This park was quite a surprise!
It was just another day, and just another walk in the park, but this park had a surprise in store. After crossing a second bridge from the parking lot, there was a natural play area on the left and a trail to the right. I decided to take the trail first as there were a lot of people in the play area. This trail went up a hill which looked down on the natural play area. Winding through the woods, the trail followed Big Run Creek for a while before coming out into a sunny meadow which is also a pet trail.
There were a lot of beautiful butterflies, grasshoppers, colorful wildflowers, and even a couple of bluebirds in the meadow.
Coming back, the trail circles around onto the trail I started out on. This time I headed down into the nature play area. This was the most impressive natural play area I have seen. There was a swaying wooden bridge, a stick teepee and an arch made out of logs. Lot of things for the kiddos, and the adults, to have fun with.
As I neared the creek, that is when I came across an intriguing sight. There was a round formation in the riverbed. I’d never seen anything like it before.
This is a concretion. They take thousands of years to form and start with a small piece of decomposing organic material. Then under the right conditions, and a lot of pressure, this organic material attracts minerals that can eventually become a large concretion that can grow up to nine feet in size. They are often found in the Ohio Shale that is common in this area. As the riverbed eroded away the concretion above was exposed.
Exploring farther up the riverbed, and I am a creek walker, I found several other concretions, some imbedded in the bottom of the creek, a lot of broken pieces laying in the water, and a few in the cliff walls. And then I came upon an impressive whole spherical concretion.
This concretion would have been exposed in the cliff wall as the “potato chip shale” eroded away, and it eventually fell into the creek bed. Some of them break into pieces when they fall, but other, like this one, remain whole.
Concretions are also called fossil cannonballs or iron kettles, due to their high iron content which gives them an orange-brown hue.
I certainly learned something new on this park adventure.
It was starting to get dark, and as I made my way back to the parking lot, I found there was another trail off to the right between the two bridges at the entrance. I’ll have to explore that trail another day and see how many more concretions I can find.
Shale Hollow Park – Lewis Center, OH – Delaware County