Yesterday, Lily and I embraced my first day of no-more-classes by taking a hike. We drove out to Massanutten Mountain and hiked up to Signal Knob, a ten-mile (roundtrip) jaunt with about 1500 feet of elevation gain. Along the way, we saw a lot of Massanutten Formation quartz sandstone (Silurian), a few trace fossils, a few good birds (eastern towhee male + female, some warblers), and some good wildlife, by which I mean more insects and reptiles.
Here’s a young bug (literally, from the order Hemiptera). Sorry for the lack of scale; this guy is like 2-3 mm long:
Fat, juicy caterpillar:
Beetle of some sort, with a lovely golden iridescence: 
And a lizard:
Enjoy. Happy May!
I think the lizard may be an eastern fence lizard
i was actually planning on taking this hike on saturday as well! but i’ve got a whole nother week til no-more-classes (im a geology major at jmu). What kind of trace fossils were you seeing in the masanutten?
DB –
I saw lots of horizontal burrows at the interface between beds — Arthophycus, I think. Also, on the final spur leading out to signal knob, there are some good examples of Skolithos.
-CB
interesting! hopefully i can finish my petrology final in time to do this hike on thursday…i will keep an eye out for skolithos i’ve never seen them in the massanutten