A Fossil Hill Expedition

Over Spring Break, my family and I went to visit my aunt and uncle for a few days. They own 130 acres near a lake in North Texas, and they call their land "Fossil Hill" after a little hill near the lake where you can find a lot of, well, fossils. They recently finished building a house there (complete with observation tower and pizza oven, both of which we put to good use). While we were there, we hiked, did trail maintenance, and went out on the lake. It was gorgeous there - the weather was lovely, and I got to sleep at the top of the observation tower with a wonderful view of the lake.

Photo by me

There were lots (and lots) of rocks everywhere, most of them very large in size. They make great little hidey-holes for creatures. It had just rained when we came, so all the moss was really bright and green - my photos really don't do it justice. All the little plants were adorable, and sometimes it would look like a miniature landscape on top of one of the rocks.

Photo by me

I learned about native plants and animals during our visit - the plant pictured above is a hawthorn tree, which we saw often. Some of the flowers we saw were Verbena and Blue-Eyed Grass, and we saw vultures and Blue Herons and heard phoebes and cardinals. One evening, we also left out some peanuts on the front porch and got to see a raccoon come to eat them.

Photo by me

This is a view of the lake. You can see that there are some dead trees that are half-submerged on the water. It made navigating the boat a little difficult, but they were really pretty and almost ethereal when I was out on the water, with their bare white branches.

Photo by me

Here's one of the creatures we found in a hidey-hole. My aunt and I were taking an early morning hike when a vulture flew out of one of the crevices. We went to investigate and found this - a baby vulture and three eggs!

Photo by me

This is one of my favorite pictures of Fossil Hill that I've taken - you can really see how gorgeous, mossy, and green the landscape is. It doesn't look like a place that you would find in Texas, does it?