The Enid News and Eagle, Enid, OK

Opinion

Discussion

November 4, 2005

Traveling back in time easy while driving to New Mexico

Breathes there a boy, who looking at the stars, never to himself has said, "I wish that I could go there." From that dream came the cartoon and movie heroes like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and lately, Captain Kirk of Star Trek fame. All of these heroes limited themselves to a mere 1,000 years in the future or past.

Today it is possible to travel back 100 million years to the time of the great Inland Sea that covered what is now the Central United States, drive 1,000 feet below sea-level, explore sea mounts, shallow waters, and shores of that time.

Let's imagine what life was like in the Inland Sea. There were giant squid, octopi, chambered nautilus, plesiosaurs, ichytysauros, plactoderms, the coelacanth, 40-foot long sharks with 10 inch razor-sharp teeth and schools of prey fish. Flying above this scene were the pterodons that caught the pieces of fish flying out of the water. All this was happening as our imagination relived the conditions in the Inland Sea 100 million years ago.

Then our car starts climbing five to 6,000 foot high hills with panoramas that blow the mind. The natural history of the area traveled is written in sediments, rocks and outcroppings that tell stories of quiet times, violent upheavals and every type of phenomena nature provided within the last 100 million years and all this is visible from the comfort of an air-conditioned car. The trip will last just over eight hours traveling from Enid. No classroom can duplicate this vivid experience.

These powerful imaginative scenes can be viewed in a trip through three states, Oklahoma, Texas and ending in Taos, N.M. The mind will combine the visual and imaginative scenarios into a mental book that doesn't have an equal on any library shelf.

M. Ruggia

Enid



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