Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument

We've been having fun running around doing field trips on weekends and exploring what's around us. On April 7, that was Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. It was our contingency plan when the weather didn't look favorable for driving 3 hours southwest to the Great Sand Dunes. 

It was supposed to be around 60 that day, but was windy and cold still when we arrived in the morning. There was plenty to keep us entertained in the visitor's center while we gave the weather time to warm up! We started by getting our Junior Ranger booklets and watching the 10-ish minute documentary explaining the history and geology of the area.

You know a place is good and kid-friendly when there are buttons to push!

Pretty sure Sam and Thora pushed all the buttons.

Tom and Katie, Junior Rangers in progress.

Dancy working on hers.

One of the petrified stumps.

Okay, so the story of this area is that these HUGE Redwood trees, larger even than the ones in California, grew here thousands of years ago and then volcanic flow covered the area and preserved the stumps, some up to 11-feet high. All the rest of the trees decayed above the cooled and solidified lava, but these stumps remained. They were picked apart quite a lot for decades before scientists finally prevailed in getting the government to protect the land to prevent tourists from cutting out their own souvenir pieces of petrified wood.

Samson loved looking in this microscope and I love Dancy's glare!

I think he had it on the petrified redwood sample.

Dancy and Katie quickly got their Junior Ranger badges and then came to show me. Ruiners! They didn't let me get a picture of them swearing in. And then Dancy and her sass...

She was particularly happy with this booklet page.

 And then we were ready to hit the trails. Tommy needed to finish the rest of his badge outside and it was warm enough.

Right by the visitor's center there are these bound and covered giant stumps, protected from erosion.

Stump cluster.

Ancient Clones

This family circle of fossilized stumps grew out of the single trunk of an older parent tree. The tree trunks are ancient clones, or genetically identical copies, of that parent tree.

Modern coastal redwoods also reproduce by stump sprouting. If a redwood is toppled or burned, a ring of new trees often sprouts from burls around the trunk's base. In the coastal redwood forests, family groups are common. But this trio of stone stumps is unique in the world's fossil record.

Harry D. MacGinitie, shown standing by a modern redwood trio in California, was a paleobotanist who excavated fossils at Florissant during the Great Depression years of 1936 and 1937. His work, published in 1953, is still the most comprehensive study on Florissant's fossil plants. MacGinitie was the first to compare these fossils with modern vegetation in order to reconstruct past climate, ecology, and elevation.

If the main trunk of a redwood is damaged, the dormant stems begin growing rapidly, using the parent tree's root system for nourishment and support.

Single stump.

Just One Piece at a Time

"One of the wonders of this part of the world is the 'Petrified Forest' … between Colorado Springs and Fairplay. This remarkable relic...bids fair to disappear very shortly, unless the...tourists cease their work of destruction. Everyone must needs take a specimen, and some of the stumps are 'growing smaller' at a very rapid rate."

Colorado Springs Out West, June 13, 1872

Early accounts describe the valley as being littered with petrified wood. As word spread, the Florissant area became a popular tourist destination. Exploitation, constant collecting, and thoughtless destruction continued for nearly 100 years. There is no way to assess the damage done or the loss of rare scientific evidence during this period. 

Shelters now protect some of the remaining stumps from weathering, and laws strictly prohibit fossil collecting. A variety of methods of stabilizing and preserving the stumps have been proposed and tried over the years, and the National Park Service continues to work towards the best solution.

In 1893, when this photograph was taken, tourists still had access to the shale fossils and petrified wood.

I forget which trail we took, but it's the one right by the trees, heading out into the open field. Not that you'll know what that means unless you go there. And you should.

Katie came running back to me to make sure I took a picture of this tree gateway. Already done, chick.

You know what's great? Walking along and the little one starts singing Potatoes and Molasses to himself. Oh, I love it!

"Mom, take a picture of me by this baby tree!"

"Mom, take a picture of those baby trees by their moms!"

Shad found a fossil!

This big stump still has a saw blade embedded in it from when some genius tried to cut it up decades ago.

If you zoom in, the blade is on the far left at the top before the rest of the stump continues higher.

Across from the big stump. I love that Thora picked a quiet spot to sit, as suggested in the Junior Ranger booklet!

Samson joined me in my spot. And he really likes having constant access to water.

Our view.

And then as we made our way back, Sam announced that he had to go to the bathroom. Poop. Crap. We had at least a quarter mile to run back to the visitor's center. And Thora decided she had to pee, so I couldn't just pick up the one kid and run. Both of them made it, and still managed to let me snap some final pictures on the way while Shad and the older three lingered reading signs.

There they are, walking behind us, only a few minutes slower than I was able to drive Thora to move her butt and stop dragging her feet.

And then we had some Junior Rangers swear in!

We'd have liked to stay longer and see more, but I had Painting with a Twist to go to for my friend Katie's birthday that night...and Shad had us scheduled to look at a bus! So we left for home around 2 pm.

Shad and I saw the bus and loved it and the idea of renovating it into an RV and begin our lives as nomads. We just weren't quite sure if we wanted to take that jump. It was while I was out painting with friends that we were texting and decided to jump on this opportunity to pursue a dream and not let it keep being "someday." My words were "We should do it. Let's be reckless, carefree risk takers." And so, check out the following post for more details on that.

