Sedimentary, my dear Watson.

Easter weekend we took a spontaneous little drive (about 20 minutes away) to the Cheyenne River to look for fossils and cool rocks. We've been here once before; that time the kids were all decked out to take a dip in the river, but this trip was solely for finding rocks!
When I was a kid I had a pretty good rock collection; often when my dad would go treasure hunting I'd be hunting the ground for rocks and fossils. I still haven't realized my dream of finding a cache of trilobites, but I won't give up yet.
However, South Dakota is a place where there have been several complete dinosaur skeletons discovered, so one can dream! Last time we were here Elora found a pretty neat fossil, so our hopes were high.
We started off with a picnic underneath a bridge-it's crazy to thank that this whole area can be covered with water, though we've not seen that in the years we've lived here. See Eli saying, " cheese" with his mouth full? Yummy.
























I was there too, don't worry. And see? I finally have a picture of the boots I got for Christmas:

Joseph actually took several photos of me, but Eli was photobombing all of them with his constant exclamations of "cheeesseee!" and his huge grins. Silly little boy.




































We had a fun time looking around for rocks and fossils! I found lots of small rocks that had cool configurations, but no impressive fossils. There were a lot of these on the top left that looked like they'd broken up and been stuck together again, , and small shells held together like in the top right example. It's hard to tell, but the bottom right corner rock was a pretty purple!

















Okay, so this collage wasn't put together very well, but here's a pic of the few small ones that I brought home with me:



















Joseph and the kids found lots of neat rocks too. Most of Joseph's favorites were huge but he still thought he should take them home. These are a lot bigger than they look here; it's hard to tell with Joseph's big cave man hands!
The top left one is his fairy rock a la "Spiderwick Chronicles". The three orangy brown ones all look like fossils of some kind; maybe impressions of bones or eggs? And the third down on the left definitely had some porous bone-like material to it. I like the spongey-looking yellow one the best.



The bottom right is Josh's find.
The circles on the edges might be shells or something?

 

 

The coolest find of all? An empty old turtle shell.



As I was looking at these photos of our family walking  through the gloomy yellowed landscape, under the overcast sky, I was reminded of a photo I'd taken the first spring we were here, near a lake by Faith. A friend on facebook said that it reminded her of the swamps where Frodo and Sam had to wander outside of Mordor, in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, though she quickly said that she was sure it was much nicer in person.




This isn't that picture. This is still by the river.
Can you tell it's spring? Me neither.

I laughed at that description, though I prefer to think it looks more like the shores of Lake Lacramose, portrayed at the beginning of the movie, A Series of Unfortunate Events. Maybe it's just the artistic side of me, but I find that I kind  of enjoy the implication of a melancholy landscape in a lone and dreary world. Heh.
Take a look:

This picture would be perfect if the branch wasn't
right in Elora's face!

Jonah enjoying the mud.




 

Josh must have found something!
Or he's sulking because he can't go in the water.



Daddy and Elora scope out the rocks



Looks like daddy founds something!

 
Of course, Eli kind of ruins the dismal world illusion, with all his cute smiles!  His biggest problem was being constantly derailed from going into the river. He did enjoy throwing rocks and breaking them , as well as discovering the rare stick with which he could walk.



 

Finally it was time to head home!



Maybe sometime around June this will all be green.