Rock Flipping Day at Horsetail

Yesterday September 7th was International Rock Flipping Day. Thanks to my friend Dave from Osage+Orange, I found out just in time! What is International Rock Flipping Day? That’s when you turn over any large rock you can, to discover what lives underneath, but you have to place it back the way you found it…that’s the rules!

I decided to force my son to walk with me at Horsetail Lake to go rock flippin’. He didn’t have a choice. Teenagers are so hilarious. They hate what you love, oh so they say…but force them to take a hike and about 10 minutes into the trip they’re saying, “Mom! Did you see that…..” and “Mom! Look what’s over there!” Yeah, they pretend to hate what you love…but we know better.

Horsetail Lake is region 7 of the Chicago Cook County Forest Preserve District. The trails are labeled by color and just look what we spotted:

I love this shot of the sun peaking through the trees on the trail. This is the yellow trail. We started on black, followed the brown trail and looped around the yellow trail back to Horsetrail Lake.

Let’s get to some rock flipping!

We didn’t find a ton of large rocks, but this one uncovered a few species. Here you can see 2 bugs, 1 spider, and a tiny snail thing. Look real hard. The interesting thing was, I was expecting to find more on the ground, but they were all clinging to the rock!

Here is a close up of Mr. Spider and Mr. Bug. I will put you guys back where you belong! I hope you weren’t too scared when you saw this big human disrupt your afternoon nap!

Did we find any horse tails at Horsetail Lake?
Why yes we did:

Here is a group of very happy campers, enjoying the end of summer with a treck though the woods on their lovely horses. I count 4 visible horse tails and 7 actual horses.

As we end our enjoyable trail hike I ask, “Will you go with me next time?”

“Nope.” My son replies, “Too boring.”

Oh but I know better. You’ll enjoy it the next time I force you to go as well!

Rock-Flipping Day Reports

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