{"id":341,"date":"2007-08-24T16:03:04","date_gmt":"2007-08-25T00:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kateandryan.net\/?p=341"},"modified":"2007-08-24T16:13:04","modified_gmt":"2007-08-25T00:13:04","slug":"mima-mounds-of-dirt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kateandryan.net\/?p=341","title":{"rendered":"Mima Mounds (of dirt)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today we visited the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/search?ie=UTF-8&#038;oe=UTF-8&#038;q=mima+mounds\">Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve<\/a>.  This is a 626-acre protected preserve of the Puget Lowland prairies.  This area is covered in mounds of dirt.  Mostly circular or elliptical, around 7 feet tall and 8+ feet in diameter.  There are 8-10 mounds per acre.<br \/>\n[thumb:686:l][thumb:687:l][thumb:688:l][thumb:692:l][newline]<br \/>\nHow were the mounds created?  That&#8217;s a mystery that still hasn&#8217;t been solved after a 100 years.   There are Mima-like mounds in other locations throughout the world but no one explanation works for all the sites.  Everything from erosion, earthquakes, to the work of now-vanished rodents have been suggested as possible explanations.  Interestingly a report by A. L. Washburn from 1988 ends with the summary that both the rodent hypothesis and erosion are the two best hypotheses &#8212; but both still need to be proved.  I also find it interesting that new mounds are not being created.  In this particular area the trees would be taking over the mounds area if left unchecked.<br \/>\n[thumb:683:l][thumb:727:l][newline]<br \/>\nThere is a short paved loop which connects to a much longer unpaved loop through the mounds.  The prairie is home to a variety of flowers and ground cover on the mounds and is popular with both bird watchers and butterfly watchers.  It&#8217;s a bit drier this time of year (although foggy this morning) but there were still a few flowers.<br \/>\n[thumb:695:l][thumb:696:l][thumb:697:l][thumb:709:l][thumb:720:l][thumb:714:l][newline]<br \/>\nAlong the way we saw birds, crickets and lots of spider webs.  Kate didn&#8217;t much care for the spiders but they did provide a good incentive to stay on the path away from their funnel-shaped webs.<br \/>\n[thumb:685:l][thumb:704:l][thumb:718:l][thumb:711:l][newline]<\/p>\n<p>It was an enjoyable as the path wound around the mounds, and over a few.<br \/>\n[thumb:722:c]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today we visited the Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve. This is a 626-acre protected preserve of the Puget Lowland prairies. This area is covered in mounds of dirt. Mostly circular or elliptical, around 7 feet tall and 8+ feet in diameter. There are 8-10 mounds per acre. [thumb:686:l][thumb:687:l][thumb:688:l][thumb:692:l][newline] How were the mounds created? That&#8217;s a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-walking","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Xt8g-5v","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kateandryan.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kateandryan.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kateandryan.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kateandryan.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kateandryan.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.kateandryan.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kateandryan.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kateandryan.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kateandryan.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}