Road Trip, Part 4: Rockford Fossil and Prairie Park Reserve

I have posted about this place before as we seem to like to visit it about every other year.  It is just West of Rockford Iowa which is about a 2 hour trek from Des Moines.

We figured with all of the recent heavy rains that Iowa has experienced, it would wash away some of the "fill" and reveal some excellent fossils.

I don't know that it revealed more than it ever had in the past, but we found quite a few on a visit that was a bit more hasty than some others when we were there.

And truly, it didn't matter as we all had fun, got stoopid sweaty and did some good hiking/crawling/climbing.

This is the parking lot, looking South.  That's our fancy 2005 mini-van at the right with Rob, Caleb and the ghastly beast, Juno just to the right of the center of the picture.  I made the comment that the boys don't understand time and they're going to be hungry and wanting to stop on the way home to have supper, but that AIN'T going to happen.  Everything happened including stopping at a rest stop that had Arby's and Godfathers so I was more right that I wanted to be...

This is at the top of the old quarry where we are  now preparing to hike down any one of the ravines.

I chose this ravine after taking a few pictures.  It was tranquil, peaceful, rocky,  and mostly un-ankle-breaking.

Mama, Robby, Caleb and Juno chose this ravine.  I won!

Once everybody is at the bottom and has most of the skin they started out with,  you can really take your time and focus in on specific areas.  That's not what we're doing here... 

That's Caleb in the yellow shirt 3/4 the way up that slope.

A cool picture of a dragonfly that almost looks like a fossil because of the transparency of the wings.

A couple of wide shots of the main basin.

 

Mom getting ready to climb up to where the boys are.  I think she's displaying some serious confidence!

Everybody is back at the top and headed for the trail to the old brick kilns.

Finally, the old kilns.  They've cleaned this up a bit since the last time we were here and they're tying the park in with a bike path and a new parking area at the bottom where you can start here and hike you way backwards from where we just came.

Caleb has been washing/rinsing the fossils. 

A shot of a few of the "things" we caught.

If you have younger kiddos, I would recommend spending a day driving and exploring this!  It's been something the kids have enjoyed every time we've gone there and I'm pretty sure that we'll get at least one more enthusiastic visit before they get "too old".