Out West 2014: Family Dino Dig Day 1

As you may know (since I've been going on and on and ON about it for at least a year now, ever since I started planning and budgeting for it), all four of us made our wild, unwieldy road trip out to the west to participate in a family dinosaur dig through the Children's Museum of Indianapolis.

The dig takes place a little northeast of Faith, South Dakota, on a private ranch that contains some incredible caches of edmontosaurus bones. Although we're amateurs, this is a real, working dig, with real discoveries to be made, all the finds going to the museum's collection for processing and study. Paleontologists from the museum worked alongside us and assisted us in all aspects of the excavation, teaching us and letting us do ourselves the digging, mapping, field jacketing, trench digging, burlap cutting, and most everything else required to run a dig.

And Faith itself, regardless of all this, is just an exciting place to be digging for dinosaurs:

Have you heard about the discovery of Sue, followed by the even bigger scandal surrounding her? Sue is a big interest of mine, and I'm going to talk more about her later in our trip, but until then, you MUST read this book: Tyrannosaurus Sue: The Extraordinary Saga of Largest, Most Fought Over T. Rex Ever Found. It's fascinating, and then I'll get to discuss it with you! I SUPER want to discuss it with you.

On the first day of our two-day dig, we got to begin with surface collecting. This is a fun way to start, because for the rest of our time here, we'd primarily be digging for the museum, but in surface collecting, we primarily get to find fossils for ourselves! The surface collection site is an exposed hillside with lots of erosion--

--and so there are lots of tiny fossil fragments and hopefully some edmontosaurus teeth that have been exposed; none of these are scientifically significant, so we can have them... IF we can find them:

Here are some of my finds--they look a LOT like surface rocks, don't they?

During this time that's really supposed to be just for fun (and a lesson on how to identify fossils in the rock, useful for our imminent excavating), Will nevertheless managed to make a significant discovery, a complete pachycephalosaurus tooth, including some root structure:

Isn't it beautiful? It's quite different from an edmontosaurus tooth, and is the first one of its kind ever found at this dig site! Just sit back and think about that for a minute--my kid was the first human ever to see that tooth that once upon a time was inside of a pachycephalosaurus' MOUTH.

Mind. Blown.

I did that all day, both days, by the way--spent my dino dig time constantly getting my mind blown. Sometimes I'd dig for an hour and find some small little thing that's a dime a dozen out there--tendon, teensy rib fragment, etc.--and one of the paleontologists would start to commiserate, but I'd be all, "I. Found. A RIB FRAGMENT!!!", and I'd cradle it in my hand, and go show my loved ones, and that paleontologist would dutifully back-pedal and enthusiastically congratulate me and admire my rib fragment for me.

Because this find of Will's WAS scientifically significant, it needed to go into the museum's collection, but first the paleontologist spent tons of time with Will talking about the tooth with her and telling her all about it--

--and then having her assist him in recording the information about it and tagging its location:

Will didn't think that having to give up her tooth sucked at all, on account of how clearly important it was, and how special everyone made her feel for discovering it. She's the one who found the pachy tooth!

Here's what our dig site looks like:

There are tents set up over the major dig areas. That's me in the yellow by the far tent, probably making one of the paleontologists admire yet another teensy rib fragment that I'd found.

The dig site is on private property, part of a local ranch, so much of the drive takes place down these... wheel tracks... across the prairie. There are birds, and horses, and a prairie dog town, and one morning we saw antelope.

Here's the site looking in the other direction:

Our tools are in the foreground, with the tool shed in the back. Off camera to the left is the outhouse. Up that hill in the background is where we did our surface collecting.

