Foss-il Hunting

So the other day we decided to take a day trip and go up north (practically Canada) to the tiny town of Republic, Washington to visit the Stonerose Interpretive Center (http://www.stonerosefossil.org).

It kind of reminded me of Orange, VA, only slightly bigger and prettier

Why?  To dig for our own fossils of course! The digging site is an approximately 29 million year old lakebed, and several extinct species have been discovered there.  In fact, a Florissantia quilchenensis (flower from an extinct cocoa tree) specimen was discovered there that was featured in National Geographic (and has become the Stonerose logo).   They also have a small museum filled with fossils that have been found there as well as some on loan from other places (such as a dinosaur skeleton fossil from China).  We set out really wanting to find a fish fossil, and while we didn't find any after roughly two and a half hours of digging, we had found some pretty good fossils:

Justin showing his chiseling skills and the proper way to open the shale

About to open the shale to see if a fossil is inside

Our haul.  We then took this to the Interpretive Center and they told us what we found

We got to keep three fossils each, for a total of six.  Here are two parts of an alder leaf. This is a copy of the same leaf, we just happened to open the shale right in the middle. 

A fossilized piece of the lakebed with a plant (I forget what flower that is)

Two pieces of fossilized redwood.  This one was broken up, so they glued it together for us.

And a single lobe of the Florissantia quilchenensis mentioned above

The drive up there was nice and we took our time, browsing at tiny antique shops along the way.  We also saw a variety of wildlife including a bald eagle, a chipmunk, a golden eagle (we think), possibly a bear, one deer, and about 8 deer heads in some random convenience store.  Our favorite part of the drive was through Colville National Forest, right by Lake Roosevelt.  We stopped by the Log Flume Historical Site, which I thought meant you would see an old log flume.  Unfortunately, it was just an interpretive trail with informative markers, though the trail was nice and quiet.  Here is a picture of Justin doing his own interpretation of a log making its way down the flume.

We did find a picturesque little spot in the forest that was simply magical.  The pictures really don't do it justice.  They don't show the sun glinting off the cold, rapid creek or the massive amounts of butterflies frolicking around or the HEAVENLY smell that the wildflowers produced.  Imagine if Smarties made a perfume, it would smell like that....but better.

There were clusters of butterflies everywhere.  I had never seen them like that before,.  Perhaps it was mating season?

Justin pondering the beauty of the place

And since I just figured out how to upload video, and am slowly learning how to work my Bloggie (wedding gift from my mom which all these pictures and video were taken with),  here is a bonus video of Chase playing frisbee.