Many dead animals in the past changed to fossils, while others preferred to be oil.

After leaving the Grand Tetons, I first hit Fossil Butte National Monument. I hit the visitor's center soon after they opened to get my park stamp and learn more about the area. I did the Fossil Lake Quarry Trail as a nice little hike to check out the area and saw a few deer and peasants before exploring the rest of this area via car along the scenic drive. On the way out I passed another section of the park and decided to turn back and check it out. Though it was getting hot, I decided to do the Historic Quarry Trail. This was the path way used by one of the locals, Lee Craig, in the decades he spent find, cleaning, and selling fossils. He would spend the winters digging for fossils and the summers cleaning them at his gas station. This was just about a desert kind of hike with some steep trails and complete lack of shade, but the interpretative areas at the quarry area itself was interested with a lot of examples of the different layers and even visible fossils. There was even an old A-frame hut the size of a large closet used by the old timer when he mined for fossils. After leaving the Fossil area, I headed out of Wyoming towards Colorado with a stop at the Flaming Gorge Dam just before they closed for a few pictures before continuing on towards the stop for tomorrow.