This month's field trip was a work party to prepare the display stone in the Gate City Quarry for the continuing Ruffner Mountain Nature Center project. After a delightful lunch at the Golden Rule BBQ the BPS had fun hiking in to the quarry via a back way told to us by the RMNC staff and we even met a potential new member on the trail. Once again the weather gods smiled on the BPS - warm and sunny in February.

Some of the new members got a brief tour of the quarry and Nancy got to play with her new photo equipment. The small boulder we had chosen on an earlier trip was re-located and we went to work cleaning and preserving it. The results were better than expected and many more "critters" were found on the stone than expected. However, attempts to do a rubbing of the stone failed due to the texture but Nancy came to the rescue. She took some great photos using her SLR digital camera and by using "PhotoShop" was able to make a virtual rubbing that I think will work better than the real thing. This "rubbing" is to be used in the educational pamphlet for RMNC and being digital, it will be easier to edit. Even though we could not do any collecting for ourselves we did find a few interesting items that could be preserved and put into the RMNC collection along with the display we are building for them. It is fun giving something back to the city that has been the home of BPS for the last 20 years.

--Edited by Vicki Lais

(Photos courtesy Nancy Kenfield and Vicki Lais.)















Everyone trying to make a point. . . .