Glad to Have Junk in the Trunk

I had 2 consecutive days of fossil hunting planned

during my group trip to Washington

but circumstances were trying to throw a monkey wrench into the mix.

My non-fossil friend from the previous day's adventure was supposed to head up to Canada with the rest of the group but a lost passport meant she would either have to spend the day alone or AGAIN go fossil hunting with me.  I offered to rent my own car for one day (that's how determined I was to go rock hounding) but she reassured me that if she wore her grungy clothes and had some of her own tools, she would be perfectly happy to hammer rocks with me.  

I stopped at a convenience store and found a cheap hammer and flat blade screwdriver: 

good enough to split shale.  

That day's fossil destination had been picked out of a rock hounding guide for the state of Washington.  It's always a gamble, since many of the books were written years ago, and you never know if there will be an apartment complex built over your fossil site when you get there but I still wanted Washington state fossilized palm fronds and this seemed like a reasonably 

easy-to-get-to destination with a high possibility of success.

My rental car on this trip was a Nissan Versa and I drove it for about an hour on good roads 

until the map said to take a left.

The "road" to the left was only wide enough for one vehicle and began twisting up the side of a mountain.  It was well maintained and there were regular turnouts in case you met with an oncoming vehicle (which we did) but my passenger was not enjoying that part of the journey.  

Anxiety can catch like the common cold and soon I was white-knuckling the steering wheel and sneaking peeks at the odometer to see if we had gone the distance.

Only one...more...turn...

onto a rutted gravel road that put the previous incline to shame.

I shifted into the only choice for a lower gear, and crept upwards. 

Right about the time that the tires started spinning and my friend was ready to abandon ship,

we came upon a hillside littered with fragments of shale palm fronds.

JOY!!!

The guide book described this area as an old quarry which exposed an outcrop of Eocene age fossils (approx. 54-34 Ma) deposited in sedimentary formations when it was a low-lying coastal range with a subtropical climate. The rocks seemed to either be extremely fragile shale or very hard sandstone.  The shale had lots and lots of palm fronds but also a wide mix of broadleaf fossils, ferns, twigs, etc. and the sandstone had fossilized wood.  

It was not easy to retrieve a couple samples of the fossil wood but eventually I succeeded.

The difficulty in retrieving leaf and palm fossils lay in the fragility of the material but we eventually had a satisfactory selection.

Here's my "happy place" selfie:

Might not look like much but it measures approximately 12" x 15" x 2" and weighs 20 lbs and I got it  home WHOLE!  One side is a palm frond and the other side is a variety of leaves and twigs.

I actually brought home TWO pieces that weighed in at 20 lbs each and since it was Labor Day weekend, I wasn't able to ship them flat rate on Monday.  I had to load 2 checked bags and a carry-on duffel bag with carefully packaged shale fossils and 

jettison most of my other belongings in order to make weight.

I mean, I couldn't leave any of this behind!

(oh, and there were more on the floorboards and the seats)

Once again, we celebrated with a fabulous meal and a Washington micro-brew.

Back at home, safe and sound with my "new" fossils, I find it easy to get lost in their beauty; layers and layers of forest growth compressed into these perfect remnants.  Each stone is like a book with wonderful illustrations inside that will be forever unseen and only imagined.