The Devonian Fossil Gorge, Coralville, Iowa

Well, I said in a blog post here, that I would write a post about what we did prior to going to the hospital in Iowa City for Calebs check-up, but it would have to wait until "tomorrow" (that would have been Tuesday) because I had band practice.

Tuesday night, I put up a quick post about the 6 month anniversary of Got'cha day, then had band practice again Wednesday night for a different concert we're doing this summer. We appear to only have two gigs this summer and truthfully, that's about enough with all that's going on!

So, here 'tis Thursday night and I'm home in the quiet since Mama took the boys to a park to play for a bit. I figured I'd better do it now or it'll be another week and I still won't have it done.

We visited the Devonian Fossil Gorge in Coralville, IA.  I could tell you more about here but I'm feeling lazy and will just include a link instead.  It really is pretty interesting so I would recommend a quick read.

I have to wonder what the boy thinks sometimes about where we take him and the things we do. He seems to enjoy them and doesn't complain about anything unless he gets cold, which is a lot. :-)

One of the few occasions where we got Robby to settle down enough to get a photo of them together. Getting them to both look at the camera at the same time is an entirely different/equally difficult task.

A lot of this fossil park is just walking along and spotting the hundreds of fossils that are nearly everywhere around you.  They did have specific fossils marked with little markers like this one here. They have a map overlooking this area that gives you a rough idea of where things are located,  but to be honest, we had a lot of fun treating it like a scavenger hunt of sorts.

Mom and Robby working ahead in an attempt to make the next great discovery.

Robby being...  well, Robby!  :-)  Love the boy!

This is looking back towards the Coralville Resevoir. You can sort of see some concrete off in the distance on the top half of the photo.  That's the emergency spillway and the water comes crashing down the path where we're standing, hence the uncovering of what used to be ocean floor a LONG time ago.

I'll bet something like this has a name...  Had I paid any attention at all in high school, I might know it now.

Tentative Caleb watches Robby get a lesson from Mama.

There was one little spot of moist ground with a few small green weeds growing out of it. As we got closer, you could see a LOT of little things moving away from you.  Upon closer inspection, they were very, very tiny toads!  This little dude is about the size of one of my finger nails.

There was a whole gaggle of turkey vultures sitting on the rocks of the dam.  Ugly little varmints, they are.

Several fossils in this rock that are probably not evident to anybody viewing the small photos on this blog.

Exhibit B.

Thought we had a Sasquatch sighting so I snapped a quicky photo only to discover it was Robby taking a short cut.

This was the boys after leaving Old Chicago Pizza.  Dad is smiling like a hyena because he just laid waste to a pizza buffet!  Yessiree!!