Arriving at the site, we'd unpack all the tools and supplies from the tool shed and van, coat our skin with sunscreen and bug repellant, and grab a clam shucker, an x-acto knife, a squeeze bottle of Paleobond, a paintbrush, a broom and dustpan, and a bucket. We'd also collect an assortment of carpet squares and knee pads to pad our area, as we all tended to sit and kneel and lie on and crawl around the hard ground at really weird angles while we were focused on our digging. My knees were red and sore by the end of the second day, because I wasn't real great at remembering to pad my area, and days after the dig was over I still had one sore spot under my collar bone, of all places, which I vaguely remembered probably using as a pivot point when I spent an afternoon digging an edmontosaurus tibia out of a hole in the hill.

See Syd's well-padded dig area?

To start, you just chip away at the hill with your clam shucker:

 If you're in a good spot, the sedimentary layers will just crumble away in bits as you work; if you're in a bad spot, you'll be slogging through muck, but you only stick with a spot like that if you're uncovering a bone that's already been found. 

Syd was supposed to be helping our group leader excavate that fossil, on account of she LOVED our group leader and vastly preferred working with her over working with me (humph!), but instead she started expanding the trench around it--and she made a discovery there!

You must often brush the dirt away from your dig area and sweep all the excess into a dustpan and dump it in your bucket:

This keeps your dig area clear and will help you see when you uncover something.

If your clam shucker hits something, or if the crumbled hillside reveals something that doesn't look like the rock around it--

Another rib fragment!!! That thing used to be inside an edmontosaurus' BODY!!!

That's a tooth!

--then you put the clam shucker away, point in the ground, and take up the x-acto knife to carefully scrape the dirt and rock away until you can see what you've discovered:

See Will with her x-acto there? One of my many favorite things about this group is the way that all the adults were happy to engage with any of the kids; Will is working with another kid's mom here, while that mom's kid helps one of the paleontologists dig a trench to prevent flooding at the site.

And when you think that what you've discovered isn't just a random rock (it sometimes turns out to be a rock anyway) but a fossil, you call over one of the paleontologists, who'll examine it, consult with you about it, and guide you on how to proceed with your dig:

After consultation, Syd proceeds apace excavating her own discovery.

Matt basically had to remove ALL the hillside above this fossil to uncover it.

Sometimes, even though you're SUPER careful and you love fossils SO much, as you excavate them you kinda... break them a little. That's why we get to excavate edmontosaurus, not T-Rex, you know? Even so, every time this happened I pretty much had a little panic attack and insisted that I had just broken Science. Because this, this fragmented edmontosaurus tooth that I just chipped, how will we now know if maybe that chipped piece had something really important in it, like a microfossilized piece of dinosaur tartar?!?

This is why we all carry Paleobond. Paleobond is our friend. Paleobond turns this--

That's me, breaking Science.

--and this--

Yep. Much Science. All broken.

--back into this:

Just so you know, I actually did a really bad job with the Paleobond on that fossil there. The seams clearly don't line up, which is why you're supposed to Paleobond it when it's still in the ground. I got to keep that tendon, however, it not being scientifically significant, so the Paleobond is really just a way for me to keep the pieces together, I claim.

Paleobond is basically superglue--SCIENTIFIC superglue--so it was not a big deal when this inevitably happened:

See the kid. See the fossil:

See the really SHINY fossil. Hey, that's a lot of Paleobond there, Kid! Ummm... Kid, why won't you let go of the fossil?

Debonder to the rescue!!!

So after you've broken your fossil discovery and glued it back together, and after you've glued yourself to it and gotten debonded, and after you've finished excavating it, all but the bottom, one of the paleontologists helps you log it (you get your name on that fossil's record forever if you've discovered it or worked on it)--

--and tag it--

--and map it:

Check out that kid learning how to translate information to a coordinate plane.

Smaller fossils can get wrapped and packed, but the bigger pieces get field jackets, which you also help to do:

The day just flies by, and the ride back to the hotel is miraculously full of quiet, dozy kids instead of energetic, hyper-excited ones.

