Long, involved fossil weekend. Sweet!

     It was time for my quarterly attendance at my fossil club meeting.  Since it's about a 4 hour drive for me each way, I think that's reasonable.  I make a weekend out of the club meetings and pack in as much as possible.  On the drive down to Ft. Myers, I arranged to visit a club member's home and see his fossil collection.  He has been fossiling for 8 years and his finds are truly amazing!  But there's never enough time so after a short hour, I took my leave and continued driving to the hotel where I would spend that first night:  Crestwood Suites, which I have now renamed Crestfallen Suites.  Oh well...

     The club meeting was very interesting, as always.  Our speaker was Sharon Holte from the Florida Museum of Natural History.  She is working on the Thomas Farm Fossil Site in Florida and her talk inspired me to volunteer to sift through dirt with a microscope in search of tiny fossils.  Now that's inspiration!  It was stated that 75% of all new fossil discoveries are made by amateur hunters.

     A fellow club member let me pose with the giant megalodon tooth he found while diving in the Venice Beach area (compare its size to the one on my necklace!).  This photo caused some amusing confusion when I posted it on FaceBook as it created an optical illusion with the man in the background.  I love it when the creative comments start flowing on FaceBook!

     I fossiled by myself all day Friday but I never felt too isolated as I was within walking distance of my truck and there were a couple of ladies fossiling just upstream from me.

     The first part of the morning was frustrating as I wasn't finding ANYTHING, but I stuck with it and eventually got in a good area.  I found a small meg, decent mako, hemi with nice color, 3 glyptodon scutes, fragments of teeth from a giant beaver and capybara, 2 horse teeth, and a very nice molar and slightly dinged packing tooth from a 3-toed horse.

     I called it quits in the early afternoon because I wanted to set up my campsite and enjoy the campfire for a few hours but when I got to Pioneer campground, they were completely filled due to the Pioneer Days celebration that was taking place that weekend.  I was so bummed.  I couldn't get enough phone connection to see if Highland Hammocks in Sebring had availability (the usual phone message instead of a real person) so I crossed the highway and ventured into Thousand Trails RV Campground.

     Thousand Trails RV Campground is great for some people, but I'm not one of those people.  

     Since they don't cater to tent campers, there are only 5 sad tent sites tucked into the weeds behind the office.  I want to be dramatic and call it the camper's hell but it was more like the camper's purgatory: just waiting around, hoping things will get better and praying they don't get any worse.

     

     I was all too happy to leave EARLY the next morning for the fossil club's meet-up on the Peace River.  This was the 2nd year in a row that I was "leading" the kayak/canoers and Jack was leading the walk-in diggers but since everyone had boats, we all headed upstream together.  I'm still a little too obsessed with my own digging to be a good group leader but it's an enjoyable experience.  Everyone was fairly well-acquainted with the river so the group quickly dispersed.  

     While I was digging, I started hearing a lot of movement in the brush across the river and finally spotted a herd of goats feeding.  

     I don't know anything about goats but the goats I've seen in the past have been fairly small.  These Peace River goats were so big, I initially thought it was a group of calves passing by except that they were jumping to reach leaves over their heads.  

     Determined digging yielded one of my best river megs to date.  I was so excited!

     I also found a beat up mako, big fat tiger, worn horse tooth, sweet barracuda tooth, earbones, turtle scutes, fragments of mammoth and mastodon enamel, etc.

Success!

     It was a great weekend and would be even better if I didn't have to deal with the aftermath of using my truck as a command center.

At least it's a small truck!

Off the grid

     I understand the benefits of gridding an area and digging for fossils in an orderly manner

however

I don't have that kind of time (only getting 1 visit to the Peace River per week) and it seems a moot point when the majority of fossilers are potholing (digging willy nilly).

     Friday before last, I found a nice little spot and I potholed the hell out of it.

     Look at all the fun stuff I found!  Lots of megs (none perfect, of course), alligator and crocodile teeth, glyptodon and giant armadillo scutes, makos, horse tooth, etc., and lot of excellent small teeth.

Location, location, location...

This last Friday, I crossed the river (same area) to dig with Jack. 

     Yup, that's the best for the whole day.  My favorite piece is the large antler butt.

     The texture of it is fabulous and it looks like it was shed last year instead of tens of thousands of years ago.  I let my mind wander while I examined it and tried to extrapolate the size of the buck that lost it.  Very cool!

     The smallest thing I found also has great texture.

     This is a little fragment of sturgeon mouthplate.  

     I don't usually post pics of all the fragments of mammoth and mastodon enamel I find but I will today to give you an idea of the quantity.  

     I've quit keeping the tiny pieces because they really add up fast and I don't know what I will do with the larger fragments but still, it's mammoth and mastodon enamel!  Gotta keep it!

     Here's a pic lifted from the FCOLC newsletter.  I am showing off the end piece of a baleen whale jawbone that I found at the Mosaic mine.

     If I've had a good day fossiling, I like to enjoy an aprés fossil bottle of wine.  Whoops!  I meant to say "glass" of wine.  The day following fossiling, I like to indulge in an aprés aprés fossil 2 hour power nap.  Bliss!

     Under the category of "Friends, Fossils, Food, Fire" I want to point out that this product should be avoided:

     I know it shows a picture of hamburgers being grilled but there is absolutely no way that would work.  Pam and I tried it.  We're not even certain you could warm a hot dog on it.  A thin fish fillet would probably be ok.

     One of my approved gas stations along my route is the BP at Exit 48, off I-4.  It's fairly clean, well-run, and the clerks are polite.  Every time I head back to the restroom, I say, "Hello!" to this lady:

     While she seems like an excellent beer pimper, she also seems a poor choice to direct women to the women's restroom.  On the men's side, all they get is a forlorn NASCAR driver sitting on the floor:

     Actually, he looks like he's sitting on a...well, nevermind.