Week 3 of the Master Naturalist course was just spectacular. The class was on Geology and we spent the day driving and hiking around different geological places in Austin.

Did you know that several million years ago Austin was host to a couple of volcanoes? You can still see the remnants of some lava in a small spot in the Barton springs park which is where a strong spring comes out into a refreshing pool used by many to cool off in summer. The reason for the diverse landscape here is because of a fault line called the Balcones fault. It makes east Austin and west Austin so very different. No exciting animals such as snakes in this class, but we did get to see some cool fossils and natural gypsum which looks like glass in the ground.

The above picture is of a very steep mountain bike trail. Looks more like a luge trail for the winter Olympics to me!! The reason for visiting this site is because this is the place where a huge amount of fossils are exposed. Little fossil Oysters called Devil’s Toenails (Gryphaea) which come from the Jurassic Period and are 190 million years old. They used to inhabit this area when Austin was a swampy marine lagoon. Amazing how things change.

Austin also had a mountain range which has eroded away called the Ouachita. This was connected to the Appalachians if you can believe that!!

Some of our rivers are flowing again as you can see in picture above. This was taken at the Wild Basin wildlife preserve west of Austin.

Our second class of this course started off with quite an interesting meeting today.

We were outside, being shown how a native prairie restoration project was fairing and how to organize one, when we came upon an unexpected addition to our class. On the steps of the house we were meeting at, there was a 6 month old rattlesnake all rolled up tight. He could have been stepped if somebody hadn’t pointed him out, that’s how well camouflaged he was.

This is a crappy picture since it was taken by my cell phone camera. He was such a gutsy little fella. At least 40 people came around to take a look at him and he did not even move. Granted it was a very cool day, so he probably was feeling a little sluggish. An expert on snakes there told us that he probably came out of hibernation when we had the warm spell here for the last week. Now he’s in a bit of a pickle since its going to be cold for the next couple of days. Hope he stays safe. When I leant down to take a picture he just kind of blew himself up a little bigger as if to say: “Hey I’m a big fella and if I weren’t so freaking cold I’d bite ya!”

Nothing short of fascinating countryside I moved to here in Texas!!