Eastern Colorado is just Western Kansas

 8/11/2021

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Alas, I seem to be running out of vacation time, so I guess it’s time to head home. I’ve seen some beautiful Colorado mountain towns, traversed a gnarly mountain pass via 4x4 Jeep, driven through some sky-high mountain passes of my own, watched one of my best friends get married, and seen all three possible landmarks in southwestern Nebraska. Not bad, for a quick trip! I’ve still got one more stop before I return myself to Texas, though: Santa Fe, NM.

I had two ways to get to Santa Fe from Scottsbluff. The first: the highways of the Front Range, home to soaring spectacular views of the Rockies and about 3 million people all trying to go up and down the highway at once. The second: the tiny two-lane Highway 71, which spans the flattest, most boring part of Colorado, and consequently is traveled by absolutely no one.

Now, given that the Front Range ranks among the worst air quality in the world right now due to smoke from the PNW fires piling up against the Rockies (ask me how it makes sense for it to end up piled on the lee side of the mountains, but that’s air currents for you I guess), this was actually a very easy decision to make. Travel a very smoky, view-less road with a billion other people, or travel a very smoky, view-less road with no other people. Highway 71 it is!

I departed Nebraska at a time when the weather was actually clearing, so I got some cool views of the bluffs on my way out that I had missed on my way in.

But then I crossed into eastern Colorado… and, well, it looks like this:

Here’s the thing: many people don’t know it, but more than a third of Colorado (the eastern third, if you haven’t guessed) is actually awful. It might as well be western Kansas, and I cannot for the life of me figure out who decided to draw the state boundaries where they did. It would just make way more sense for all of the flat terrible corn fields to belong to Kansas. But I guess Colorado needs some agriculture of its own, so here it is:

Literally miles of dirt

Really, it’s kind of remarkable how FLAT it is. Even Kansas has more hills than this! It seems almost as if the Colorado Rockies soar to vast heights and swoop to deep valleys entirely to compensate for the featureless flatlands adjacent to them. And in a way, the dullness of the eastern topography plays counterpoint to the drama of the west, amplifying the impact of the mountains. Certainly, it makes for an increasingly interesting and exciting drive as you move from east to west – something that I discovered the few times I traveled between North Carolina and Colorado.

The problem, unfortunately, was that I was traveling neither east nor west today. I was traveling north to south. And that meant that I was trapped in this drab doldrum belt for… oh, about 6 hours. Not that long in the grand scheme of things, but certainly long enough for madness to start to set in.

Well, probably the madness was already there. I mean, I’ve driven 9 hours straight across West Texas – a similarly wastelandy-feeling voyage – so many times I’ve lost count. And I keep doing it, every year, so I must be insane. Whatever.

All this to tell you that I took very few pictures today, because all of the pictures looked the same:

Wow! Incredible! 

Fortunately, as I neared the New Mexican border, things did begin to improve a bit. With the sun low in the sky, the golden hour approaching, and the haze nearly completely dissipated, even wide grassy flatlands started to look nice again. You know, for as much as I remarked on Nebraska’s endless oceans of grass – I was never really complaining, because they were beautiful and had some topography to them. Rolling hills and bluffs and the like. It’s a lot harder to make a completely flat grass field look nice in a photo.

Finally, the flatlands gave way to hillier country. The haze lifted entirely, and those big fluffy clouds so characteristic of a New Mexican summer finally made a reappearance. Bluffs intersected by craggy ravines slid by in a blur, blending with the patchy scrub of the southern Great Plains.

As much as I love the craggy mountains of Colorado, I always feel more at home in this terrain. This is a space big enough for a vintage American car, a space where all that personality and drama and power can burst free and run wild. No slowing for other travelers or twisty, confining narrow mountain passes. No tedious traffic, no need to keep things quiet and contained. Out here, we can be as loud as we want – indeed, the landscape almost seems to demand it. It is a landscape that feels solid – not a constantly shifting, whispering ocean, as the plains of Nebraska are, where your own self can disappear into the void without a trace; but a place that calls you to be present, to feel the sun on your skin, the rocks under your feet, the wind across your face, and to see all of the subtle variances within those traces that speak of a complex world. This is the kind of place where the open road pulls you forward, always onward to some new intriguing sight right on the cusp of the horizon. And so onward we went.

