How did I end up at Idaho’s Mammoth Cave and Shoshone Bird Museum? In my travels across the US, I’ve passed numerous “roadside museums”. These are always so run down it’s questionable if they are even operational. The entrance often features a large, faded, crumbling outdoor animal statue meant to attract the interest of children […]
Tag: history
What are petrified watermelons?
Are these watermelons? Petrified watermelons, melon rocks, melon gravel – these are all names for basalt boulders scattered across the Snake River corridor. While the process of petrification can turn organic material like watermelons into stone, watermelons did not even exist when these rock monoliths were formed. The colloquial name “petrified watermelons” comes from a […]
How did ancient people access their cliff dwellings?
It’s 1100 CE and you are house hunting on the Colorado Plateau near the Little Colorado River in modern day Arizona. Peering over the rim of Walnut Canyon, you notice centuries of wind and water have eroded the softer limestone layers of the canyon wall to carve recessed ledges protected from the worst of the […]