March 23, 2012
I've decided to avoid stressing about
not getting much painting time in yet, and enjoy all the
opportunities I have this first week. I'll be able to learn more in
a shorter amount of time, and once the school group leaves, things
will get pretty quiet around here. There will be time for the
painting and exploring. So today began with a 9am meeting for talks
on park resources and fossils. Ed, the paleontologist I met my first
night here, talked about some of the more major finds here at
Badlands, as well as the geologic and ecologic history of the area.
We followed that with a hike between Old NE Road and Door Window with
both Ed and an ecologist from the park, Milt. They had great
information and it was a lot of fun talking, asking questions, and
seeing things along the way. Found more fossils on the hike, and I
learned a trick paleontologists use to determine whether something is
rock or fossil. If it's fossilized bone, it will stick to your
tongue a little when you lick it because of its porousness. The kids
then worked a bit on a mural project they're doing with kids from
local schools in SD and Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Dinner was
some very tasty bison chili with fry bread. Then a few of us adults
hiked back out to the spot where we found some fossils last night.
Ed was able to identify one set of fossils as coming from a tortoise.
Sun had set, and we didn't manage to find the other set, will try
again another day. Then off to the amphitheater for an astronomy
talk and telescope viewing of Mars and the nebula in Orion.
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| Trail from Old NE Rd to Door Window. |