When we got back, we walked down the block and around the corner to Faith's small grocery store, to see if there was something there that might make better use of our in-room microwave (Can't dig dinosaurs all day and eat peanut butter sandwiches for dinner that night!). We did find microwave meals, and yogurts, and some more fruit, but Matt--

Okay, let me tell you this story first: In college, Matt pretty much ate junk food all the time. There was a Pizza Hut in our Student Union, and I swear that Matt ate a pepperoni personal pan pizza for lunch and dinner every single school day for two solid semesters. We went grocery shopping together once for food to take to my apartment, and he bought chicken nuggets IN NOVELTY SHAPES. Seriously, rocket shaped chicken nuggets--why was I not concerned that I was dating a five-year-old?

Anyway, along with all the other crap, Matt always bought Better Cheddars--not Cheez-Its, not Goldfish crackers, but Better Cheddars. Matt's also a fussy eater, and he ONLY liked Better Cheddars. Novelty chicken nuggets with Better Cheddars for dinner, Kern's nectar to wash it down, and Twizzlers for dessert--that was Matt's idea of a fine meal indeed.

After we moved here from Texas, Matt was gutted to discover that he could no longer buy Better Cheddars at the grocery store. Where had they gone?!? We even kept an eye out for them when we traveled--buying some sandwich bread and yogurt in Florida? Let's see if there are Better Cheddars!--but had not ever seen them again since Texas.

So we're in the Dakota Mart, Matt's just somehow convinced me that pizza rolls are acceptable as dinner food (Hmm, I can't for the life of me think of how I managed to gain three pounds on this road trip even after the loads of vigorous exercise that I got... wait until I tell you about the winery visit, and how I may have downed half a bottle of wine every night for a week), and we're walking through the chips aisle on our way to the register, when I spot it. Like a rib fragment sticking out of the hillside, discernible from the rock around it only by its shape and slight color difference, there, surrounded by shelves of boxes of orange cheese crackers of all kinds, are four boxes of Better Cheddars.

Reader, we bought them all.

Out West 2014: Ingalls Family Homestead

We've been to the house where Laura and Almanzo lived later in their lives, where Laura wrote the Little House books, but this particular visit was to the the setting for over half her books, the Ingalls homestead in South Dakota where Pa finally moved them after the woods, after their illegal stint in Native American territory, after many more moves and yet another failed homestead.

This is the Ingalls homestead in De Smet, South Dakota, preserved from the Ingalls' time with prairie land, part of the Big Slough, ten acres of crops, and the rebuilt house. We spent the night here, next to the prairie:

By the time Laura moved here at the ripe old age of 12, she considered herself too old to play, but mine are scampering around the exact same ground that Carrie and Grace got to enjoy, at least:

I'm sure that Laura still picked wildflowers, at least:

  
And perhaps made the occasional flower crown, when she didn't think that anyone was looking:

Given the run of the grounds after the homestead closed to day visitors, we had a fabulous time exploring in the late afternoon sun:

Can you see why the family was frantic when they thought that toddler Grace was lost here? How would you ever find someone in this tall grass?

Especially, it seems, if they didn't want to be found:

Here's the unsuspecting prey:

Got him!

The kids worked on their travel journals while my partner and I did the housekeeping for our covered wagon:

The kid can form uppercase and lowercase letters correctly, but won't when I don't remind her.

Finally, we were all squared away--

--and could enjoy supper with a good conscience:

I had been looking forward to star-gazing here on the prairie, but I had also been dreading the heat of an un-air-conditioned night. The good news is that the Polar Vortex made the days pleasant and the nights cold the way that I like them; the bad news is that we were under-packed for cold weather, and so, like the Ingalls, we instead retired after dark to snuggle up under our covers (and beach towels, and spare clothes) and go off to sleep.

