Fossil Butte National Monument — Attraction in Kemmerer

TL;DR: The Scenic Drive is NOT like every other park where it's a nice drive on a paved road. It's a dangerous road for anything less than a 4x4 with full preparation.

The Visitor center was awesome and the fossils were amazing. I would want to spend at least a day reading everything there. Had that been all we did I would rate it 5.0.

HOWEVER, we decided to take the "5.5 mi Scenic Drive" road and at the end of the drive you end up at a fork with NO indication of which way to go to get back. Just sign that says it's over. We went right at the end fork and saw the entrance sign facing the other way and thought that it must be the right way to go since it was greeting visitors and describing the park. We then proceeded to be lost in the back country on 4x4 roads FOR HOURS as there was no cell service and the previous GPS directions were SO WRONG. Luckily we were in an Expedition with 4 wheel drive and a tall enough wheel clearance, however we were not prepared for this drive being as overgrown, deeply rutted and flooded as it was. Clearly no one has used parts of this road in well over a year.

We passed the Orgeon Trail graves of several parties who died doing this in a far harder fashion that us and that at least helped to put being lost in perspective. We're inconvenienced for several hours, they had it far harder. We ended up driving under the power infrastructure up and down hill and nearly washed out roads. Had this been at night or in a car, it could have ended in disaster.

At the end of a 2 hour ordeal to get the normal road we were blocked in by the river at the damn. The ruts just went under the river and came out the other side. Again, NO signage about any problems on the road. NO closures. NO warnings. Plants over the top of your head. We had to back track down 3 separate offshoots (each a dead end) to try to find a road that lead somewhere close to a real road. Eventually we took a nearly nonexistent path that ended up on a private farm miles out of town. The farm hands were helpful and understood the predicament and were suprised we were able to get through. They helped us to get us back to town and told us that GPS can't be trusted around here (too late for that but helpful in the future).

I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH that the LACK OF SIGNAGE is going to get someone killed out there. DO NOT DO THE SCENIC DRIVE. If you want a 4x4 adventure and you are prepared for it, knock yourself out. Luckily our car was able to handle it but other people may not be so lucky.

I've submitted a report against the road which tries to ford the river at 41.936468, -110.648559. The entire stretch from under the power infrastructure to there should be deleted as inaccessible for routing. The other side of the river from the main road down to the...

Fossil Butte is, as the name suggests, a fossil-oriented park. It is known for its plant and animal fossils from just after the dinosaurs died out, in the Palaeocene and Eocene epochs, especially its well-preserved and abudant fish.

One of the most eye-opening features of the park is its geological timescale. Starting about 2/3 of a mile from the visitor center on Chicken Creek Road, you start seeing signs about events that have occurred, starting with the formation of Earth 4.567 billion years ago. Using a scale of 9” = 1 million years, you see more events as you drive to the visitor center. Once you park at the visitor center, you see more events, such as the extinction of dinosaurs, as you walk to the entrance. Arriving near the entrance door brings you to the present time on the timescale.

Inside the visitor center is one of the best museum-like displays of fossils in all of the fossil-oriented parks. It was somewhat busy the day we arrived, a warm midday in July, but not enough to ruin the experience. An unexpected treat was to be able to watch a park employee working to reveal a new fish fossil from the rock containing it. As he was working under a microscope, what he was seeing was displayed on a TV screen above him.

If you’re into hiking, the sagebrush and butte environment of the park is one where you can walk in...

Wife and I stumbled across this place kind of by accident, we were taking the long way back from Bear Lake to Evanston and decided to go through Kemmerer on the way back. There's only a single and somewhat small road sign warning you of this place's existence ( heading Eastbound anyways ) and I happened to see the road sign in time and we decided to take a diversion and check it out. As you approach the Visitor's Center a Geologic Timeline is placed on the side of the road leading to the building and once you arrive, you're greeted with a more detailed timeline that encircles the Visitor Center perimeter full of cool info. The inside of the Visitor Center is very nice and you're presented with some surprising fossils that have been unearthed in the area, which given the local view today can be quite surprising. Staff is extremely friendly and the exhibits are well organized. IF you're ever in the area, this is a must see. There's an active fossil dig in the area that you can visit as well and there's a nice drive to be had, but you don't want to make it in anything too small, I declined to take my Daytona up the dirt road, but a small pickup or SUV should be able to travel the upper portions of this monument...