Pandapas Ponderings

I took the day off of work to have a girl's day out with Sammy.  We headed out to Pandapas Pond, one of our favorite hiking spots.

We started out with a lunch from Sammy's favorite sandwich shop - Jimmy John's.

Gymnastics is everywhere!

We didn't really get much walking in.  We found too many things to do everywhere we went.  We spent quite a while making rock sculptures next to the stream.

Years ago, when Sammy was little, she had her little heart absolutely set on finding a fossil.  She dug up half the yard trying to find one and was horribly disappointed when she didn't find one.  We may have seen a hint of that little girl come out as Sammy got excited over finding this:

After finding the one, we started searching around the rock piles to see what else there was.  We found an incredible specimen:

It's very hard to see the grooves that make up the fossils, so I spread some flour over it to make them more visible.  There are lots of different types of fossils in this one piece.  Below are some closeups of the diatoms and bivalves:

After our amazing find, we decided that it would be fun to find as many kinds of fungi as we could.  The wet areas along the stream provide the perfect conditions for shrooms of all kind.

We also got to visit the geese, always good to see our feathered friends.

The car was really hot when we got out, so we opened it up and sat under a tree in the shade while it cooled off.  Sammy read to me from a journal where she had been copying information out of science books that I had given her.

On the way home we stopped for ice cream at the mall and snapped a pic in the mirror in the ladies room.