Could it be...? Mountains in the distance?? Some actual topography to cross???

We closed out the afternoon with a drive through Raton Pass into New Mexico. It always seems a bit silly, to me, that this pass is named and carefully marked. It’s a fairly low elevation pass, with very gentle ramps leading to and from it that make it seem more of just a large hill. In comparison to all other Colorado passes, it’s as gentle as a lamb. But I guess it still is a pass, and maybe it’s a fairly sizeable one for New Mexico. Regardless, we cruised our way through, enjoying the beautiful scenery, and then posted up in a small hotel in Raton on the other side of the pass. 

I suppose I could have made it to Santa Fe all in one day. But truthfully, I just didn’t feel like driving 9+ hours all in one go to get there. Guess I must be getting old. Well, that, and lodging is substantially cheaper here, and I happen to know from experience that the Raton Microtel has really, really nice rooms.

So until tomorrow’s adventures… Kelly signing out.

Relics of the High Plains

8/10/2021 

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This morning I peered hopefully from my tent, wistfully wishing for a departure of the smoky haze and a return to clear blue skies. Alas, it was not to be. But things looked a bit clearer to the north – which was good, because that’s the direction that I was headed today!

Scottsbluff is one of the few towns with amenities (such as campgrounds and good gas stations) in this part of Nebraska, so it’s easier to make it a temporary home base and do little day trips out from it to see the area’s attractions. I found this out the hard way a few years back, when I had planned a broader adventure through Nebraska on my way up to Montana – but found myself running out of gas on a very long road with no stations, causing me to have to backtrack back along a different road and cut my explorations short.

On that trip back in 2017, I had planned on stopping by Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, a little rural park in western Nebraska that features supposedly exceptional Eocene-aged mammal fossils. It’s always bothered me that I didn’t get to check that one off my list. So, today’s mission was to finally go visit the elusive park!

Jane and I took a short hour-long romp north from Scottsbluff along Hwy 29 (one of only two roads that extends north from Scottsbluff into other parts of western Nebraska). It was on this drive that I was reminded of one of the best things about the less-visited regions of the States: no traffic! In fact, I encountered only four cars on the entire drive up. 

That peaceful drive gave me an opportunity to really take in the vastness of the high plains, to experience it in a deeper way. For fifty miles, there was nothing but prairie as far as the eye could see: endless waves of grass rolling across gentle hills in a never-ending verdant carpet. The expanse yawned wide, seeming even huger for its emptiness, the absence of the hustle and bustle of civilization. Occasionally, I saw a farmhouse placed in the landscape, always surrounded by a protective screen of trees in what appeared to be a desperate effort to fend off the boundless ocean of grass. But for the most part, the only sign of human influence on the plains – beyond the road, of course - was the endless row of fenceposts marching towards the horizon. Indeed, it was Jane and I that seemed out of place here, her brilliant blue paint glittering radiantly, defiant of the persistent haze, and the exhaust bellowing out across the plains in a triumphant challenge to nonexistent rivals. Our loudness screamed out into the void, and we received nothing in return but dust.

After some time, the GPS told me to take a right turn onto a narrow road, and suddenly I had features to look at again. Sunflowers carpeted the fields adjacent to the road, and small knolls bearing exposures of chalky white rock protruded upwards from the landscape quite frequently. I had reached Agate Fossil Beds!

I parked at the Visitor Center – a very large imposing-looking log building that still looked perfectly at home in the plains - and headed inside to get some information. The center was just as impressive on the inside as it was on the outside, with wonderful exhibits featuring great reconstructions of the park’s fossils. It turns out that many of the bluffs that I saw on the way in are preserved remnants of a Miocene-aged (20-25 million year old) arid savanna that was cut by a number of small streams and watering holes. One might imagine an environment similar to modern African savannas, with large herds of mammals – ancient rhinos, gazelles, horse-like animals, giant pigs, and the like - roaming the grassy landscape and congregating at watering holes during periods of drought. The major fossil finds at Agate are concentrated around these scattered watering holes, which became the final resting place for many animals during periods of extreme drought, creating thick bone beds that were preserved for millions of years only to be revealed today. 

