Racehorse Fossil Find

Alice leaves for Girl Scout Camp tomorrow and the three of us decided to spend her last full day together, doing what we love to do... hiking.  One of our favorite hikes last summer was back to Racehorse Falls and we unanimously agreed that was our destination for today.

It's been a wet, cool summer and there were lots of slugs on the trail.  I don't know much about slug reproduction, but I'm pretty sure that had something to do with what we found just as we started out on our hike.

 My kids are troopers.  Even when faced with a huge field of log debris.

 Didn't take long for us to find fossils.  As soon as we left the forest and came out on the riverbed, there they were.

 They had a great time searching for fossils by Racehorse Creek.

 And, for the most part, they were quite successful!

 

 But we were getting hungry and wanted to make it back to the waterfalls to eat our lunch.  So, off we went - over logs, under logs, and across the creek.

 There were some beautiful wildflowers along the way... and what did we forget to bring?  Alice's wildflower identification book.

 Almost there.   Just one more log to cross.

 We made it!

 So much more water than August 2010.  Wow!  Last year, we were able to cross the creek, climb the rock, and stand right next to the falls.  Not this time.

 It was nice and cool by the falls and we enjoyed it just as much this year as we did last year.

 A little teeter totter action on the way back out.

 Once we reached the trailhead, we drove further up the logging road to get to "Slide Mountain" to search for more fossils.   There were so many!

 The landscape has changed significantly from last summer, with a new ravine/creek bed.  It was even more of a scramble this year.

 But we found some cool fossils!  This fossil was directly below a live plant which looked strikingly similar.

Another fun field trip.  I'm glad we got to spend this beautiful day together before my little peanut heads off to camp.