The Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument

I will have to admit, Denny was right and I was wrong (and believe me, this doesn't happen often!) He said that we probably wouldn't be able to see anything at the fossil beds and he was right. We stopped first at the Hagerman Fossil Beds Visitor Center, a tiny little building which houses a few displays of fossils and a large mounted skeleton of Equus Simplicidens, or the Hagerman Horse. The Hagerman Horse is the Idaho state fossil and is actually more closely related to the African zebra than a modern-day horse. However, it is certainly much larger than the first horse, eohippus or more properly hyracotherium, which was the size of a small dog.

The visitor center has a short film clip about the fossil beds and how the scientists believe this large areas of fossils came to be here, but there's not a whole lot to see in the visitor center, to be honest. We grabbed a self-guided tour brochure and headed west on Highway 30 to see what there was to see. Basically all you'll find are a couple of overlooks from which you see the Snake River and surrounding area and parts of the Oregon and Emigrant's Trails. There are trails you can walk, some of which follow the Oregon and Emigrant trails, but none of them lead to fossil sites. Apparently in the summertime park rangers lead tours to the Horse Quarry where most of the fossils were discovered, but that ends before Labor Day. Once you get to the second overlook they recommend you turn back as the road simply leads to private property. So we headed back and turned east on Hwy. 30 once again as we could see the Thousand Springs area from the overlook and were curious to see how large the falls were from closer up. The Thousand Springs area consists of a large number of fresh water springs bursting through the canyon walls above the Snake River as you will see in the pictures below.

On the return trip to our rig, we stopped by a local farm for fresh sweet corn, figuring it would be the last of the season for corn and we were correct. While there I had to visit with the horses and foals, including the little fellow pictured below. A few came over to have their noses stroked and see if I had any goodies in my pockets, but I was unprepared and fresh out of carrots. Sigh.

So while I was disappointed that we couldn't see fossils in the field, it turned out to be a pretty good day trip. Another beautiful day in the neighborhood.