8-9-2021
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Hello! New day, new post – you’ll note that this one has
skipped ahead by a couple of days, though. Last post was for Friday, 8/6, and this
post covers Monday, 8/9.
That’s because I was completely embroiled with helping my
friend with her wedding, which was on the 7th, and completely
neglected to take any photos! Not that I would post my friend’s wedding photos
on a random blog like this anyways.
I also visited another friend and her fiancé in Boulder
on the 8th, and me being tired and them being tired, mostly all we
did was eat and catch up. So again, nothing to report on when it comes to
snazzy picture-laden blog posts. But it was a great weekend, and I was glad to
have gotten to see my friends!
But now it’s time to get back on the road – I’m tired of cities
and ready to go plop myself somewhere new and kind of remote.
Where does one go, when looking for solitude in Colorado
in August? The answer is: not Colorado. The reality is that most areas of
Colorado are totally swamped by tourists in the summer (myself being one of
those tourists, of course). If you’re looking for somewhere to plop down and
recover from a whirlwind extra-social weekend, you have to get off the beaten
path. And what place is more off the beaten path than… Nebraska?
Yep, I’m going to Nebraska. There’s about three things I
wanted to see in the southwestern corner of the state, which actually happens
to be not too far from Boulder (surprisingly, only a three hour drive!). I
figured I wouldn’t be actively going to Nebraska anytime in the future, so being
already in Boulder, this was probably my best time to go. Longtime readers of
this blog may remember that I did pass through in 2017, but admittedly spent as
little time as possible in the state before escaping further north.
Okay, so Nebraska. You may be skeptical, but there are
some great things to see! My destination for the day was Scottsbluff (or Scotts
Bluff, depending on if you’re referring to the town or the park in the town).
Now the unfortunate part is that while I was in Denver, a
thick gray smokey haze had descended. You know, I was very excited to get to
travel through Colorado the ONE year that it’s not on fire – and it turns out
that it doesn’t even matter. Because although there was no smoke from local
fires, the fires in the Pacific Northwest were burning so viciously that the
smoke was wafting all the way across the continent, even reaching the East
Coast. I know I shouldn’t be complaining – there are a lot of people dealing
with those fires up close and personal, and those fires are no joke. But as I
set out north from Boulder on Monday morning, I did find myself wishing that the
smoke would stay over there. Everything was completely gray; Boulder’s famous
Flat Irons might as well have not existed. It was a very blah kind of day.
I drove north into Wyoming, then east into Nebraska, and
things did not improve. Not for a long while, at least.
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| Sign's advertisement misleading; did not find big blue skies |
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| At least the speed limit is nice |
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| Is this really the good life though?? |
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| UGHHHHHHHH |
I finally saw SOMETHING as I approached the town of
Scottsbluff. To my surprise, large dusty white cliffs rose right out of the
plains, towering majestically over the waving grass (and corn). I don’t know
why I was surprised, as I was going to Scottsbluff specifically to see these outcrops.
I guess I was just so used to seeing nothing but gray that I was surprised to
be able to see anything at all.
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| Land ho! |
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| A very Nebraska picture |
I stopped by Riverside Campground first to set up my campsite, or at least make sure that I had remembered to book one. I found the place largely deserted, home to a few RVs but otherwise very little signs of life. Perfect.
Having staked my spot, I then puttered back down the town’s
main drag and turned off onto the road leading from Scottsbluff, to Scotts
Bluff. Confusing, I know.
I stopped off at the visitor’s center, where the park
interpreters oohed and aahed over Jane and I oohed and aahed over some cool
exhibits about pioneer life in the area. Many of the exhibits detailed how
challenging Scotts Bluff was to get through, especially for wagon trains like
the pioneers used, because of the eroded badlands topography of the area.
Wagons don’t go through bluffs or ravines too well, you know. But I kind of had
to wonder about this. Nebraska is quite flat and consequently Scotts Bluff is
one of the most visible landmarks for many, many miles – you see it coming, in
other words. So it seems as if it would have been quite easy for the pioneers
to detour around instead of rolling right up to it and then struggling through
the challenging topography… which they would have been able to see for miles
away. But what do I know. I guess maybe when you’re driving through a largely unmapped
continent, sometimes it’s easier to just go through what you know, even if it’s
a real pain in your ass, than to try to explore for a better solution.
Scotts Bluff National Monument is a small park, with only
a couple of trails, so you could say that the area even now remains largely underexplored
– or at least not thoroughly traversed. I picked up a map from the visitor
center, but it turns out I didn’t need it, because all of the trails started
right from the front door. No way to get lost here!
I first headed along a short interpretive trail that
takes you along the original path that the pioneers took back in the 19th
century on their way Out West. Some cool views here, and a neat reproduction
wagon, but I think my favorite thing about the trail was that you could still see
the indentations in the hillside from the wagon ruts, even nearly 200 years
later. Erosion is a funny thing.
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| A disgusting amount of haze ruining what would otherwise be an incredible shot! (I assume) |
After poking around there a bit, I hopped onto the main
trail, which winds its way up the side of the bluffs to a looped path with
spectacular views on top. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the entire
path was paved – most trails aren’t, but the paved ones are much better for
accessibility, and of course they don’t erode into disrepair nearly as quickly.
I can only imagine the amount of effort that it took to haul asphalt up the
sheer sides of the bluffs to pave over some of the sections. Impressive, especially
for a small park!
