Wow! What a day! Even though we awoke to somewhat "troubled skies," at our camp in Cody this morning, by the time we were headed down Route 120 toward our primary destination, Wyoming's town of Thermopolis, the skies had begun to clear and take on their familiar (for Wyoming) bright blue hue. Before long, the then cloud-filled skies were so fetching that we started looking for a place to pull over and take a few pictures (photo left).
Anywhere would due as today our windshield was just filled with georgeous geology, mostly sandstone cliffs and canyons in wildly different colors. It's probably a good thing that there was seldom any place to pull over and do photography as we would have been countless extra hours reaching our evening destination of Riverton, Wyoming.
Fortunately, photo ops were few and far between, and this allowed us to get to Thermopolis and the "Wyoming Dinosaur Center and Dig sites" by lunch time. We've been on the road for 19 days now, and we've been constantly watching for just such an opportunity. For various logistical reasons, we passed up a dinosaur museum in southern Wyoming, one of the premier ones in the country we read. So when the Thermopolis museum popped up on the radar screen, we were determined to see it.
From our perspective, we were totally captivated by the incredible paleontological specimens they had on display in their museum. We got to see samples of fossils in a sandstone matrix as big as a large coffee table, something that we'd never seen before. All types of sea creatures, extinct for hundreds of millions of years, were featured in these display cases.
Beyond the confines of the display case area are the full-sized recreations of dinosaurs, and this space is HUGE! They keep the lights low in this area, perhaps to protect whatever genuine fossils that have been used in the reconstructions. Fortunately, I has able to choose a speed on the camera of 1/1250 of a second, and overexpose for one full stop, to make the photographs more viewable.
The museum comes with a nice gift shop, a good deal of which is devoted to items attractive to children. Naturally, I gravitated to the book area for adults as you can always use one more book on geology or paleontology. Though most such books are pretty pricey, I setttled on a child's picture book of rocks and minerals which had some glorious rock photography. I also bought a small pocket book by Robert T. Bakker, whom you may remember from TV. Way back in the 1970s and 1980s, Robert Bakker was constantly on TV from one of his digs in Wyoming or Montana, and Concetta and I used to just love to watch him for his enthusiasm for his craft.
"Bakker has been a major proponent of the theory that dinosaurs were warm-blooded, smart, fast, and adaptable. He published his first paper on dinosaur endothermy in 1968. His seminal work, The Dinosaur Heresies, was published in 1986. He revealed the first evidence of parental care at nesting sites for Allosaurus. He also observed evidence in support of Eldredge and Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium in dinosaur populations. Bakker currently serves as the Curator of Paleontology for the Houston Museum of Natural Science."
Bob Bakker is definiately in my top 10 individuals of whom I would love to meet someday
Assembled in the van with us were seven other poeple, including one man who was obviously well-versed in such topics and added greatly to our guide's narrative by asking probing questions, the answers for which we all benefitted.
The trek up the mountain took about a quarter hour, and then we were assembed inside a roofed structure meant to protect the dig and the diggers from the worst of Wyoming's weather. Our guide told us that the diggers only had about a five-month window during which they were able to access the site before the trip up and down the narrow dirt track became too dangerous.
The dig was concerned with a patch of ground that dated to the "Morrison layer" of the Jurassic, about 148 million years ago. The museum guide told us that the sandstone in the Morrison layer was sort of green in nature compared to other layers, but I had a little trouble seeing that. Still, whatever color the layer was, the fact that we were looking at a piece of ground that had once been at or near sea level and now was on a mountainside some 5,000 feet in the air was downright startling.
We probably spent about a half hour asking all the questions we wanted of our guide, taking our photographs, and wandering the grounds, then we loaded up for the trip back to the Center. Though the opportunity was not offered to us today, the Center also offers programs where guests are allowed to work on actual digs, something I'd just jump at the chance to do someday.
After leaving Thermopolis, we were treated to some of the finest canyon travel and views we have ever experienced as we drove the Wind River Canyon from Thermopolis to Riverton, about an hour's drive. At the south end of the canyon lies the Boysen Reservoir, which sits behind a large dam. The dam feeds a continuous stream of water into the canyon which, from our observation, must be a delightful place to both fish and river-raft.
At one point I decided to pull over and shoot the towering canyon walls, and I was extremely pleased to seee a river raft coming toward me. Before long, the raft had entered a series of rapids in the canyon beneath me, an upbeatable photo opportunity. All too soon the opportunity was over, but to me it seemed the perfect end to a perfect day.
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