The Whiskey Bridge

Yesterday we drove to the HWY21 bridge over the Brazos River (called the Whiskey Bridge because it once marked the boundary between a wet and dry county) to go fossil hunting. This location is known for its 35 million year old Eocene marine fossils. The weather was cold and a little wet, but we bundled up. What we did not expect was that the Brazos River was pretty high from the weekend rains so we could not get as far into the fossil area as we wanted, but we all found some fossils (mostly shells). Katie found the very first one, and Kris showed her talent in patient excavation of delicate fossils. After that we drove a little further on to see Texas A&M (reminds me of the University of Illinois; architecture building shown here). On the way there and back we saw storm damage to trees and a building or two - the weather to the east had been much worse than in Austin. The reservoirs to the west still need water, for example Lake Travis has only come up a foot since November. At one point yesterday we saw about 8 cows huddled on an island in a flooded field, but it must not have been that bad because the island was empty when we drove by later. When we got home we did "chores." I skipped watching the Super Bowl - Kris wanted to watch the commercials but I just wasn't into it this year (I hear it was the most watched ever). Today we managed to get everybody to their locations on time.