As I traipsed up the bluffs towards the crest, the terrible
air quality really began to take a toll on me. Granted, the path was steep, but
given that I just hiked steeper paths at higher elevations when in Colorado, I
have to assume that my shortness of breath was related to all of the smoke in
the air rather than my fitness. I hope. Or maybe I just ate too many pizzas in
Denver.
Regardless of the cause, my frequent stops gave me a lot
of time to look at some cool plants and rocks and stuff.
Now is a good time for a brief foray into the unique geology
of the bluffs. These sandy yellow-gray hills are very, very soft, being formed of very
loosely lithified fine terrestrial sediments. To explain further - to make a
good strong sedimentary rock, you need two things: a mineralizing fluid, and
pressure. Essentially, to take a pile of sand and make it into a rock, you need
a way to get all of the grains to stick together. If you run a fluid that is saturated
in elements like calcium through this sand, you can grow (precipitate) little
bits of calcite that stick the sand grains together. It helps if you can bury
the sand under a lot more sand, so the grains really get squished together and fluids
get forced through or even trapped, allowing further precipitation of minerals
and mechanically sticking the grains together as well. In the rocks that I
usually work on (limestones), the sediments were deposited in the ocean, so calcium-rich
seawater can very easily precipitate bits of calcite between grains, sticking
everything together and making it very strong. But these rocks, which were deposited
on land as parts of a muddy river system, did not have the benefit of an entire
ocean’s worth of calcium to precipitate little cements to stick all of the grains
together. All they had was lime-saturated groundwater. And they didn’t get
buried nearly as deeply as many marine rocks do, in part because sediments don’t
pile up on land as thickly and quickly as in the ocean (remember, most land is eroding,
not building), and in part simply because they’re not as old as the rocks I
usually work (they’re “only” 22 to 32 million years old). So, with less burial
and less cementation, understandably, these rocks are very soft.
About halfway up the bluffs, I saw a really interesting
contact between two beds of rock. It looked almost like thick mud that had been
squished up through the overlying rock! I did some brief digging into Google
Scholar (just now) and it appears that there’s a few opinions on how this could
have happened, most relating to intrusion of fluids or precipitation of
displacing minerals or something. Whatever the cause, it does look really cool!
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| Wow! |
I neared the top of the bluffs and found that the geology
had changed again, and of course I needed to take more pictures of it! Walking
adjacent to the cliff faces, it was easy to see really cool features like pipey
limestone concretions (created by lime-rich water percolating through only
certain parts of the rock), aeolian cross bedding (relict sand dunes), plant
root casts, and insect burrows! But what was most remarkable to me was how
fragile the rock was. I could crumble it with a touch quite easily, yet somehow
despite its fragility it has stood the test of time, even though the bluffs
have been exposed to the harsh winds of the plains for thousands if not
millions of years. There’s probably a metaphor for human life or something in
there.
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| "Pipey" limestone |
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| Some very nice cross-bedding |
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| Insect burrows and/or plant root casts! |
Speaking of human life, I found these deep handprints in
the cliff face at one point. They were cool but… actually really creepy. They gave
me the impression that someone was desperately trying to escape – but from
what? I hoped I wouldn’t find out.
Finally, I reached the top of the bluffs. You can
actually drive up here if you’re not too inclined to traipse up the steep trail
that I took – there’s a parking lot at the start of the bluff-top loop. But I
had opted to hike because I needed the exercise after a weekend of eating
pizza, and also I figured that there wouldn’t be many good views for Jane at
the top anyways due to the haze. Wandering around the loop briefly, I found my
suspicions to be true. I bet that normally, the top of this trail probably
affords spectacular sweeping views of the town of Scottsbluff, various other
bluffs in the area, and of course thousands of acres of corn fields. But on
this particular day, I could only see how thick the smoke haze really was.
So with dusk approaching – and a ranger appearing at the
top of the parking lot to tell the single vehicle up there to leave before the
park closed – I hiked myself right back down the trail. I had parked Jane
outside the gates so I didn’t need to worry about the park closing, but I can’t
say that I love to hike in the dark! I have to confess that I was disappointed
though and spent the majority of my walk back down the bluffs thinking about how
great these views would have been, had it not been for the haze. I mean, it’s
not like I’m going to be coming back to Nebraska anytime soon.
But as I reached the base of the bluffs, I was abruptly
reminded that haze is good for ONE thing: dramatic, vibrant sunsets. I was
reminded of this, because I was suddenly treated to a radiant beam of brilliant
orange light that arrowed down from a break in the thick band of clouds, diffusing
through the haze and throwing the nearer bluffs into deep purple shadows even
as it backlit others. Oh, man. It was not a traditional pink-and-purple-majesty
sunset, but it certainly lacked nothing for drama and interesting lighting. I
spent the remainder of my hike thoroughly enjoying the show, as the sun
struggled to defeat the near-impenetrable clouds, first peeking through one
gap, then another.
Eventually, the sun slid sullenly beneath the band of
clouds, and without its rays reflecting off all of the particulates in the atmosphere,
the skies turned back to a pleasant shade of blue – at least, if one was
photographing with ones camera leaned a bit upwards. I made it back to Jane
before dusk and took the opportunity to take a few photos as the park closed
down for the night. By that point, the sun was reflecting across a scattering
of clouds lower in the sky, making for a different kind of dramatic effect that
provided a very nice backdrop.
I returned to my quiet campsite for a couple hamburgers and an enthralling book – an excellent end to a day. I have to say, this one turned out better than I expected. Certainly, the day didn’t look very promising to start – but it turns out that haze is good for something, after all.
Kelly signing out.
Thanks Kelly. This park is now on my list.
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