Mineral Wells Fossil Park Day 2

May 31, 2022May 31, 2022 — Nature, Travel — 2 min read

Back to the fossil park again. We arrived shortly after the gates opened at 8 AM and as before, we were the only ones there. We have read reviews of the fossil park where people complain about how hot it is. If people come later in the day it will be hot, this early in the morning it is merely uncomfortably warm.

Today we will be concentrating on searching for what is seen in this and the following two photos.

We thought we found several of these echinoid plates the other day, maybe we will be more successful today.

The ultimate find.

The requisite flower photo.

The focus today was on small fossils. The best place to find them is where the water flow slows significantly and smaller material would be deposited. The farther out the water runs, the slower it goes. Anytime it encounters vegetation the same thing happens. The arrows point to two places where significant finds were made.

My finds for the day. To the left of the dime is ??? Could it be a shark tooth? The size, the form and weight suggest it certainly might be a shark tooth.

As you can tell from the size of the finds compared to the dime, today was all about finding the small, smaller and smallest fossils. Clockwise the finds are Red: echinoid plate. Yellow: crinoid pentagon section. Green: tiny Brachiopod. Blue: crinoid spines. Literally hundreds of fossils were handled with only these being collected. What an awesome morning collecting fossils.

Sophie’s Bed, Now You See It, Now You Don’t

May 30, 2022May 30, 2022 — Travel — 2 min read

The reason we like Sophie, our RV (Caravan), which is a LTV Unity RL. The RL is the acronym for Rear Lounge. What makes it so nice is the bed which is a murphy bed that pivots up against the rear wall when not in use. The other thing that we learned is due to it being hidden, there is no need to nicely make the bed.

The bed has now been raised and latched in place with the back cushions of the seats in place. It takes us less than two minutes from start to finish to put it up or down. It is also very easy to lift or lower so the wife often does it herself. Needless to say we absolutely love this floor plan. With a TV, table and seats up front we can either spend time together or have our own separate spaces.

Footrest extended. The seat beside it also has a footrest, both of which are electrically operated. I usually sit back in the corner at an angle. You can rightly point out there is nowhere to set anything and you would be right, at least in this photo. Sometime in the future I will post our solution to that, which is actually very simple.

The view from where I sit in the corner towards the TV. The interesting thing is that we are within the optimum viewing distance for a TV of this size. I have also installed Fire TV Sticks to this TV and also the front TV so we can stream separate shows if we want. Life is good.

Mineral Wells Fossil Park

May 29, 2022May 28, 2022 — Nature, Travel — 3 min read

Situated to the west of the Texas town of Mineral Wells is a very unique park where you can collect fossils that lived in the bottom of a sea some 300 million years ago. We spent time here a year ago and she who never passes up an opportunity to explore rocks and fossils planned our trip so we would be visiting again this year.

A sign tells of the different types of fossils that that can be found at the site.

The collecting area is the former borrow pit of a now closed city landfill. It can be really hot down there so we try to arrive in the morning just after the gates open and besides a bag or two to put our finds in, we also wear camelbacks which really help to keep us hydrated.

Rains erode the banks of the pit exposing and carrying the small fossils along with the runoff, meaning most anywhere you look there is likely to a fossil, though the best places to look in our experience are near the bottom of the banks.

I took this photo of a section of a crinoid stem just a few feet from where the chain leading down to the bottom of the pit ended. While she and I grew up in the same state near the Great lakes, it was in opposite ends of the state. Yet we both had collected crinoid stems as kids, along with other fossils and arrowheads. No wonder we have been so compatible for so many decades. How can a guy go wrong if he marries one of the smartest and prettiest girls in her high school class. Lucky Rob.

There is more than than fossils in the old borrow pit. Flower names are not my forté, so this one shall be named a low growing purple flower with a yellow center. A botanicalist I isn’t.

After almost two hours of constantly bending over and and scanning the ground, we decided it was time to make the long drive back to the RV park. But she who sees everything rock and fossil wise asked if I saw the rock art in the borrow pit. That meant I had to climb up the bank and take this photo. Just goes to prove that not everyone who comes here spends all their time collecting fossils. And yes, before we left she had to add some rocks a nd fossils to the rock art

Toothpick and dime to provide scale. And before you comment, “You spent two hours here and that is all you found!” understand that we didn’t collect 1/1000 of the fossils we saw. By the way this is what I collected, but hers was similar in quantity. The relative size of the fossils are apparent from the toothpick and the dime. We had a contest as to who could find the smallest brachiopod. I figured out the smaller and lighter fossils would be carried further by the runoff, so I searched further out in the pit. The smallest ones are in the two rows between the toothpick and dime. The largest is above the dime and had a mostly complete bottom shell and half of the top shell. It is days like this that make Life so worth living.

A $40 a Night RV (Caravan) Park

May 28, 2022May 28, 2022 — Travel — 1 min read

There was gravel and dirt with a small small piece of artificial turf (likely from the local high school football field when new artificial turf was installed) at the last RV park we stayed at. This park has grass and space galore. The jar on the concrete is solar tea. A quart jar filled with water, tea bags and sun is all it takes. She buys loose tea and tea bags, then she fills the tea bags with just the right amount of tea to let the sun do its thing resulting in perfectly smooth, delicious tea.

No comparison to the last RV park we stayed at. Large pull thru sites, multiple locations for showers and laundries, however the wifi is TengoInternet which we have had at other parks and it seems is never all that good. Luckily we have our own internet and it works very well. The real downside to this park? It is some 20 miles from what we do when we are in this area. Price and value are certainly two different things when it comes to RV parks.

A $35 a Night RV (Caravan) Park

May 27, 2022May 28, 2022 — Travel — 2 min read

Many people would say this is “not the ideal RV (caravan) site. It’s bounded on two sides by park roads, one the main entrance road, and the site is absolutely tiny. We are only here when we are not out and about. We bought Sophie for the spacious rear lounge so we could be inside when the weather wasn’t to our liking. Bottom line, it is home for a few days and suits us just fine.

Why we decided to downsize from a big diesel pusher RV to 25 foot (7.5 meters) Sophie. No problem fitting in any site anywhere. A little bigger and we wouldn’t have been able to stay here, we would have been too long for the site.

They only have 2 sites available for transients, which is what we are, all the other sites are for long term residents. So why did we stay here rather than the nicer park further out of town? 1. We like to be close to the places we are going to visit. 2. We really don’t care that much what the RV park is like. 3. Since most of our time at an RV park is spent inside Sophie so park amenities are not that important to us. (Over the years we have stayed at parks that would make this one look like a high end resort in comparison.)

Just a few thing that make this park what it is, Not shown is the pickup truck parked beside a park road that has a flat tire with the truck bed full of junk. While it’s not a park for everyone, we would stay here the next time we are again visiting Dripping Springs.