After school on Friday, we stopped by the skate park to hang out with a bunch of the kids from LR’s class. Our (horribly deprived) kids don’t have skateboards, roller blades or scooters, so they had to do it ‘free-style’.
RJ the fearless discovered that the skate ramps were great for sliding down.
Just days after we arrived, we set off on our Yellowstone expedition. After driving about an hour, we entered the foothills and were treated to stunning mountain views, rock walls and cliff faces — but there was no time to stop! We pressed on and entered the park.
Yellowstone was teeming with bizarre and wonderful wildlife of all sorts. We delighted in spotting something new around each corner: bison/buffalo, elk, pronghorn antelope (SPEEDGOAT!), coyotes, foxes, rabbits, marmots, beavers, eagles, black bears and even one grizzly bear (suspiciously, dad was the only one who saw this). As we travelled, little crowds of photographers by the side of the road gave us plenty of clues as to where to look.
There were lots of tourists around, but we were generally impressed by the state of the park — not pristine, but well taken care of and healthy.
The kids even had a chance to play with some snow! It was pretty grotty, mostly melted and covered in black dirt, but it was magical for them.
On the weekend, we stopped at a chalk outcropping near Gingin to hunt for fossils. Our main goal was to find some shark teeth, but we weren’t successful. We did find a large assortment of crinoid bits, sea urchin spines, pieces of giant clams, and rhizoliths.
We headed across the fields to the chalk outcropping.
"Wait for me!" The thick mud in the field slowed RJ down a bit.
"Where'd they go?" RJ got to the top and had to search for the other members of our expedition.
LR was already hard at work digging out crinoid stems down in the abandonded quarry.
RJ was desperate to find some shark teeth. "The hammer goes BOOM!"
At one point, RJ found slugs everywhere.
"Can we keep them? They're cute."
Stomp! Squish! Stomp! Squish! Stomp! Squish!
With a bucket full of fossils and some very muddy boots, it was time to head home.