In addition to the impressive bonebeds, Agate is home to some rarer, more unique fossils, most notably the fossil “Daemonelix”, meaning “Devil’s corkscrew”. This crazy fossil is actually a trace fossil – meaning, a fossil that preserves some remnant of the animal’s presence or behavior instead of the animal itself. These things consist of large corkscrewed tubes, about a foot in diameter, that extend down roughly 6 feet before extending out horizontally for some ways. Early paleontologists were stumped as to the origin of these corkscrews, until one happened to find a beaver fossil inside one of them. Turns out, these Devil’s corkscrews are actually just weird beaver burrows! How neat is that? Unfortunately, the glass casing on this specimen prevented me from taking a really good photo… but the rangers informed me that I could see more examples out on the trails in their original location, which seemed more exciting to me anyways.

You might think that I spent a while in here oohing and aahing over the fossils before hopping onto the park’s trail system. And normally you’d be right. But the Agate Fossil Beds Visitor Center is home to something even more valuable – and arguably more fascinating – than even its rare and unusual fossils: a massive collection of Native American artifacts from the Lakota tribe. Apparently, the original owner of the Agate Springs Ranch, James Cook, became close friends with Chief Red Cloud, the Chief of the Oglala Lakota tribe in the 1870’s. This friendship lasted for decades and spanned a period of time when the Lakota were being driven onto reservations with their movement greatly restricted. Although James Cook did his best to advocate for his Lakota friends, they saw that their way of life was rapidly disappearing, and consequently gifted him many items that were important to them, to preserve and protect for future generations to see. Remarkably, this collection survived in the family’s care for nearly a hundred years – originally residing in the living room of his farmhouse at the ranch, then staying with the family until the 1960’s when it was donated to the National Park Service. I spent hours wandering through the exhibits showcasing hundreds of these artifacts, completely in awe of the incredible craftmanship of the various pieces, but also really touched by how well-preserved everything was. The collection includes delicate artwork, beaded moccasins, buckskin shirts with porcupine quill embroidery, etc., all of which is probably remarkably hard to keep in good condition – especially for that length of time, and ESPECIALLY for a farm family in rural Nebraska. Each and every piece that survived intact is a reminder of the friendship that the Cook family and the Lakota shared, tended with care and dedication. Definitely one of the best exhibits I have seen in a long, long time.

A (modern) example of a Plains hide painting called the "winter count", which was intended to record the events of the past year. This particular example appears to record the entire history of people in North America through the 1960's, however.

Amazing beaded moccasin gifts

Pipe bags from three generations of Red Cloud's family, decorated painstakingly with porcupine quills

A buckskin ceremonial dress which would have been worn by Red Cloud's wife

More awesome bags

An intricately-embroidered child's buckskin suit, gifted to James Cook's firstborn son.

Saddle with detailed quill embroidery on blanket, plus some rad gloves and several unique dance wands.

Eventually, though, I ran out of artifacts to look at and stories to read, and I had to move on to the rest of the park if I wanted to see everything before the end of the day. Agate Fossil Beds is pretty light on hiking trails, having only two. The first one, which leaves directly from the Visitor Center, takes hikers through the Niobrara river basin and up through the plains to a couple of the original major fossil bonebed excavation sites.

Grabbing some trail mix for a snack, I set out on the short hike. It had kind of turned into one of those “aggressively bright” days – you know, the kind of day where the sky is really gray and the ground is really yellow but the sun is really bright so all of that light just keeps reflecting off of everything, washing out the landscape and making it really hard to see. So I squinted my way down the trail until, very abruptly, I found my eyes soothed by a thick swatch of deep green rushes that led to a patch of large healthy-looking bushes and small trees. 

Apparently, I had reached the Niobrara River! It was jarring to suddenly find a lush tree-lined river springing out of the bright, almost desolate plains. I find it hard to imagine how it would have felt to a pioneer making their way across the Great Plains – not knowing a river was nearby, and then suddenly coming across it like this purely by lucky happenstance. I imagine that it probably felt like salvation.

All too soon, the trail removed me from the riverbed, and I was back in the bright, harsh, unforgiving plains again. They certainly have a peaceful beauty about them, but I can also see that looking at this landscape for weeks on end may have been a little insanity-inducing for early travelers. Man, it is a LOT of grass. Fortunately, I was not traveling across the plains for weeks – I was traveling across them for about a mile, which is hardly anything at all. 

