this small herd of desert bighorn sheep.  Some had the nice big, rounded horns, others had horns of a more moderate size, and then there was the baby.  They walked right up to and back and forth in front of the Jeep, showing absolutely no fear.  What a fun sight!

Sometimes the erosion of the rock results in formations that look like something man-made.  In this case, they look a bit like beehives.  However, in the past when they were first discovered, they reminded people of a shape they were used to – coke ovens, where the coal that was mined was loaded, sealed and then it was lit.  The end result was coke, which was used to make iron which is then used to make steel.  So, these formations are called coke ovens, even though some of us are reminded more of beehives!

The next viewpoint was called Artist Point, due to the many colors of the rock in this area.  Across the road from the formal viewpoint were some close-up examples of the colors you could see.  A pallet of many colors!

The next stop, Upper Ute Canyon View, had an interesting rock formation as part of it.  You can see the full canyon in the upper image, and in the lower image, there’s a rock formation that looks remarkably like a mummy sarcophagus.  

The next rock formation was really interesting and reminded me of an iceberg calving.  Geological forces are unrelenting and ongoing.  They combined to cause part of the canyon to separate and fall. You can see what is called Fallen Rock in the center of the image.  What makes this different from a lot of rocks that fall off the wall of the formation and crash to the canyon floor below, is that this rock sort of slid off the face of the canyon and stopped more than 100 feet below.  This reminded me of when we’d see icebergs calving up in Alaska.  Part of the iceberg would crack away from the solid iceberg and simply slide into the sea.  This rock was stopped by the debris at the base of the canyon and is believed to have been in this position for thousands of years.

One of our last stops was to see the multi-directional Ute Canyon.  The image in the upper left was the part of the canyon that branched off to the right when I stood on the viewpoint.  The lower left image branched off to the left, and the image on the right branched directly away from where I stood.  It was quite impressive to see the branches of this one very large canyon!

The last canyon that we saw in this Monument was called Cold Shivers Point.  I couldn’t find any explanation of why it was named this, but I was struck by the beauty of the canyon, with trees and shrubs adding the green color to its walls.

We ended our travels through this National Monument the same way we began – through a tunnel.  However, this tunnel was at the opposite end of the Monument!

Enjoy!