Historic Fort Hays Days

Fort Hays, Hays, Kansas

The Sternberg Museum

fish in a fish

The famous fish within a fish fossil which was found some 50 miles away from Hays, Kansas where the museum is located.

closeup

Closeup of the ribs of the larger fish alternating being over and under the smaller fish showing that the smaller was inside the larger fish when they were fossilized.

fish

What the swallower looked like. It is 14 feet from head to tail. The fish inside was seven feet long.

Mososaur

If you were a creature that lived in the in the Western Interior Seaway 70-80 million years ago you were likely food for something bigger and nastier.

rocks

While most of the museum is devoted to fossils, there is more, such as these rocks.

Change the source light to ultraviolet and what a difference it makes.

 Pteranodon sternbergi

Pteranodon sternbergi overhead on the 3rd floor.

T Rex

It moves its head and growls. We visited the museum five or six years ago and had it on our must stop again list this through also.

Stone Fence Posts

stone post

When the area of Kansas we are current traveling thru was first settled it was mostly treeless. No trees, no fence posts, so what did those settlers do? They used what was available which was a relatively thin band of limestone that resisted weathering and became known as fencepost limestone

rv

The post in front of our RV site.

shell

This limestone was formed from deposits when the Western Interior Seaway covered this part of Kansas during the Late Cretaceous period many millions of years ago. The post at our RV site has a shell showing. The post rock limestone has been designated the official state rock of Kansas.

corner

Corner posts needed additional bracing. We saw this example at a nearby State Park.

Starlink Sighting

rv

The first RV we have seen during this year’s travels that had a Starlink dish. It is likely that for next year’s travels we will also have Starlink.

ladder mount

The dish is mounted at the top of a telescoping pole that is attached to the ladder.

dish

It is the new style rectangular dish. The pole, fastened to the ladder with hose clamps and Velcro straps seems to move in the wind. We mounted a mast with a weather station to the ladder of our previous RV with locking clamps and it never moved. Lots of research to do before we would buy one ourselves.