Dinosaur footprints

Dinosaur Valley State Park is a national park service area hosting easily viewable dinosaur footprints. Much recommended! The park is in Glen Rose, Texas, about 130 km from the Dallas Forth Worth airport, about 1.5 hour drive if there's no traffic. 

I was at the airport because of coming back from a conference in Vancouver, and to my surprise my flights included an 11 hour layover. Well, that was just enough time to rent a car, drive, explore, come back, get through security, etc. Surprisingly tight schedule, in fact, for some reason. The only extra time I took was a lunch break and a bit of shopping.

It was a nice drive to the park, even got to admire the modern day dinosaurs roaming on Texas' fields:

The park is a large area with multiple locations where there's potential to see some tracks. Most (or all?) of the tracks are in a riverbed of a present day river that runs through the area. 113 million years ago the area was a muddy beach of a retreating ocean, and the footprints on that beach petrified onto rock that we can see today. 

The river makes things a bit challenging, however. When I visited they indicated that the footprints may not be visible. There had been rain, and increased water levels and general muddiness of the water hides many of the footprints.

Still, I was able to see and even step my bare foot into some of the river bottom footprints. Such a magnificent experience!

Best location I found for the footprints was at N 32.253129 W 97.818631, short walk from one of the park's parking lots.

The official home page of the Dinosaur Valley State Park is here. See more information also here. The wikipedia entry is here, also worth reading for the hoax around founding also human footprints in the same area, purportedly proving that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time. This is obviously not true.

Access to the park is just 8$, well worth it obviously. You may wish to reserve a visit, the park visitor limits may fill in easily. Also, as noted the viewing conditions vary.

It is also interesting that just before entering the park, over-religious Texans have put up a "Creation Evidence Museum", this one purportedly showing evidence of divine creation of the earth six thousand years ago. Again, not so... there may have been creation, but clearly there's been evolution on earth for a much longer time, including periods of animals such as dinosaurs that are extinct today.

Thanks to Tero (and indirectly, Robert and Jean) for telling me about this place!

The park:

Photos of footprints:

Texas driving:

More exploration stories in the Planetskier blog series at Blogspot. The photos and text (c) 2024 by Jari Arkko.

Day trip to Levi

Did a day trip yesterday to Levi for October turns. Levi and Ruka are the only open ski resorts in Finland. Icy experience on the slopes, but glad I went!

Levi is about 1000 kilometers from my home, so while driving is an option (if I had a car), it is not an option for a day trip :-) I wanted to fly, but since I was booking the trip less than 24 hours in advance, also the tickets to the closest airport, Kittilä, were sold out. But I managed to get the last tickets for a flight to Rovaniemi, also high up north and near the arctic circle. But still a rental car and a two-hour drive away from Levi. 

Still, it worked quite well. My flight was an early one, left home after 5am and the flight was at 7:30am after a nice breakfast at Finnair's new Schengen lounge. I was in Rovaniemi nine-ish. A bit of waiting for my ski bag and getting the car I was in Levi 11.30am. I also had a late flight, 9.30pm, which meant that I had to leave 6pm-ish from Levi. This still left plenty of time :-)

I used the time to ski. It is very early season, though, and there was no natural snow anywhere to be seen. It has been an exceptionally warm year up north as well. Levi has used stored snow from last year and snow-making machines to set up some of the slopes. And of course, there were reindeers around the slopes, always fun to ski with them:

The Levi World Cup run seemed ready, but no one was allowed to ski there, I guess they are saving it to the World Cup race that was coming up in a few weeks.

So, on the main slopes right in the village they had three slopes open, one of them being a park which was on my day used for a competition only. The two remaining ones were kind of the same wide slope, just with slightly different starting points, two lifts served them. Half of this wide slope was used for racers. I think I saw ten-ish national racing teams, from Japan, Bulgaria, Italy, etc. Not sure if they practice here often, or if they've arrived to practice on location while waiting for the World Cup.

And the slope that had snow ... well, it had ice. It was hard, cold ice with very little snow to grip on. Levi's relatively steep main runs were making each run a challenge, particularly with my not so sharp edges :-) On the first run I wondered if I'd get to the bottom safely and if I'd do more than one run... but it was ok in the end. The racers prefer ice though.

Ice ice no matter which direction you took:

Temperature was around three degrees when the sun was shining, and I think minus something when it wasn't. At the top ski lift hut the thermometer must have even showing wrong though:

I also visited the Levi Hotel Spa before leaving Levi. It is also called Waterworld Levi, a large and popular spa right in the village, 300 meters from the slopes. Very nice, they have an inside-outside pool, a complex indoor pool with a large number of water jets, water slide, many jacuzzis, a regular lapping pool, saunas... 24 € for an adult entrance. Popular with many people, families, etc., but not too crowed at the time I was there. I've also been here before. Recommended.

Skiing pictures below. I started by parking my car under the slopes... 

But it looked much better as you got to the slopes:

Restaurant Horizont at the top of the ski hill. They offered one type of meal, traditional mix of fried potato cubes, sausages, and egg. Affordable, I think it was 13.50€.

Levi area is very beautiful:

Spa:

Finnair's Schengen (Platinum) lounge in Helsinki-Vantaa (link):

Flights:

Rovaniemi airport (link):

Return back to Helsinki-Vantaa was in thick fog:

Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot or TGR. For more sauna and swimming stories, check out planetswimmer.com and saunablogger.cool websites! The photos, videos, and text (c) 2024 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. The spa pool picture is from the spa's website, copyright by them.

Still not wrecked!

Apparently, my Volvo 740 still isn't wrecked. Standing in my repair shop's yard... 

More car stories in the Planetskier blog series at Blogspot. The photos and text (c) 2024 by Jari Arkko.

Latokaski mini-caves

I was walking back from my car repair shop, having returned by loaner car... and they are working on my Volvo. Let's see if they can fix it. It's been there six months soon, and even under work for more than a month. But on the way back I run into small holes in a rock outcrop in Latokaski. Too small maybe to call a proper cave. But certain space where you can go under a rock.

The cave is at N 60.178656 E 24.664942, right next to the Latokasken asukaspuisto (Latokaski citizen's park).

There's actually the main space, a slightly smaller and lower space under a rock roof next to it. And couple of cracks.

An overview of the main and side cave area:

Main cave was shown from the inside in the opening picture of this post. Here's a closeup from outside:

Side shelter cave:

Couple of cracks nearby:

Read more urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot or TGR. Photos and text (c) 2024 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.