MOM BUYS SOME ROCKS

In my opinion, it's totally dumb to pay good money for rocks, when you can just find them lying around in lots of places on the ground.  But a long time ago I gave up trying to understand some of the dumb things humans do.  Anyway, on Wednesday Mom went to a place called House of Rocks, and while she was there, she bought some rocks, because that's why she went there in the first place, to buy rocks.

Mom knew exactly what kind of rocks she wanted, but first she looked around some at all the other kinds of rocks.  And she took pictures of rocks because she actually remembered to take her camera.  When you first get to House of Rocks, you can see ideas of how to use the different sizes and shapes of rocks because there is a display of stuff built out of rocks.  Of course, if you are not a stonemason, whatever you build out of rocks might not turn out looking this nice.

At House of Rocks, they have pretty much every size of rock ever made.  And all the different kinds of rocks have names.  Here's a pile of medium-sized rocks that are called Eau Claire.  In French, eau claire means "clear water," which is where you are likely to see smooth rocks like these.  Also, Eau Claire is a city in Wisconsin.  So maybe these rocks come from Wisconsin, or maybe they just come out of a clear stream someplace.  Mom likes to buy the little bitty size of Eau Claire rocks to use as top dressing on her cactus plants.

A lot of the rocks are cut into nice shapes that you can use to build a wall.  They are bundled into handy packages and they sit around on pallets, all ready to be loaded onto a truck.  It sounds like a boring sort of life to me, but the rocks have been sitting around for thousands of years, so I guess they are used to it.

There are signs that tell you the name of the rocks and how much they cost.  You can usually buy them by the pound or by the ton.  If you get them by the pound, you can personally pick out the ones you think are the prettiest.  But if you need enough rocks to build, like, a whole castle, you should probably buy them by the ton.

Some rocks would probably make better paving stones than walls, especially if they were lying down flat instead of standing up.

Here's the shed where the forklift lives.  There are lots and lots of pallets there.  You could probably build a whole house out of the wood in the pallets.  Or several dog houses.

I think this is a different shed, or maybe it's the other end of the first shed.  Anyway, it's sort of falling apart.

Sometimes people just want a great big rock or two in their yard.  I'm not sure why, unless it's so their boy dogs will have a place to pee.  If there are enough holes in the rocks, little plants will grow there.  These rocks are limestone, and limestone usually has a bunch of holes in it.  Sometimes entire caves are made of limestone.

This rock has some interesting lichen on it.

Behind the yard where all the rocks are at House of Rocks, there is a deep ravine, and at the bottom of the ravine, there is a creek.  This creek is called Turkey Creek.  In the past, Turkey Creek went through a part of town called the West Bottoms, where there were lots of stockyards and train tracks and stuff like that.  And whenever there was a flood, Turkey Creek got out of its banks and helped fill up the entire West Bottoms with water.

In those days, Turkey Creek flowed into the Missouri River, but then its route got changed, and now it goes into the Kansas River instead.  I guess this somehow helps keep so much flooding from happening, but that's all I know about it.

These are the controls of an old forklift that was sitting around in the open, without a shed to protect it.  That's why Mom thought it probably wasn't being used anymore.  Plus it looked like it wouldn't run, even if you put gas in it.

The tire of the old forklift has a bunch of rocks stuck to it.

This is one of the trucks that hauls rocks.

Here are some interesting rocks with layers in them.  If I were a geologist, I could maybe tell you what kind of rocks they are, but I'm not, so I can't.

Now we have to ask ourselves "Who is SCOTT?  How did his name get there?  And why is it upside down?"  I have lost at least 30 seconds of sleep thinking about this mystery, but sadly, I cannot solve it.

Finally, Mom found the kind of rocks she wanted.  They were all in a big pile.

Mom thought they were called something like "river rocks," but it turns out that the correct name is "Grey Cobbles."  Most of them seem to be made of granite, but I will just say again that I am not a geologist.  Mom told me that the rocks spent many centuries having their sharp edges rounded off by glaciers or water, and that is how they got so round and smooth.

Here are all the nice rocks that Mom picked out and put in our car.  She tried to guess how many rocks she needed and how much they would cost, but she was wrong.

It turned out that she only had to pay $42 for the rocks she picked out, and it also turned out that she didn't get enough rocks to cover the space she wanted to cover.

So today, while our kittens are at the shelter getting spayed and neutered, Mom is going back to House of Rocks to buy some more grey cobbles.