I love rocks. I like looking at them, feeling them, collecting them, putting them in jars.

But here’s the problem with being a rock collector at a National Park–you can’t collect the rocks.

All these lovely rocks and you have to leave them be.

And anyway, when you’re backpacking, you can’t really start socking away a bunch of rocks in your pack. Every ounce counts.

So while I would have liked to bring home a bunch of stone souvenirs, I mostly left them alone and took pictures (though I have to admit, I brought a few little ones home…they were tiny, really…no one will miss them).

I generally like stones for how they look and I don’t get deep into their composition, rarity, or how they formed (although, that does interest me).

And there are people far better qualified to identify all of these beauties than I.

I can tell you that I saw sedimentary rocks, like sandstone and the great conglomerate above.

And that I saw igneous rocks, like strips of granite, through metamorphic rocks, like gneiss, which you can see in a couple of these photos. And I wonder just how that granite found its way in there.

And I saw this great little scene of erosion and shaping by the waves and wind on the beach, like Pictured Rocks in miniature.

But I left them all there. For your trip.