Geocaching and fossil hunting

[glacier_kitty]

Today mom and I went caching a little outside of Payson, and it turned into fossil hunting when the description of a cache said this: "As you walk toward this geocache you will be treading on the fossilized remains of these 300 million year old invertebrates. This is considered the most fossiliferous site in the state featuring fossils of the Paleozoic Era (Ancient Life era) found in the weathered limestone, shale, and sandstone. They are most easily found in pieces of limestone which look sort of like frozen gray mud." Wow, I never would have known about the place if not for geocaching!! (Also, "fossiliferous" is an awesome word. :P) It was fun hunting for fossils on the way to the cache (and I love rocks, so it was cool seeing the different kind of rocks too). We found some fossils to take home with us..so cool!! We also came across a controlled burn..we had been seeing the smoke since we got here, and was curious to see where it was (I didn't think it was an uncontrolled fire anyway, since the smoke wasn't acting crazy and there weren't planes or anything). It was weird seeing random spots just burning by the side of the road lol. We found five caches altogether, and then rewarded ourselves with a milkshake lol..yummy! Here are a couple pics:


Fossils!

Beautiful ponderosa pines and the Mogollon Rim in the distance

Comments

[foxydanish.livejournal.com]

Ohmigosh, I can't believe I will be there tomorrow!! Of course it'll be dark by the time I get there, but hopefully the stars will be pretty for me haha :P

That sounds like such a cool spot!! And YES "fossiliferous"!?!?!? That word is AMAZING haha!!

Matt needs to say "Mogollan" for us when we get together lol. I was doing okay with practicing it when I was there in August, but now I've entirely forgotten again haha!