On the Road--Dinosaur Provincial Park

The dinosaur display at Dinosaur Provincial Park is available during park hours. We hiked several trails in the evening. The best plan though is to show up for several days and get in on one of the guided tours. That's when they take you into the fossil beds and point out the work being done. The trails were there, but marked closed so we of course obeyed. The area is scenic with lots of sedimentary cliffs at various stages of erosions. Lots of desert plants and animals--but no snakes.

I spent a lot of time working on my laptop recording our trip and keeping up to date with my writing. This can be a chore and I'm just beginning to wind down and get unpacked.

Power Plant--how many people to support?

This is one of two power plants at Snoqualmie Falls, WA. Visitors park across the street and hike over an overpass to see the falls. A trail leads down the cliffside to the Snoqualmie River edge, with a boardwalk for much of the way. The trail is steep but features such fun visits as seeing the two power plants and the generators spinning effortlessly, no one much arooud.

Strange dirt effect

We encountered this strange bit of dirt on the way to the agate beds on Red Top Mountain. It looked strange and we suspected some sort of rodent activity. Later we spotted the ground squirrels and had our answer. The flowers are from onion bulbs--we suspect the squirrels were dining on them. The tunnels were in great abundance; the snow melt underway with some patches still evident. I guess if you hibernate you wake quite hungry.

Finding Mushrooms in the Cedar River Watershed

I never knew that there were so many mushrooms. I always wondered why people worried about what was edible or not. During an about 2 hour scrounge through the Cedar River Watershed, in Washington, US, we found a collection of about fifty types. We actually had another container with all the larger mushrooms, too. We went as a group and afterwards, we found there was very little duplication, some, but not entirely. The one factoid I remember from the hour lecture was that tree health relies on fungus' in the dirt. There were many more.

Here's the link to the Cedar River watershed webpage for more information about classes such as this one:

http://www.cedarriver.org/

Expect to find hikes, birding, history and more...including rain drums!