Meanwhile, at Painting with a Twist...our instructor drove me nuts because he sounded just like Tom Haverford from Parks and Rec! (Aziz Ansari)

Fun night painting and chatting bus purchasing with Brandi, Lindy, and Katie!

Nomad Southeast Trip, Day 10: Everglades National Park

December 30, 2018

Morning breakfast picture and wondering what on earth is blocking my lens. My pop socket. It moved in the night...

{Tommy, Katie, Shad, Samson, Dancy}

Granola bars and fruit for a simple camping breakfast on Florida Bay.

The kids loved waking up and we were right by the water!

We went to the ranger station, which was sort of still open (government still being shutdown). At least we were able to get our national parks cancellations. I still don't understand why it's called a cancellation when it's the "I was here" brag stamp. But if you ask for a stamp, that's something different.

My heart cries for this!

We drove to the marina where we opted for the backcountry boat tour over the Florida Bay tour. Florida Bay had a greater chance of dolphin sighting, but seeing the backcountry and getting deeper into the park sounded more exciting to me and Shad. We saw so much wildlife just standing on the dock! We saw an alligator, manatee, pelican, and ospreys!

Never got a good picture of the manatee, but she hung out here in the water and kept bobbing up for air. We watched her for a good 10 minutes.

{Samson, me, (Thora in front of Dancy), Dancy, Katie, Tommy}

Pelican!

Pelican watching

{Tommy, Dancy, me, Katie, Samson}

Then we heard loud, obnoxious calling and followed the crowd to investigate. It was osprey mating season and they were being vocal about it!

We had everyone go to the bathroom one last time before our tour. The bathroom lines were crazy and we were the last ones to get on the boat. We were less impressed with this boat tour than the bayou tour in Louisiana. This boat had siding that you couldn't see through, which meant that visibility from the center of the boat where we, the last passengers, had to sit was very minimal. We all got bored and restless because we couldn't see. The little kids got cranky and the parents had to spend their time and energy trying to keep them happy rather than listening to what little the tour guide said and trying to see it.

The water is naturally reddish due to the mandrake roots. The mandrake trees are what holds in the shoreline. 

Always such a relief to see this girl smiling instead of pouting. She's in Florida, her new favorite state since her bff Aunt Lori moved here.

{Thora}

Oh! This canal we were boating down was manmade (definition of canal versus bayou) by the National Park Service to provide a path to Coot Bay and the backcountry. BUUUUUUUUT what happened was that seawater rushed in and turned the water brackish (a mix of seawater and fresh water) and subsequently killed much of the plant and wildlife, including the Coot ducks for which the bay is named!

Coot Bay

{Shad and Samson}

{Katie}

{Dancy & Katie}

More mandrake roots.

There is a tiny alligator on the central log.

Thora made friends with this lady, who was very kind and happy to talk with her after spending years working in Montessori preschools and kindergartens. Thora wasn't so fond of her husband, though.

Samson wanted to come to the back of the boat to see me, but tripped on the way. I worked to cheer him up.

Fun wake.

Katie made friends with this girl who couldn't speak English and to this day it drives me nuts that I didn't get to try to ask where she and her parents were from. That would've enriched the experience for Katie so much!

Driving back to the campground from the marina, we pulled over when we saw a snake slithering across the road. That was fun!

We went for a hike, one of few we could do because most of the trails got ravaged in Hurricane Irma. Just a short one mile loop around a pond. My kids can handle up to 3 miles. We're not new to hiking. But we got maybe 100 yards into this FLAT GROUND WALK, and Dancy just started complaining and complaining and complaining. So that pissed me off and I ended up just not taking many pictures.

But there was this anole on a wood post.

And this grass tied up in a spider's web.

We got back to the tent, heard less complaining, and Samson was just soooooo happy to be back to his camping.

Getting the aloe ready. Some of us got lightly burned in Ormond Beach.

In the evening, we decided to try another walk...this time following a paved trail from the campground to the ranger station. We didn't make it far because we kept stopping for sand, shells, and birds!

It's a cypress!

See the cool root system?!

And then right there where we were stopped for the cypress, we heard an osprey calling.

And then we made it a little further to this beach spot and found that it wasn't sand at all, but crushed shells!

We realized sunset was fast approaching and that that might be a great spot to watch the sun melt into the water. We wanted to grab our dinner stuff and chairs and come back to watch, but there wasn't time at our slow pace. Instead, we just enjoyed the show at the congregation area.  We got there just in time for the sunset to start.

We had tuna salad cups and fruit cups for dinner. It tasted soooo good after so many car sandwiches we'd had lately. Oh! That reminds me: One big issue we had with this road trip was ice for our cooler. The hotel in New Orleans had a fridge in it, but no ice box. The hotel in Ormond Beach had a fridge...that leaked water everywhere and was unplugged when we got checked in. Great. So starting from Day 4, we were out of ice for all our fruits and veggies. We even bought a cutting board and a knife at Walmart in Ormond Beach so that we could cut up more for the Everglades. We did get a bag of ice, but then that meant everything in the cooler got watery. So many struggles with this road trip!

I've mentioned before that the sass is strong with this one, right? It was so fun to go through Shad's camera and find all of these!

{Tommy, me, Samson, Thora, Dancy, Katie}

Another anole.

Dusk

And ending the night by reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone aloud to everyone.