I soon arrived at the knolls that once contained impressive bonebeds, now blasted and scoured free of material, the bones all safely ensconced in the building I had just left and various museums scattered across the country. I really don’t know what I expected. I guess I figured that maybe they would have left a few less-valuable fossils in place, or put in some dioramas depicting excavations. But instead, I just ended up circling a few hills of craggy white rock with really nothing to show for it. I did get a cool view of the Niobrara River valley though, and I saw a bunny having a nap in the shade, so I guess I enjoyed the walk anyways.

Pictured: Rocks, no bones or any defining features

The Niobrara River Valley with a field taking advantage of the water that the river can provide.

There is totally a bunny snugged up in one of the little overhangs in that rock

Looks like I woke him from his nap

A bit disappointed, I headed back down the trail, back through the sea of grass. I did find myself looking at all of the knolls scattered across the landscape, though, wondering if they still hold more fossils waiting to be discovered. Surely, early paleontologists have crawled all over this area looking for exactly that. But… people have been known to miss things. You really never know!

This bird was enjoying this bench, at least

Just a bench in an ocean of grass

Back through the Niobrara River Valley

Reaching the parking lot a short time later, I hopped in Jane and drove back towards the entrance to the park, where the other trailhead was. I parked Jane adjacent to a spectacular field of sunflowers with the intent of snapping a few nicer “posed” shots later – I hate to take up space doing this usually, but it doesn’t matter here because I’m the only one around!

The trail is another short one, involving a brief out-and-back with a loop towards the end that winds through the bluffs for views of some Daemonelix fossils still entombed in their outcrops. This one, at least, was supposed to give me some really cool stuff to look at! I tackled it with gusto, double-timing it to the nearby knolls where fossils were reputed to lurk.

The purple thistles in this patch of sunflowers are actually invasive, but they do make for a nice picture

A random patch of petrified sand dune

Rounding one hill, I came upon my first exposure of Daemonelix. Upon initial inspection, there was almost nothing to differentiate this hillside outcrop from any other one around here – until, with the right lighting, you could start to see the coiled fossils extending down into the layers of rock below. There’s actually several of these traces in this outcrop, which indicated that the beavers that made these burrows were communal, living in a kind of colony similar to prairie dogs! Neat.

A very weathered, but actually visible Daemonelix burrow

Still, I was a bit disappointed. The exhibit in the visitor center had gotten me interested in seeing one of these things in its entirety, the way it would have been seen by a mystified paleontologist of the late 19^th century. So I carried on. A bit further along the trail, and a very strange telephone booth-looking object came into view. Bizarre, but hey, maybe people were accustomed to calling each other from the middle of a hiking trail in the middle of rural Nebraska back at a time when pay phones were prevalent!

The trail marched right up to this booth and I found that it was actually a large plexiglass enclosure covering a really excellently preserved Daemonelix fossil. Here, finally, was the fossil I had been looking for, poked right out of the hillside in all of its confusing glory!

I wish that the burrow had not been encased in plexiglass, but I know why it was: this rock is all very soft, and very prone to weathering. The burrows probably erode out of the hillsides quite readily, so without this shelter, this trail would soon feature no burrows at all! Take the previous unprotected hillside as an example – there, the burrows were visible but clearly eroded and crumbling. The ravages of time proceed quickly, here.

I proceeded to loop around the bluffs, amusing myself with imaginations of what it would have been like to be an early paleontologist here. To wander around these very bluffs, chains of small, remote islands rising out of a sea of grass extending to every horizon. To spend days, months, and even years hopefully seeking a scrap of white bone or a strangely curved bit of rock sticking out of a hillside, your only indication of a possible paleontological gold mine. One could spend an entire lifetime – or at least your entire career - here searching, and some did.

 

A double-coiled Daemonelix! Neato (well, a lot cooler to see in person, if you're interested in paleontology)

Erosion is an odd beast, isn't it

I, however, did not intend to wander that sea of grass endlessly in search of signs of ancient life. I had my own ancient artifact to contend with: Jane. I arrived back at the trailhead fairly quickly (the trail only being a mile long) and took the opportunity to set Jane up for a few shots. When I say “a few shots”, I mean that I took about 30, but I’ll only post a few here. I enjoy the juxtaposition of my “fossil” (well, more of an archaeological novelty, but whatever) versus places and things far older, with far more secrets. It’s good for a sense of perspective, you know.

