I’ve done a few lessons on fossil beds with my students and have fond memories of Dinosaur National Monument. I had no idea what to expect here and was slightly disappointed that Zak said there would only be fossils of small plants and insects. He mentioned petrified wood, but we’ve had a wonderful time at Petrified Forest National Park and I knew this wouldn’t beat that. I was most looking forward to the hike, over 8 miles in mountain forest.
We arrived as the monument was opening and were greatest by two wonderful volunteers who were behind a table of all the insect fossils we’d see during our visit, about 8. The real attraction was the petrified redwoods. About 35 million years ago, while redwoods grew across most of what is now America, a volcano erupted. The eruption left 15 feet of ash on the ground. The redwoods died and the stumps below the ash level were eventually petrified. Absolutely fascinating. There were only a half dozen or so, but it was an awesome combination of California’s redwoods and Petrified Forest NP. These had been massive trees, at least 100 years old, and are nearly perfectly preserved all these millions of years later. Except they’re rock now.
After hiking the mile loop that included all the petrified stumps, we set off on the second big hike of the trip. It was perfect. We wove in and out of ponderosa pine groves and across vast grasslands. The animal activity was spectacular, little prairie dogs zipped all around us, we saw two groupings of deer, and most surprising, a herd of cow along the side of the trail. That was a first.
The hike ended up being just what we needed to keep the momentum going. Decent milage, but not crazy. Bursts of great elevation gain, but not too much overall. Everyone was (mostly) happy the whole hike. I’m proud of us all. We’ve hiked 16.5 miles in two days, over 25,000 steps each day. We did no training for this trip. We usually spend May hiking on the weekends, but with Ellie’s broken ankle that wasn’t possible this year. The girls always amaze me, and the past two days are no exceptions.
