Cave and Mine

On Friday we hiked up to one of the bat caves and then had lunch in a small cave entrance nearby. We saw no bats but found a few other creatures along the way, including a pair of lizards peeking out from under a rock crevice, and this beetle hiking up the rock wall. The big cave was impressive, but full of guano and awfully foul-smelling. Later we hiked up to a limestone outcrop above an old mining site and looked for fossils in the rocks. As usual, M. found the best ones, some crinoid stems and some shells. I gathered up a couple blue/green copper mineral specimens also. The hill was very steep and while angling between an agave and a prickly pear clump I lost my balance. I almost fell backwards into a large prickly pear cactus clump and managed to get a bunch of the nasty tiny spines lodged into my hand and hip. The tiny ones are evil and difficult to remove. The agave thorns are very sharp also and M. got speared in the back of her leg by a nasty one that bled profusely into her sock and shoe. However, the view up there was great in the late afternoon light and worth the trip, and it was fun to look for the fossils.