The monster hiding in the tall grass, waiting for the perfect moment for an ambush attack

With my photo whoring done, I clambered back into the car and set off back south across the ocean of grass, back to the safety of the society of Scottsbluff. Whatever that is. I actually proceeded a little further past town to visit Chimney Rock National Historic Site, the second Chimney Rock I’ve seen on this trip! At this point, I’m feeling a bit invested in this accidental side quest I’ve invented: a quest to visit every Chimney Rock in the United States. It turns out that there are actually SIXTEEN Chimney Rocks in the States! And now, I’ve been to (or at least glimpsed) four: Chimney Rock State Park, NC; Chimney Rock in Capitol Reef National Park, UT; Chimney Rock National Monument, CO; and Chimney Rock National Historic Site, NE. It turns out that Montana has FIVE Chimney Rocks, California has three, and there are additional ones in New Mexico, Maryland, Minnesota, and Idaho. I guess it’ll take a long time for me to see them all, especially considering a couple of the Chimney Rocks in Montana are actually giant mountains. Anyways, I was very excited to check the Nebraska Chimney off my newly-constructed list! 

There it is! The Chimney!

But then… I arrived. And wow, what a disappointment. Part of the problem was that the haze was still quite bad in the Scottsbluff region. Part of the problem was that I arrived in the late afternoon, and apparently this landmark is best viewed with morning light due to the position of the parking lot you have to view it from. And speaking of the parking lot – the MAJORITY of the problem is that that’s the closest you can go to the stupid thing!

Optimistically, I pulled up in the parking lot and went inside the museum, only to be informed that the cost of admission (to the museum) was $8, and also that they closed in 10 minutes. Well, okay, no problem. I asked if there were any trails to hike, as there was still plenty of daylight left, and the receptionist replied, “Well… there’s kind of a trail on an unimproved road that leaves from a cemetery, but we don’t let people go on that because the rattlesnakes have taken over it”. WOW, what a statement!

Shockingly, I opted NOT to go on the rattlesnake-infested graveyard trail, and instead just viewed the pointy rock from the parking lot as apparently you are supposed to do. Here’s a photo I took:

uuuuUUUUGHHHHHHHH

Somehow the wagon skeleton actually makes it look even more desolate

 This may be the most garbage photo I’ve ever taken of my car, and certainly of my car and something that would normally be a fairly cool landmark! I hope you all can feel my disappointment through this photo.

I’m sure that normally on a beautiful day, this is probably still a beautiful, impressive landmark. It would be even better if you could go on a trail to see it up close, or at least from a different angle so you didn’t have to stare into the sun. But alas, on the day that I went, this was the opposite of an impressive landmark, and there was no trail to redeem it. Especially disappointing considering that I really have no plans to return to Nebraska anytime soon! Oh, well. These things happen sometimes.

I returned to my campsite, certainly feeling more than a bit grumpy, but cheered myself up with some hamburgers and s’mores and a nice book. Overall, the day had been wonderful anyways – but wow, Agate Fossil Beds sure didn’t have a lot of competition!

As night fell, I found myself thinking back to the collection of Lakota artifacts in that room at Agate. It is odd – and more than a bit sad – to look up at the moon and realize that once upon a time, not so long ago, the Lakota people had spent countless nights enjoying weather just like this, looking up at the very same rock in the sky from the very same grassy plains of their homeland. It is poignant to consider how their everyday items, evidence of their way of life, are now relegated to words like “relics” and “artifacts”. I can’t help but think that someday my life, too, will be reduced down to nothing but relics, artifacts. If I’m lucky, that is. In pensive moments like this, it is easy to see myself, holding on to bits and pieces of a bygone time, with my archaic automobile, my frantic lunges towards simpler times, wilder places, bigger skies. Things I was truly not born into, but feel the need to preserve nevertheless. Perhaps, like many who came before me, my function in this world is to remind others that although the world continues to turn, we should not forget what used to be. The path once trodden is worth remembering, lessons learned worth retaining.

That bit of cosmic philosophy ironed out to my satisfaction, I returned to my book.

Kelly signing out.