Serendipitous Stops

We tend to avoid stopping at roadside attractions when traversing the States.  Perhaps Canada has more to offer, or at the very least, better fonts.  Anyway, two of the highlights to our drive across British Columbia were gravel roads advertised with signs.  The first was a dairy farm encompassing not only said cows, but chickens, peacocks, ice cream, cheese, a llama, and a camel.  Most of these weren't necessary, as they had us at Holstein.  So, we got an absolutely delicious cone of Cherry Cheesecake and wandered about petting small cows.

and then we were off....

Next roadside attraction?  Fossil dig.  This could go either way, it could be really cool... or it could be brachiopods.  The sign said that it was $20 per person to dig for a few hours.  We didn't have $40 or that much time, so I decided to hike up the hill and ask the guy in charge if I could pay him $20 to dig through the scrap pile at the bottom.  I'm not sure if he was just an excitable person or stoked to talk to geologists, but he gave us the grand tour and pulled out some great leaves and fish fossils and just gave them to us.  He was super nice and extremely knowledgeable considering he wasn't trained as a geologist!  The fossils were a very wide array of conifer, deciduous, fish, and insects in 50.2 million year old lake seds.  Even more interesting was CRB (Columbia River Basalt) flow directly on top of the fossiliferous layer.  We paid him the $20 and continued on our way, the car slightly heavier from all the rocks!

     

  (This site is actually a well known locale with the paleontologists, you can check out their website at www.dll-fossils.com)