Arches National Park in Utah was an amazing place to visit. There are over 2000 natural stone arches in the park formed by water and wind grating away the soft sandstone over thousands of years. There are also balancing rocks, spires and many other interesting rock formations including "bee hives".
The main reason that we visited Arches National Park was to try and find some fossils. This incredible area represents the most continuous record of life of any geoghraphic area on the planet. Fossils and dinosaur bones protrude from the sandstone embankments and dinosaur footprints can be seen across the park.
While we were there we had a good look around and a bit of a dig, we also cracked open some stones. You are allowed to take common non-vertabrae fossils eg shells, plants, petrified wood and trilobites as long as you are collecting them for non-commercial uses.
Mild and moist climates during the jurassic period added to the Morrison formation (upper jurasic rock formation) which contained a series of clays and sandstone that helped fossilise plants, bones, teeth and even footprints into the landscape.
We thought we found a few different things but we weren't sure if they were fossils or just rocks. After visiting the Mill Canyon site we went to a fossil museum & shop where we realised we had actually found some petrified wood and perhaps some other fossils. It would have been a good idea to visit the fossil museum first so that we would know what to look for!
The soil in the hills around the site is really green not from plants but from the copper found in the soil that leaches through the ground. This is really interesting as I've never seen anything like this before. Fossil hunting was really fun, we all enjoyed digging around and trying to discover our own fossils. Drew
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