Sepia Scenes Kansas Version

This was taken at Chisholm Creek Park in NE Wichita. 

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Scenic Sunday

Just left South Dakota and visited in Colorado for a few days.  Now trying to get settled back into Wichita.  Passed by Garden of the Gods on our way to Woodland Park in Colorado.  Not a fan of all the concrete and fences there, but the red beds are pretty neat.  The formation is called the Fountain Formation and it runs up and down the Front Range.  It is a deposit left from rivers and floods that came off the ancestral Rockies some 200 million years ago.  If you look closely, you will often see crossbedding and places were ancient stream channels ran and deposited this course sandstone.

The red beds are in the foreground and Pikes Peak is in the background.  If you look to the right, you’ll see a window in the rock, and if you use your imagination, you’ll see what they call the ‘Kissing Camels’.  I never once could picture them when I was little, but they’re pretty obvious to me now.

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Sepia Scenes

This is late, and not that amazing of a shot, but this was in Aiken Canyon Preserve.  Protected by the Nature Conservancy, this wonderful little area has red beds and a visitor center.  It also offers great views!  You can see Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado Springs, and even the Spanish Peaks far to the south.

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Sepia Scenes

I found a couple rattlesnakes the other day and moved them off the road.  Of course, when a ranger and a rattlesnake are in the middle of the road, traffic stops.  I did manage to find some snakes without attracting crowds, so I got some really nice pictures.  From the looks of it, the snakes weren’t very appreciative of my efforts, but oh well.  Hopefully they made it to their hibernation dens before the cold came again.  Who would have thought that they use the same hibernation den for all of their lives?  And that the mothers pass it on to the young?  That’s a lot of snakes in one place!

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Scenic Sunday

I really like this part of the park.  It’s the Yellow Mounds area, aptly named, and it says so much geologically.  The yellow is the oxidized Pierre Shale [pronounced Pier] that was exposed to air and plants once the Western Interior Seaway left the middle of the continent some 60 or 70 million years ago.  I can’t remember specifically what the purple is, but it’s pretty!   The grey is the Chadron formation, which is around 40ish million years old, has such a plastic consistency that it bends down slopes, sometimes covering the underlying layers.  Because of the plasticity, the tops of the Chadron form rounded hills, called haystack mounds or haystack buttes.  Coool, eh?

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Muriel

Muriel Niehans   1906-2009

Sepia Scenes Wednesday

Thanks for all the comments last week and thank you very much for visiting.  I try to get to all your sites, but I rarely leave comments.  Sorry about that!  Big field trip tomorrow.  60 kids travelling 2 hours to get here, just to hike in the freezing cold, muddy Badlands.  I hope we can make it worth their visit!

I often wonder if the little formations are jealous of the larger ones, knowing that their time is much shorter than those that loom higher.  It’s almost depressing in a way: what took 10 to 15 million years to pile up is being eroded at an inch a year and all over the park you can find formations that are almost at the end, no harder rock above to keep them from washing down to the Gulf of Mexico. 

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Scenic Sunday

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul.  –John Muir

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Sepia Wednesday…late again!

I climbed around Cedar Pass midday and found a neat little spot.  On two sides you are surrounded by road, but can only see it at the bottom near the Visitor Center.  This view is the same from the VC, only you are looking from the left up that formation.  Either way, a good view.  I was hoping to see some bighorn sheep around, like they were the day before, but it was very windy.  I was sheltered in most places by the junipers and cedars, but it was fantastic to hear wind whipping over the formations.  That’s my sepia!

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McFarthest Middle of Nowhere

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/09/26/413-the-mcfarthest-place-145-mi-to-the-nearest-big-mac/

Alright, take a look at that link and then come back here. 

Thankyee for coming back!  I personally think that is something cool and honorific to be living in a state where the nearest McDonalds is a good drive away, too far for lunch in most cases.  From here, Badlands National Park, it would be around 70 miles.   But it also suggests that any good produce is that far, too, and indeed, it is. 

Anyway, just thought I’d share that. 

I’ll also share that there was a wonderful sight all day today that I got to share with a bunch of hunters and a bus full of senior citizens; bighorn sheep decided to wander around the base of the formations all day today, in perfect view of our wonderfully large windows. 

 It was a real delight to announce over the PA system that there are bighorn sheep out front and to watch people pour out of the theater to see them one minute before the movie started.  

It was also nice to show them to two ladies to whom I had to tell they couldn’t bring their cute little dog in to the visitor center.   The lady and the dog both seemed to frown when I told them, but they were very happy once they found the sheep in the binoculars, climbing up the sandcastlesque and ancient formations.  Well, I suppose the dog didn’t care, but he didn’t mind being petted. 

It was a nice day!