Monday, September 7, 2009

September 7, 2009

Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument and Monarch Pass

We drove north to Colorado Springs and then west.  Past the entrance to Pikes Peak road and on up to some beautiful country.   Wide green valleys with mountains all around.  At the little town of Florissant we turned south up another beautiful valley (actually the remains of a prehistoric lake) to Florissant Fossil Beds.  This place is OLD.  Much older than the dinosaurs.  It has produced probably the greatest trove of fossils of any place in the world.  Insects, plants, animals, from many ages.  The visitor center has drawers of fossils all under glass but available to see. 

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At one time the area was a lush, moist, redwood forest.  Bet you thought redwoods were unique to the west coast.  The redwoods were buried (the lower portion of the trunks) by a volcanic lahar.   The buried parts of the trees became petrified.   The Petrified Forest in Arizona has vast numbers of trees but this place has the largest petrified trees in diameter.  Picture the redwood trees in Sequoia National Park.  Now picture the bottom 10-15 feet of those made of stone. 

‘Modern’ tree growing in the middle of the remains of a petrified tree.

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Petrified stump.  The small brown spots near the top are broken saw blades where early treasure seekers attempted to cut off a chunk of the tree.

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Rings on petrified tree.

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Ranger duty here must be tough.  The area is beautiful.   It is a bit remote so visitor population is not too bad.  There is no camping and no facilities other than the visitor center and the place closes at six or seven in the afternoon. 

Homestead on land of park.

01 Hernbek Homestead

We spoke with a ranger naturalist for some time and he introduced us to a new term for us that could have applications at times.  “Coprolites Happen”.  Look it up.

Leaving the fossil beds we headed west some more and then south to US 50. 

09 Hwy24 thru the rockies

From there it was west again toward a big challenge.  Monarch Pass.  We had passed on driving the carbus over a 12000 foot pass and we didn’t want to take I 70 out of Denver as we had traveled much of it earlier this year and it would make us miss some things we wanted to see.  That left  US 50.  A very picturesque road through Colorado as it is along much of its’ route.  Just one small bump in the road.  Monarch pass is 11312 feet above sea level.  The carbus did well climbing the pass while towing the Grand Vitara.  Most of the climb was in second gear and we had to use first gear for the last mile.  We gave the RV a rest at the top (we were not alone) and the trip down was fine.

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