West Yellowstone to Bozeman, Big Sky in the Middle

It’s been hard to find the time to take pictures these past few days, but we had an excellent wrap-up to our time in West Yellowstone, capped by a moonlight ski alongside the Madison River. We took the time to lie down in the snow and feel the world around us, listening to the river flowing past and the wolves howling in the distance. It is always nice to be able to stop for a moment and try to clear the mind, and what better place to do it than Yellowstone.

After packing all of our things and our team into the Expedition, we drove to Bozeman for the SuperTour races this weekend. The drive was highlighted by a stop in Big Sky, where we went for a short walk on the South Fork of the Gallatin River.

As a geologist, it was very cool to see these formations: relics of ocean deposition during high sea level in the Cretaceous, ~100 million years ago.

Since, the Gallatin River has cut down through the old sedimentary rock and lets us walk through and look up at history. Pretty amazing!

On a hunch, I wiped away some snow to find interference ripples, showing that there were two directions of flow (probably in an intertidal zone near a beach) back when these sediments were laid down in the Cretaceous.

We got to walk down the river bed and explore on the way back. It was a great way to stretch our legs on our way to Bozeman.

I’ll leave off with a video from West Yellowstone. Dev jams on the guitar and we all sing along. What a talented bunch.