Israel

As all of you with little kids know, falling back an hour doesn’t mean an extra hour of sleep. With our extra hour, we went for a drive this morning. I have long been interested in the mountains on the other side of Utah lake, which have the creative name of “Lake Mountains” on my map.

The problem is that this area is where everyone in Utah county goes for shooting practice. Any given Saturday, this mountain is crawling with people shooting at cans, old appliances, glass bottles. Consequently, the mountain is covered in trash. It also seems like a dangerous place to be hiking around. I know there are responsible people who pick up their bullet shells and take home whatever they were shooting at, but apparently very few come to this mountain.  I also know there are responsible people that make sure the have a safe back to where they are shooting. However, I wouldn’t trust anyone out shooting at targets to be safe. Once, when I was hiking with my friend Sheila, we heard some shots fired and then a bullet hit a tree about 4 feet from us. Some idiot was shooting up a canyon where there was a hiking trail. Too close of a call for me. I feel like I have vented about inconsiderate people before so maybe I should stop now. 

So anyway, I got the idea that maybe there wouldn’t be any people there on a  Sunday morning. I was right. We drove a little ways up Israel Canyon and stopped to walk around. There was lots of sage brush and juniper trees , lots of shot gun casings and bullet shells, some nice rocks, and a beautiful view of the valley.

 

We found some kind of Brachiopod fossils:

 

There was some kind of spherical fossils. I think they are fossils, the insides don’t look like fossils but the outside sure looks organic. They don’t look like normal geodes. Maybe someone knows what these are. This one was a perfect cross section of one.

Making clever shadow monsters:

 

Being cute: