My best friend purchased a fossil hunt for me and two other friends in the Kansas Badlands. So we loaded up the Teal Mobile with snacks, jeans and scruffy t-shirts, and went on a Western Kansas tour! After running around in a shallow canyon (we found a shark's tooth, some fossilized wood, a five foot long fish skeleton, lots and lots of oysters and clam shells, some jasper, some gypsum, some pyrite conglomerates and a couple of marker layers of volcanic ash), twisting one girl's ankle and enduring several windstorms, the next morning we headed out to Monument Rocks. If you're ever wandering around HWY 83 between Oakley and Scott City, I highly recommend seeing them. Stop by the Keystone Gallery and Museum too, for some awesome fossils and artwork.


(BTW - these are only PART of the family of rocks - there's a bunch of different big formations and a bunch of little ones in farmer's fields and by roads, if you know where to look!)


The wind was CRAZY fierce out there and only two of us went running around the rocks, but it was completely worth spitting out the five tons of chaulk and sand to see such an awesome piece of erosion up close. There's hundreds of thousands of years of history in those exposed layers of sedimentary rock, left over from when a gigantic, shallow sea covered much of the center of America - most of Kansas, except for the SE corner, was completely covered in water.

I also recommend stopping by the Sternberg Museum at Ft. Hay's University in Hays, KS, viewing the Garden of Eden in Lucas, and seeing the World's Largest Prarie Dog. It's a bit of a round trip, but soooo worth it if you have the time.

The xB2 did pretty well on gas mileage (about 29.9 going there) but the winds really hit it hard coming back. First they were blowing from the side and front, and then I was driving directly into it. I didn't even bother keeping track of mpg at that point. Even the little Prius that was traveling with us a while was having a hard time of it. I had a great time and it really made me appreciate how great my home state is - suck on THIS those who claim Kansas is flat!!

 

cool! you should post more pictures!

 

any more pics

 

One more of the xB, lots more of the Monument Rocks. This is the one that came out the nicest, but I'll post others if people are interested. It's a really beautiful area.

 

Damn, I didn't even know we had stuff like that here...

 

post em and lets see how beautiful the area is

 

kansas, it's not the end of the earth but you can see it from there.

 

Hypnotic Teal at Bonneville Salt Flats... part of my 6300 mile road trip.

 

I want to go on a Fossil Hunt!

I demand you take me!

 

what a nice remote area w/a nice view. seems like a good getaway for the weekend. nice pixs

 

I can't see the pics posted (firewalled here at work) but I thought I'd show you all a Teal Box posted by a member on my site.

Post your rides too if you like.


Check Out This Teal xB - Click Here

 

monster inc rolling around

 

How Stretchable is that stuff?

 

There's also Rock City, Mushroom Rocks, and Castle Rock out in W. Kansas. We actually stopped near Castle Rock, but didn't end up going.

Up north there's a lot of glacerial deposits from the last Ice Age. That's why a lot of cities in NE Kansas will feature large granite boulders in their gardens and parks, and you can find ancient spruce forest remnants buried within till. Imagine a high shelf of ice standing near Kansas City and Lawrence, a cold desert of wind swept tundra in front of it and rivers of run off dumping boulders bigger than cars, while carving today's water systems.

There's a lot of sinkholes in SE Kansas due to mining as well. My aunt's house sits over one and has been slowly sinking for years. You can look at the house and tell one side is significantly higher than the other.

There's igneous intrusions called Silver City Dome and Rose Dome in SE Kansas. My dad likes those a lot. They're essentially volcanic plugs.

And, last but not least, the Nemaha Ridge, which most easily is explained as a buried granite mountain range uplifted from stress of the closure of the MidContinent Rift. The compression and faults there are responsible for most of the earthquakes felt and not felt in Kansas. It runs from Nebraska into Oklahoma.

Kansas has an amazing geological history, and no one even knows it. Most people who've taken a geology 101 class know this was once all an expansive inland sea, but other than that, the only thing they think about Kansas is "flat" - when Florida and Louisiana are FAR flatter.

 

I don't know. I emailed him and asked.

Sorry for getting off topic... sort of. Kansas my not be flat.... but it's close!

Great people though. Interesting geography lesson too.

 

The coolest people come from Kansas (Or at least lived there forever)

 

I used to get to drive around a lot. Stopped on a road near Liberty due to an accident involving numerous deer and an RV. Was waiting for the road to get cleared and a couple came out from their house and fed what must have been 20 people.

 

That's REAL Midwestern hospitality right there.

It was interesting because I hosted a swing dancer from Canada who was touring the U.S. on her way to move to California. She'd been all over the North East seaboard, the Carolinas, through Tennessee and stopped in KC. When she left, she blogged that Southern hospitality was very gracious and treated you as a much desired guest, but Midwestern hospitality was like being one of the family or a best friend not seen in ages.

 

This is the older brother of the '49 Chevy Suburban that we took out into the fossil fields. This one is used for parts, but Mr. Bonner said that he rarely has to use anything from it, the other one just is that hardy. The dinosaur painted on the roof is a pteradon and the one on the side is a masosaur.



Down in the little canyons with my friends.


My baby out at Monument Rocks again:


And more of Monument Rocks:

 

I've lived all over the USA and would have to agree with that.