Nature Photo of the Week - Week 48 - Pebbles

This week Sophia, Olivia, and I went to Interstate State Park in Minnesota. There were plenty of pebbles and small rocks around the park as well as large rock formations.

It seemed fitting that the prompt for the Nature Photo of the Week challenge that I chose for this week was "Pebbles."

The photo, however, is not of pebbles. Rather, it is of an interesting area of the park that has rock formations withe various colors. The stripes and waves of colors vary from rock to rock. It's beautiful.

According to the DNR information about Interstate State Park, "About 1.1 billion years ago, earthquakes erupted from Taylors Falls to Lake Superior. At least 10 different lava flows were the result. The hardened basalt rock from these lava flows was partly responsible for the formation of the Dalles of the St. Croix and the bottom of the river.

"From 530 million years ago up until 70 million years ago, the state was washed by advancing and retreating seas. Evidence of these ancient seas is revealed in the sedimentary rocks and formations found in the park. These rocks contain fossil remains of ancient animals, evidence of various creatures, and ripple marks left in stone by the now vanished seas.

"Actually, there have been many different St. Croix Valleys down through the ages. The original one was formed about 70 million years ago. The last one, which exists today, was formed about 10,000 years ago."

When I think of the size of the glaciers in relationship to the size of the rocks that were before me, they are pebbles - such small rocks - compared to the massive glaciers moving through this area.