09 Trip - SE Washington ... Blue Lake Rino!!!

After university, four of us went on a car trip to the states. When we hit a fork in the road, we flipped a coin and ended up in this same area of Soap Lake and the Grand Coulee Dam.
In 2009, it was déjà vu as my husband and I drove the highway and looked up at the mesa formations. I remembered a horse back ride along some of these ridges.
I also remember meeting a university professor who talked about a cave with a mold of a young rhinoceros. He gave us directions and we hiked up to Blue Lake over dry hills and rockfalls of shale. We were amazed to look in and see the imprint in the bottom and roof of the small cave.

This model depicts a rhinoceros that lived during the Miocene period and was engulfed by a lava flow. As the lava hit the lake, it cooled and left a unique mold of it's body that is visible near Blue Lake at Sun Lakes state Park. A few bones of the large animal were also in the area. It was a young animal and was probably dead and bloated. The size would be 8 feet from snout to tail. This took place in the time between one and 25 million years ago.

It is one of Washington's most famous fossils and is widely know to the world's community of vertebrate paleontologists.Here is a link: http://www.spokaneoutdoors.com/rhino.htm

These are some of the other animals that lived during this period. The funny part of all this is that no one believed my story of the rino. Now I have documented proof!