The next morning we had plenty of time to eat breakfast, pack up, and play with the farm kittens some more before the homestead opened to day visitors:

And then we explored the historical farm, where there was a lot to do:

inside of a sod house

A teenager who is now my favorite docent EVER was at work in the garage, and she helped the kids make corncob dolls (re-telling to them the story of Laura's corncob doll), let them mill corn, told them the story of the wheat loaves from The Long Winter and let them grind wheat in a coffee grinder just the way Ma and the children did, showed them how the "hay twists" were made--

--helped them make a length of rope to use as a jump rope--


--then got the older kid to "help" her make a bowline and tied her to a post. My partner and I were quite appreciative of that one--I, in particular, was not necessarily in favor of letting my little rapscallion go!

A lovely covered wagon ride across the prairie is included in the homestead visit. When you hop out of the wagon, however, right away a lady comes out of a little one-room schoolhouse and starts ringing her bell. School is in session!

The girls were all handed bonnets and the boys were given straw hats. My kids looked at me for instruction when handed bonnets, since I have a "no public headgear" rule (lice, you know), but I thought, "Aw, the hell with it," and gave them the go-ahead. And nobody got lice, so yay!

The school session was AMAZING--the teacher managed to keep the kids engaged, all while doing the pioneer school subjects with them (I must brag here that my older child was a credit to her homeschool with her answers in history and math), teaching us all some history, and discussing one-room schoolhouses in general. She got across a great spirit of authenticity, I think--the kids were suitably cowed when required to have a spelling bee, and the older kid got to read a riddle from the McGuffey's Reader to them:



AND the kids got to drive the wagon on the way back--Laura would have been so jealous:

After we left the homestead, I did the truly fangirl thing of going to the cemetery to pay my respects to the family:

Pa's headstone is difficult to read.

It's probably creepy that I've been at the graves of every member of the Ingalls' family other than Grace, but I can own that.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to random little towns, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Out West 2014: Science Center of Iowa

We stopped a little more than halfway through our slog to South Dakota to spend a morning in Des Moines at the Science Center of Iowa, an ASTC passport member (so our visit was free!). I have been to a LOT of hands-on science museums in the last decade, so I was particularly impressed that the Science Center of Iowa didn't have a ton of exhibits identical to every other science center in America (SO wearying to walk into a museum and find a tornado tunnel, a bicycle wheel centrifuge, an earthquake platform, and a giant bubble maker), but instead had plenty of stuff that we've never done before quite in this way:

ferrofluid

spinning disc that you can roll wheels across--so fun!

planetarium jukebox--you collate your own planetarium show, then go watch it IN the planetarium!

okay, every science museum DOES have this, but I still like it!

stations to make and test your own paper rocket--Syd spent AGES here! 

Even the ubiquitous green screen had its own spin--the local TV station has a satellite office for their meteorologist in the museum--

--and every day at noon she lets the children join her while she gamely attempts her live forecast over their excited heads!

Here's what the local TV viewers would have seen--I imagine they could have deciphered their forecast fairly well over the chaos:

It was officially the first of MANY road trip highlights!

Spots update: Still no word. I'm still trying to do productive things every day to help her get home if she can--yesterday I made a big yard sign, thanks to Tina's suggestion, left flyers around our old neighborhood and at our old house--

--and put a flyer on my car, and today already I've left more flyers out on the far west side of town at the kids' riding stable--but I'm also making an effort to let the children distract me from my grief, because as healthy as sadness is, I don't want them to see me sad all day. So in this free week before I start up school again next week, we've had jump rope, and Tinkerbell, and board games, and eternally more unpacking. I've started lesson plans, researching paleontology and pioneer history and rearranging grammar and Latin, and set a meeting time to talk with an instructor at the kids' riding stable about starting an inclusive Pony Club--how cool would that be?!?

And if maybe I spend some time daydreaming about how, if we find Spots, I'll throw her a party with a two-layer canned cat food cake with crunchy kibble on top, and I'll sponsor the adoption of an adult cat at the Humane Society in her name, and I'll plant a catnip garden that is solely for her use and enjoyment, well, that's still probably more useful than the weird, fanfictiony things that I usually daydream about.

