"Courtesy of Fred's Two Feet"

Today was perfect for getting outside to enjoy some sunshine and fresh air. Kman and I took the opportunity for our favorite pasttime - heading out of the Metro-mess and into the countryside.

Photos from our razoo today here.

Glen Rose, Texas is a little over an hour from our house, and is home to the Dinosaur Valley State Park. Very pretty little state park, with great hiking trails. I just wish that people wouldn't be so careless with their trash. We came upon discarded water bottles, a spray bottle of insect repellent, two little girl's pink flip flops - separated by about a quarter of a mile, a pair of men's plaid boxer briefs (I shall not even try to ponder this), several of the paper maps handed out at the park headquarters, and cigarette butts. I wished I had brought along a big trash bag. Ridiculous and totally disrespectful, the evidence of human stupidity made me disgusted.

Speaking of evidence of mankind....

Just before you enter the state park property, on the righthand side of the road there is a privately owned Creation Evidence Museum. The place looked closed up today ( after all it was Sunday), but there is no way I would step foot within their compound - I might have to drink their Kool-aid. This little bit of information is useful for what happened to us at the park:

Kman and I head for the river and the best set of dinosaur tracks. Not a lot of people in the park, but enough that we wanted to get started on the trails to avoid as many human interruptions as possible. We stop briefly at the first set of tracks, which have been flimsily strung off to keep people from stomping on and in the fossilized tracks. A tall athletic-looking woman, about late 40's, was standing looking at the shallow pool of tracks with her leashed dog, "Shadow". She smiles, and we pet the very friendly dog. The usual banter of "pretty weather", etc., and then the woman tells us that there are also fossilized human footprints to be found in the riverbed right in the same rock strata as the dinosaur tracks. She further informs us that she participated in a dig just up the river last summer. Kman inquires about where to find these miraculous footprints and we get a vague "Oh around here on the river".

Uh huh.

The woman wouldn't quit; I tried to walk away and ignore her before I let loose with my best Texas swearin', but no...we have to hear about how evil and stupid Darwin was; he got it all wrong, you know. And The Big Bang? Didn't happen. "Nothing grows from chaos, and the Big Bang theory was just full of chaos". According to our uninvited guide, life only can be explained as Divine Order. Dinosaurs didn't just one day hatch an egg and out flew a bird.

Well, no sh--, little Beaver. I don't think even ol' Charlie D would argue that. (A more intelligent description of the Chaos Theory here, courtesy of Wikipedia.)

After we manage to disentangle ourselves conversationally, we stride quickly to add some comforting rock and dirt between us and Proselytizing Pollyanna. Along the first half of the trail, Kman is thinking aloud things he should have said in response to her rude quackeries. I tell him that my tongue is bleeding from holding it between my teeth so hard. The entire time this crazed zealot was preaching, all I allowed myself was my trademark one raised eyebrow smirk to her face. It is as effective a communication tool as several well-spoken cuss words - almost anyway. It was pointless and not worth the indigestion to try and argue any evolutionary theory with such a mental midget.

I respect this woman's right to believe however she wishes in terms of the origins of the universe and its inhabitants; I don't give her permission to push that belief upon me uninvited, however benign her intentions might be - and the term "benign" is a big allowance on my part - she was about as benign as anthrax.

Later as we head back to our Jeep, I see this posted on a park informational sign and I laughed aloud and long: