It was an exciting weekend for the group as one of the women from Hastings did unearth 84 vertebrae and the tail bones of a huge fossil fish. Put together, the vertebrae measured about 11 feet. Dave and some other folks helped her dig. Since the fossils were found on private property, the finder has the right to keep them. Kelly is planning to clean and mount her find. I don't know where she will keep it, though! A few years ago a woman who found a four-foot fish mounted it on the top of a coffee table.

We had a good weekend with 20 other people from Hastings and then various ones from the Kansas City area. The "Creation Safari" was sponsored by the Creation Science Association of Mid America. We went on an outing with them to a museum in Lawrence, KS, about 6 years ago when Laura lived there and then two years ago we went on the western Kansas chalk and fossil beds expedition. (They take outings to southern MO sometimes, too, which also sound good to Dave.) Dave enjoyed it so much in 2007 that he wanted to let people in our church in on the outing.

We all met at the church parking lot on Saturday at 8:30 a.m. Two families had pop-up trailers, two planned to stay in motels, and threee were tent camping. We drove about two hours south of Hastings to meet up with the Kansas City folks. On the way we stopped at a monument which marked the center of the 48 contiguous states. It is near Lebanon, Kansas. Our meeting place with the others was the park in a very small town called Sylvan Grove, KS. I am sure the inhabitants must have been wondering who was invading their town. We had quite the caravan of vehicles!

Our first stop was at a limestone fence post quarry. Since there were not many trees in Kansas when the pioneers were settling the area, they used rock fence posts. There were lots of clam fossils there as well as some live lizards and scorpions. The next stop was on a hillside where a layer of volcanic ash was exposed. The kids all got plastic baggies of the stuff to take home. The last place we stopped on Saturday was just by the side of the road near Wilson Lake. Fossils can be found in the outcroppings all around there.

The campground where we spent Saturday and Sunday nights was in Ellis, KS, beside a small lake/pond created by a dammed up creek. According to the leader of the group who has been taking people on this trip for about 20 years, there is usually no trouble with finding room for everyone even on the holiday weekend. However, this year was the proverbial exception. The policeman who was collecting the fees was very kind and let us all camp in three spaces. Thankfully we were surrounded on three sides by open spaces of earth and water. The worst part was the campers next to us who were from Colorado and had visitors talking loudly until after midnight on the first night. All the tenters had to share one picnic table and two grills.. We brought our Coleman stove, though, as did at least two other families. It had been over five years since I used ours. Somehow it was malfunctioning part of the time so that the flames were high even when the controls were off which added to the challenge of cooking and at one point made me afraid the picnic table would catch on fire. The bathrooms were clean and had hot water except for the first night when I took a shower, thinking to avoid the crowd in the morning. I was just glad to get cleaned up so didn't mind too much.

At or before each of our stops to explore we had short lectures about the features we would see and what type of fossils to look for. The leader brought samples of fossils he had found on earlier trips. Also on Sunday morning we sang choruses and Dave gave a devotional on Psalm 29 which refers to Noah's flood. He showed the wooden model of the ark he made with Dad's help a few years ago and also referred to some charts about the geological column that Laura had made for him.

Sunday was our trip to Wildcat Canyon 13 miles south of I-70 at the Collyer exit. It is on a ranch; but the owners have given permission for this group to look for fossils there as long as the gates were kept shut so the cattle wouldn't get out. We could see clams fossils there that were about four feet in diameter. They were all broken up, though. This is where Kelly found the fish vertebrae. She unearthed about 6 feet of vertebrae and of course wanted to keep going, but people were getting tired and hungry so we went on to the next stop--Castle Rock--where we ate lunch on a plateau overlooking a big valley. After maneuvering the very rutted road around to the valley, we stopped so the kids could climb on the rocks. Dave and two other guys and two women then went back to Wildcat Canyon to continue excavating the big fish fossil. They were hoping to find the head that went with all the vertebrae. That never happened, but they did uncover the tail. The fish is found fairly often in the chalk beds and used to be called "Portheus", but is now "Xiphicanthus." Specimens up to 17 feet have been found, including a 14-footer with a 6-foot fish inside of it (close to where we were hunting). It was pretty hot work in the late afternoon sun so I went on back to the campgrounds to get supper going.

The weather was wonderful all weekend. We did drive through two short rain showers, but it didn't rain on our exploring or on the campground. (Last year they had to spend over an hour in a nearby church because of a tornado warning.) Monday the Hastings group decided that we had had enough and didn't want to drive another hundred miles or more to see basically the same terrain at Monument Rocks. We just headed back toward home, stopping at a park about 60 miles from Hastings to have lunch. Josh and Caleb Munnell rode back with us. They were the first to try out our DVD player in the ceiling of the van by watching a program about the ice age. We also played some road games to pass the time.

I don't get as excited as Dave does about fossil hunting, but I did enjoy the fellowship. Getting acquainted with the various families was enjoyable. It is a lot of work to get ready for a camping trip and to bring all one's food along. I suppose if we did it more often, it wouldn't take so much effort. I appreciate more what you do when you go to P-37, Larry. Planning and taking supplies for all the meals is more of a challenge than at home. I remember how particular I was on our 1974 camping trip about getting all the dishes and pans clean in boiling water. I have mellowed out some since then. :-)