Understanding the Geology of Boulder

So I'm taking a Geohabits of mind course and for the first day we went on a hike around NCAR.

Here's a map in case you're not familiar with the area.

The black line is Table Mesa. Here's a another view.

Here's a picture I took with different layers highlighted.

Our hike was along the along the edge of Bear Canyon up Dakota Ridge all the way to base of the Fountain Formation. Along the way I took a few rock samples and photos to show the type of rock associated with a few areas. Each rock was collected from a highly striated outcroppings (see example below the samples).

I think this is from the Pierre Shale region. I think it's shale because the grain sizes are so small. The height of this image is about 7cm.

I think this is either from the Dakota Sandstone region or the Benton Formation because it is definitely sandstone mostly due to the small grain size. The height of this image is about 6 cm. However, there are tiny crystals on the other side of the rock that indicates something else might be growing into it. I found this on the side of the Dakota ridge that was closer to NCAR.

I found this rock in the area around the Morrison Formation. This rock was extremely brittle and broke easily compared to the sandstone I found in other areas. Due to its brittleness I thought it might also be shale, but that might not be right because of the elevation in which it was found. It was collected on the far side of the Dakota ridge. The height of the image is about 7cm.

This rock was collected near the base of the Lyons Sandstone. It has a pinkish hue that didn't really come through in this picture. The height of this image is about 4cm.

Here's a picture of the site where I collected the first rock. I should've taken pictures of where I took the other samples, too, probably.

Here's some poison ivy we avoided around the Lykins Formation.

Here's a cool looking flower that I couldn't really identify near the Lyons Sandstone Formation.

In case you didn't know, I have a book that you can read that has absolutely nothing to do with geology.

(You can get an advanced ebook copy by clicking the picture.)