Spots, Come Home

Like one of my babies, my cat Spots is rarely photographed because she's so often in my arms. Her habit when she needs some purrs is to find me wherever I am, whether it's writing or sewing or molding sticky wax into candles, and weave her body back and forth against my face until I stop what I'm doing, pick her up, hold her against my shoulder, and love on her while she purrs loudly. When she's done, she jumps down and wanders off, and I fruitlessly brush at the fur all over everything before picking my work back up where I left off.

Here's one recent photo that I managed to snap of her, however, giving me her patented "I see that you're not petting me. Care to explain?" look that I love so well:

For our recent vacation we planned to leave the cats alone in the house, as we usually do, with a friend to stop by a couple of times a week and play with them. I did so many things wrong this time, though, and made so many bad decisions, and was given absolutely no forgiveness by a series of just awful coincidences.

Our old house had interior doors that were stiff and wonky, and when you put them somewhere, by gawd, they stayed there. This new house, however, has a newer section to it with lovely new doors that easily swing closed and actually latch, of all things. It never even occurred to me to brace them open so that a cat wouldn't accidentally get trapped in a room. Sometime just hours after we left for our vacation, based on the state of the litter box in that room, Spots must have gotten trapped in our master bathroom.

Our old house didn't have any high windows, over my sight line, but this new house does have one, in the master bathroom. I closed all of our other windows, but I didn't notice this one. Our cat sitter came to the house two days later, so if this window had been shut, she would have discovered Spots, very hungry and suffering from dehydration, but certainly still alive. Spots is the brightest of cats, however, so it doesn't seem to have been long until she discovered this high window, and with determination must have finally managed to jump up to it, pull the screen down on top of her, jump to it again, and make her escape out of it.

I did call my cat sitting friend a week later because, of all things, our chickens had escaped from THEIR sitter and I was frantic and upset (they were found the next day--our friend had left them alone in the yard for a few minutes, they'd heard a rooster crowing from across the street, and immediately made a beeline over to join that flock. That flock owner gamely kept them until she saw my friend's flyers), and the cat sitter mentioned to me that she hadn't seen Spots all week, but distracted and completely unconcerned about the cats' safety in their secure house, I brushed her concern off with the idea that "Oh, she must be hiding." I don't know why I would say that, because Spots isn't a hider in particular, but I was so worried about the chickens that I didn't even let it cross my mind that something could be wrong at home, nor did I think to mention it to Matt. So it naturally didn't bother our cat sitter, who's dealt with hiding cats before, when she never saw Spots, and with two other cats in the house, there was no way to tell that one of them wasn't eating, drinking, or pooping there.

And that's how nobody knew that Spots was missing for possibly two entire weeks, not until we got home from our trip at 3 am on Sunday (we'd driven from the Nebraska/Wyoming border that day) and Spots wasn't there to greet us. Since then, I've called and listened and called again. Matt's visited all the neighbors for a great distance. He's driven me back and forth to call and listen and call again from farther away. We've made flyers and posted them. I bought an ad in the newspaper, dialing myself back from a $59 four-paragraph ad with a photo to a $9 four-line ad with a description and two phone numbers. Thanks to a friend's recommendation, I connected with a lost-and-found Facebook group for my town, and have kind strangers sharing my post and being on the look-out; I have more kind Facebook friends doing the same. Matt's left food out at our old house in case Spots makes her way there, and he'll be posting flyers there and talking to neighbors tonight. We'll hopefully be posting more flyers just everywhere; with the drive-in traffic, it's possible that a kind person found a hungry Spots and took her home with them to any place. The humane society has our info and so does Spots' microchip.

Here's my Craigslist posting for Spots; if you're somewhat local, I wish you'd share it as you can. It's my hope now, I suppose, that someone rescued Spots, saw that nobody was looking for her, and took her into their family because she's just that wonderful. But if they see that Spots is deeply wanted and desperately missed, they can give her back to me, because I am just so heartbroken without her.

Out West

We're off to dig for dinosaur bones. We'll see you when we get home!