Tuesday, April 05, 2016

Homeschool Amber Collecting Field trip

Trevor and I went on an Amber Collecting Field trip with our homeschool meetup group.  We met a geologist there who took us up a 6 mile closed off road where we parked our cars.  From there we hiked in a mile to where an old mine used to be.  He showed us what was left of the old coal mine from 1904.  Then we hiked further to where an earthquake shifted the earth and brought the area with amber upwards.  We learned that amber comes from sap from the old sequoia trees which no longer exist.  After digging for amber for an hour we stopped for lunch.  We then went a bit further to an area that has fossils.  He showed us how to break them open.  Trevor was super excited to find one that has petrified palm tree inside.  Apparently that is pretty rare.  We learned that the area used to be a beach area and covered in palm trees.  We had a great time and excited for our next adventure.
 
Trevor in front of one of the closed off mines.
 Digging for Amber.  You can see the high tech tools we used.  Yes it is a butter knife.
 Getting mad that he isn't finding a piece of blue Amber.
 Ready to break open some rocks to find fossils.
 Excited that he found petrified palm tree.

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