One the way back to the ranch from Gillette (a 140 mile round trip), I saw this Moon Rise over Trail Creek Road. The Sun had just set behind me and all this red light was even reflecting off the road sign turning a dark blue sky into a dark redish purple “Belt of Venus” which is the long red wavelengths bouncing off the ice in the air. This gave the whole scene a rediish colorcast which here is as it was then.
This is the hunters moon which was just above a wispy cloud layer lighting it up. There were plenty of hunters packing up for the day on Trail Creek so the moon was living up to it’s name. Red Colorcast this deep isn’t that common in my experience.
Geologic Musings: Some of you know I’ve been a geologist (MS) as one of my professional careers I’ve had in my travels… I’m very much into Geobiology and sedimentology. This area in this image is a well dissescted sandstone/shale geologic sequence (Tullock or Fort Union Formation Tertiary) with most of this grassy areas bedrock being younger than the dinosaurs. My ranch way up on those ridges on the upper left of the photo has the older Cretaceous Dinosaur Bearing sediments. Down in the river valley you get some quartz cobbles where the rivers concentrate them. . It’s pretty rare to find cobbles up on the far ridges and when you do they are always affiliated with dinosaur fossils……
These stones are called “gastroliths” or stomach stones. The dinosaurs carried them from where they picked them up hundreds of miles away from where they were finally deposited when the dinosaur died…. Rivers that deposited the Cretaceous dinosaur bearing sands sand were only competent to carry sand only, they couldn’t carry cobbles very well lolol. Too heavy for the current velocity. I actually look for sand with rounded mud clasts (balls of mud) the size of the bones I’m looking for to search for fossils. I bet you think I look for fossils first. Actually I look at the sediment and it’s characteristics before I start looking about.
Location: Trail Creek Road, 1 mile south of Montana near the Little Powder River, Campbell County Wyoming.