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Geese over Trail Creek Drainage

Geese over Trail Creek Drainage
Geese over Trail Creek Drainage

Geese over Trail Creek Drainage

The hundred year old Parks Ranch I’m presenting here is certainly a historic place. This old red barn in and of itself is a pretty nifty place to see where generations of real cowboys handled their stock. Cribbing horses having chewed on the wood of the pens withing the large structure. Groups of geese flying about the area.

The old house on this property was built from locally sourced wood in the early 1900s. Still habitable of course and a local family lives on the property in an adjacent home. The original homestead a HUGE homestead. Built for 2 families it appears. I’d say 10,000 square feet in the old house.

The property has old Ranch buildings galore with all sorts of thing about you would expect from such a cowboy center of activity. You just have to love a 100 year old cattle ranches.

Stock Trailers, head catches, pens, fences, branding ovens, tack, horses, cattle. Artesian lakes surround this wondrous place. . A few worn horse shoes scattered about mix with discarded or just disused tack from the past. There must be tales about tales swirling about in the history of this old Ranch. Men and Women toiling over the three day wagon ride round trip from Gillette Wyoming and back to home. The flow of time slowly submerges events away from our collective knowledge. What is so important at the time, perhaps a new dress for a ranch child growing up, seems lost in the past.

Location: Historic Parks Ranch Campbell County Wyoming. 4 miles south of Montana but there is Montana sky and mountains in the distance. A few miles south of the Bliss Dinosaur Ranch.

Title: Geese over Trail Creek Drainage

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Untracked Mid-Morning Snow Diamonds

Untracked Mid-Morning Snow Diamonds
Untracked Mid-Morning Snow Diamonds

Untracked Mid-Morning Snow Diamonds

I occasionally go on long morning drives after a fresh snow to see what I can see. I will drive a big loop maybe 30-40 miles working what ever I come across that interests me. Mostly untapped by photographers the back roads of Wyoming are. . There are a few of us up here but not many doing this full time.

So I had drive a big round trip circuit and was just about back. Now this is a “major” local artery. It’s a Gravel Road but it’s usually a fairly busy road. Here it is on a Sunday morning at 9AM with no tracks but my own. I was surprised by it. The road I live on is often untracked most weekends unless I drive over it. You don’t want to break down out here. No cell phone service and no body coming by since the night before say 18 hours at least. There are some very remote parts of Wyotana I cruise about where I would expect that but not so much here.

Snow Diamonds (Diamond Dust)

All Blue Sky morning it was Diamond Dusting. Can it really snow on a cloudless, sunny day? It can if it’s diamond dust. It was pretty light so ore like Mother Nature’s tinsel than snow, this weather bonus is caused by millions of tiny ice crystals that form near the ground. As they float slowly in the air (much like household dust) they reflect the sunlight, which makes them sparkle like diamonds! A very similar phenomena is responsible for sun pillars both below and above the sun. Here those ice crystal plates fell all the way to the ground.

You see them on the road as bright sparkles.

Location :Trail Creek Road , 9 miles east from Rt’s 59, . Northeastern Wyoming, Campbell Country looking west up into Montana.

Title: Untracked Mid-Morning Snow Diamonds

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Driving into the Western Sunset

Driving into the Sunset: Backroads of Wyotana
Driving into the Sunset: Backroads of Wyotana

When your on the local “main road and yourDriving into the Western Sunset on the Backroads of Wyomint and Montana was taken on the Equinox when the sun set straight to the west at 270 degrees corrected for magnetic declination. This section of road is by coincidence also straight east and west. The horizon is 50 miles out and the sun is a minute from being covered by the rising horizon. (You know the sun is not setting but the horizon is rising about 4 inches the time it takes a rifle bullet to travel 1000 yards….. It only take around 3 minutes for the sun to be covered by the horizon once it touches the sun. This varies with the season because the tilt of the earth’s polar axis with the solar ecliptic

It’s starting to get icy more often. As I type this we’re in the middle of a snowy period. Winter is coming (contemporary reference)


Location, close to the Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

Driving into the Western Sunset

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Moon Rise over Trail Creek Road

Moon Rise over Trail Creek Road
Moon Rise over Trail Creek Road

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.

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Layers of Landscape and the “Red Hills” 40 miles Distant

Layers of Landscape and the "Red Hills" 40 miles Distant
Layers of Landscape and the "Red Hills" 40 miles Distant

40 Miles distant from the Camera’s lens, I’m at the same elevation at that snowy far ridge “Red Hills” in this Layers of Landscape image. Big views from up here 👁
Spotlightling was rife that sunset (about a week ago). Your looking across the Montana/Wyoming border as I’m standing in Montana. It’s snowy where I am too. We got 4 inches of heavy wet snow but the ground in the valley’s got rain. Rinse and repeat all winter lolol. I have never seen it this green up here in OCTOBER up here in the 20 years I’ve lived here!!!!!!!


Geologic Note: The big Valley is the Little Powder River Drainage. It’s about 6 feet wide at the moment. It removed all that sediment between here and there though…. 🤔
From where I stand, the originally flat layers of sediments are Diving underground 50 feet every mile generally in that direction more underground. They dive into the LARGE Powder River Basin at the foot of the Big Horn Mountains 130 miles distant. The Basin is literally a downwarping of the earths crust forming a wave where the wave crest was eroded away to form the Big Horn Mountains, which wore away and filled up the wave trough (the bathtub next to the mountains where all the coal swamps formed) So the Dinosaur bone bearing Sand Beds that blanket my ranch disappear about two miles west of my house diving underground and younger rocks are on the surface. The BigHorns happened After the Dinosaurs 😎

The “Red Hills” are called such because they have a LOT of usually/mostly Red “Clinker” rocks which are coal fired “underclay” that turned to a natural ceramic by the underground fires. It is literally a coarse uneven ceramic in hardness and “Clinks” when it drops. Native Americans made a LOT of tools from it. Lewis and Clark thought it was of volcanic origin. Large outcrops of it exist all over the area and it’s mined as gravel for roads after crushing. Lots of rattle snakes live in “Clinker” dens. The Clinker shrinks as part of the process leaving voids which are homes for many creatures on the surface but often make for local perched water tables that occasionally are big enough for light local use.


Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.

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Autumn Landscape in the Borderlands of Wyoming:Montana

Autumn Landscape in the Borderlands of Wyoming:Montana
Autumn Landscape in the Borderlands of Wyoming:Montana

An Autumn Landscape in the Borderlands of Wyoming/Montana.

I’m standing on a hill top in Montana about 4 miles north of the Ranch on the right side of the image. I’m shooting south into Wyoming across some of our place 40 miles out to the cloud decked “Red Hills”.

This is without a doubt, the greenest I’ve ever seen this landscape and I’ve been watching it cycle between white green and brown season for 20 years.

I’ve yet to really see brown season and I NEVER even had to fill up my fire truck this year :). Snow tomomorrow…. A big storm is moving through and through thursday we’re getting dumpted on. I still have a few chores to winterize totally but I’ll get another chance. Pretty much done with the important stuff…

Location: Bliss DInosaur Ranch, Wyoming/Montana borderlands.