After Russ joined me on Sunday night, we decided to take Monday to go see two highly recommended natural sites. But first, we stopped off to see the partially reconstructed pueblo just south of the lake—the northern- and eastern-most pueblo dwelling yet found in the United States. I was privy to some insider information, having just encountered a team of archaeology students and their professor at the laundromat in Scott City the day before. They were working on a small dig just south of the state park, and were happy to answer my questions about their dig, the pueblo, and larger questions about the movement of Puebloan peoples across the southwest. (A side note: I majored in Anthropology, and sent a summer with a team excavating the Salmon River Ruins in Bloomfield, New Mexico while I was in college. And while, just as my dad feared, I never held a job in Anthropology, I’ve always been fascinated by the subject. But enough about me.)

We met a very interesting couple from New York state at the pueblo site, I was able to sound fairly well-informed there, and we talked for quite awhile. They were headed to the same places we were, so we saw them again throughout the day.

Monument Rocks. There is nothing I can say that would improve upon these pictures, so enjoy (and enlarge them if you want to get a better idea of the immensity of these formations)!

Then we headed to the nearby Little Jerusalem Badlands, Kansas’s most dramatic Niobrara chalk formation, formed from the prehistoric inland sea. An important habitat for many plants and wildlife, including wild buckwheat, Swift foxes, pronghorn antelope, ferruginous hawks and badgers, it also has many marine fossils. Apparently, it got the “Jerusalem” name because from a distance it looked like the ancient walled city of Jerusalem. It was for generations part of a private ranch. Now it is owned by The Nature Conservancy.

As Russ said to me later, it was a great day!