August 16, 2023 – Greybull, WY

Wednesday, we took a drive to Shell Canyon, Red Gulch Dinosaur Track Site and Medicine Lodge State Archaeological Site.

Chimney Rock is a red rock formation at the mouth of Shell Canyon.  This picture does not show how red it is.  The smoke is from the fires in Canada.

Shell Canyon is named for the shell fossils found in the sedimentary rock walls of the canyon.

Shell Canyon is a beautiful drive into the Big Horn Mountains.   We stopped at Shell Falls where the water flows 3,600 gallons per second - it was breathtaking.

The riverbed just below the falls.

We walked along a path that took us to a view of the canyon farther downstream.

 

 

We headed back down Shell Canyon so we could visit the Red Gulch Dinosaur Track Site.

After a long drive on a very rough gravel road, we arrived at the Red Gulch Dinosaur Track Site.

The dinosaur tracks here are approximately 167 million years old.  They are much older than T. rex which lived about 67 million years ago.  This is a picture of a “track” that was set in the concrete by the picnic tables to show what the actual tracks look like.

This area is called the ballroom and there are prints crisscrossing the entire area.  The prints were very hard to see and this one is the best we could find. 

The dinosaurs who made these prints were relatively small, about the size of turkeys to ostriches.

We were a little frustrated that we could not make out more tracks but were fascinated by the site.

We continued down the rough gravel road to the Medicine Lodge State Archaeological Site to view the rock art.  Medicine Lodge is well known for its quantity and quality of petroglyphs and pictographs.  Rock art numbering in the hundreds is spread out over a 750-foot-long sandstone cliff.

A shield bearing warrior with a distinct pattern on the shield.

You have to look closely but there are figures along this whole section of the cliff.

Archaeological digs have revealed 10,000 years of occupation at this site.  Archaeologists were working at the site today.

These panels have numerous images; both pecked and incised.

We enjoyed visiting Medicine Lodge and seeing all the rock art but didn’t spend a lot of time here because the temperature was in the upper 90s this afternoon.

 We drove to the small town of Ten Sleep on our way back to Greybull and stopped for some ice cream to cool off. This was a very enjoyable day even though it was very hot.