Chuckanut fossils...

A geocache brought us back to Chuckanut Drive south of Bellingham a couple of days ago. When we read about fossils being here, we had to see it for ourselves. So south we drove, parked on the wide shoulder, and crossed the narrow highway to look up on the cliff. I never knew about the fossils that were exposed when the road was built, but I bet my sister does... she has a minor in geology from Western.

In one place you can see a variety of tropical plant vegetation, including palms. There's also an embedded tree, now petrified wood.

Ice Age Floods

On the Road Again Day 17 | Dry Falls: View from the rim

When we lived on the dry side a million years ago, this was one of our favorite drives. It was also our first introduction to the whole amazing story of the Missoula ice age floods, which scoured out the inland empire western Montana, Idaho, and eastern Washington, and created the rugged landscape we know today. Over and over and over for thousands of years, the cycle continued. Building up an ice dam, then the dam breaking, released the floodwaters to run rampant over the landscape before funneling through the Columbia River gorge to the Pacific Ocean. Dry Falls is a 3.5-mile wide chasm of basalt with a drop of 400 feet, part of the Grand Coulee canyon, and a major stop along the Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail.

This sheer cliff was once the world's greatest waterfall. Short-lived to be sure, but nothing on earth ever matched it for sheer size and power.

The geology of the middle of Washington is quite spectacular, and so worth seeing. You can read more on the planned (and first) National Geologic Trail here. The proposal and maps can be found here. and on the Ice Age Floods Institute website.

Frozen in time...

On the Road Again Day 10 | Fossil Butte

A highlight of a road trip a decade ago was digging for fossils behind the high school in Fossil, Oregon. These days you pay a small fee in exchange for a limited number of fossils. But before 2004, there was unlimited access. We brought home a small container of slabs of shale to investigate, plus some lucky finds: all sorts of leaf fossils.

Since then, we've been bitten by the fossil bug, so stumbling across Fossil Butte National Monument was a thrill. We're headed for fly fishing, but happily took a detour to check it out. There's a great visitor's center and more fossils than I've ever seen in one place. On the heels of seeing the dinosaur bones at Dinosaur National Monument, this was very cool.

There are leaves of all sizes, but there are much more unique fossils here. Like a complete lizard with a curling tail. Snakes. Insects. Turtles. Bats. Flowers. Fish, individuals and schools. My favorite is a fish that died in the act of swallowing another fish. There's even a crocodile.

Hunting the elusive blues

Today was the start of a weekend with our friends Bernie & Linda, who moved to Ellensburg a few years ago. Linda quit her Boeing job and took the girls east, living her dream of being in the town where she went to college. Bernie is also living his dream, of retiring from Boeing at 55. (Neither of them really retired, though... both work part time for the city.)

Anyway, we head for Eburg as often as we can, since these guys are our best friends, and we miss them. Linda & I planned this weekend two months ago, because we know how it goes: if you don't set the time aside, your days fill up.

Linda got me started on looking for for this particular stone, as she lives in the only place in the world where you can find it. The Ellensburg Blue agate is so rare, it's considered by many gemologists to be a precious (rarity & hardness, actually... this agate is harder than your typical agate). She's developed a reputation in town as someone who can usually find them. Pretty good, considering that the public land in agate territory is shrinking. And the local landowners are not usually willing to let people traipse over their acres.

We started our weekend visit with a few hours in the hills, hiking in to an area where they typically find Blues, then walking around with heads bent to the ground, looking for that flash of color. We found a lot of stuff today: pure white quartz, agates filled with crystals, and a few pieces of agate that have the telltale orange halo of a Blue, but so pale you can't really call them blue agates. If I ever find my geology hardness kit, I'll know for sure. If I can't scratch these with a piece of quartz, can I call them Blues... even if they're not blue?

Alibates Flint

At dinner last night, we scrolled through the list of nearby attractions on Jeepers, our Garmin GPS. And that's how we learned about the Alibates Flint Quarries.

This unique flint attracted people to the dry and windswept plains of the Texas Panhandle as long ago as 12,000 years. Before the Great Lakes even formed, Indians of the Ice Age Clovis Culture used Alibates flint for spear points to hunt Imperial Mammoth.


Now, isn't that an image to grab your imagination? So we plotted our course, and first thing this morning, headed out. And this was definitely one of the more interesting things we did on vacation: visiting this one-of-a-kind site where Native Americans of many tribes came to harvest their flint, later used to fashion arrowheads, spear heads, scrapers.

Lake Meridith and the fling quarries are pretty much out in the middle of nowhere, and when we arrived at the national park site, there was no one there. Hmmm... we drove to the end of the road, and enjoyed meeting a Box turtle on our way back. This time, there was someone at the visitor center. As the man unlocked the door, we asked about a tour. Lucky for us (since you had to book tours in advance), he was there to meet a couple of men who'd booked a tour, and let us tag along.

If you're ever near Amarillo, I highly recommend taking a couple of hours and doing this nature walk. It's pretty amazing, walking in the footsteps of so many who've been here over the centuries. We got to handle the different colors of flint and see several different pits where they dug down below the limestone cap rock to access the thick layers of agatized dolomite. The ground is littered with discarded bits of flint, gorgeously colored, from pale striped to purple, to reds and greens. We were told it's unique in the world.

In this photo, the red piece is a bit smaller than my fist, about 3 inches across.

They have one ranger on staff who has learned the fine art of crafting arrowheads and spear points from this flint. He can sit and chat with people on his tours, while striking out an arrowhead, right in front of their eyes. That would be cool to see!

Ellensburg Blues

When we cleaned out Martin's storage unit we found a small bag of Ellensburg blues. Martin bought them from Jerry’s here in Kent back in 1982, and there are three: a dark blue rough piece about an inch across, a dark blue oval about 1x2, and a small narrow piece about ½ x 1.  They're beautiful, and since Linda keeps me entertained with stories about her own search for the elusive blues, I've become very "tuned in" to the beauty of this particular type of agate that isn't found anywhere else. In fact, it's considered to be a precious stone.

Since my father-in-law kept the receipt for everything he ever bought, I know what he paid for these stones 25 years ago. Have they become more scarce in the past couple of decades? I don’t know much about them, but sure love the color. I'm looking forward to seeing the stones that Linda has found. 

Rockhound

We spent the afternoon going through my father-in-law's storage unit, sorting through all the garbage to find anything worth saving. It was stuffed to the gills with tools, specimens of minerals and rocks he’s collected over the years, lots of newspapers and magazines. Now that the house is sold, this is the last repository. Martin kept his mining equipment there, but it was stuffed with much more. His dad loved prospecting, but he also loved going out in the hills, digging for agate, jasper, thunder eggs, and especially sapphires. I had no idea he made so many trips to Montana to dig for them. It’s sad… it’s something he and I could have shared over the years, if he’d just told us what he was doing. Such a secretive man. We set aside all of his specimens, but no one in the family shares his passion, so they will probably end up in the dump unless the Boeing club will take them off our hands.

We hauled one load of trash to the Highlands dump, then decided to finish up today rather than come back and get the recycling another day. It only took three trips to get rid of all the paper. Dave suggested dinner and a beer at the Dog & Pony, which sounded great to me. Back to the dump with recycling, then to the D&P. I stayed pretty clean today, but Dave is a grub! Oh well, they won't mind. We got a parking spot (a miracle), cleaned up, and ordered beer and food and settled down for a nice couple of hours.