the next adventure

Laurie & I before our hike up Guadalupe Mt, the tallest peak in Texas. You should've seen the self-portraits we took afterwards, we look awful! They are such a riot but I'm not posting them here! Ha!
Copyright (c) 2006 Wendee Holtcamp

I've been totally snowed under with work, still trying to get caught up after Hurricane Ike pushed all my work back a couple weeks. I am getting very excited about my upcoming camping trip this weekend! I am going to camp at Cleburne State Park with my friend Laurie (above) and we will visit the Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose as part of research for my book (Losing My Religion: Making peace between evolution and Christianity, Beacon Press).

Basically the guy who runs the museum, Carl Baugh, believes that dinosaurs walked the earth with humankind. Yep just like the Flintsones. And Noah had dinosaurs on board the Ark - less than 4,000 years ago. So obviously, I don't agree with what he espouses, since science shows the earth to be over 4.5 billion years old, dinosaurs to have gone extinct around 65 million years ago and modern humans (Homo sapiens) to have arisen in Africa around 200,000 years ago. But I'm curious to know why he believes what he does. Why do any of us believe what we do? How do we know if we're right or wrong? That is what my book is about. As a fellow Christian, what does he think of my acceptance of evolution? (I know from some of his writing he says there's no evidence, which of course is ridiculous - there are hundreds of thousands of studies of published articles including genetics research, natural history research, paleontology, archaeology, embryology, physiology, etc that all point to natural selection and evolution and the common descent of all living organisms). I've long ago made peace with my faith and science, but it will be interesting to talk to those who think differently.

So besides camping, campfires, and S'mores Laurie and I will visit the museum, I'll interview Carl, and we'll explore some other sights in the Granbury-Cleburne-Glen Rose area (southwest of Ft. Worth). I also plan to visit Dinosaur Valley State Park, which I've been to before a couple times, but it has some of the best preserved dinosaur tracks in the world! Some of them are in the shallow clear blue Paluxy River. I hope the water level is low so I can see the prints well.

It's going to probably be cold this weekend so I'm glad I have a very warm sleeping bag!!! But hey after camping in Nepal where I literally slept in about 5 layers of clothes, my fleece beanie, and my awesome North face down sleeping bag, I can handle it!!