The parlance of fossiling

     Once again, the distance of 3 miles was mentioned to reach a fossiling location and once again, the actual distance was just over 1 mile.  I'm still learning the language of fossiling, where paddling upstream against a swift current can make 1 mile feel like 3. 

 These are the times when I feel thankful for my trolling motor.  

      I know, I know, it's all about the journey and not the destination, right?

     Still, I want to get where I'm going!

     My journey last Friday was unique in a number of ways.

     I was pulled over by the law for the first time during 2 years of long drives to the Peace River.  

No, I wasn't doing 80 in one of the many 0-mile-per-hour school zones.  My offense was pulling out of the Hess station at 6:45 AM without headlights.  The sheriff's patrol car did such an urgent U-turn to nail me, I started to have a panic attack.  I couldn't imagine what I was doing wrong but I suspect the officer imagined something far more intriguing inside my beat up old Ranger than the reality of a middle-aged woman with no makeup and "morning hair" nervously gripping a cup of coffee.

No ticket.  Just a warning.

     I arrived at the boat ramp, ready for a grueling (read "sloooow") journey upstream so when Pam and I quickly reached the landmark we were looking for, it was with light hearts that we went ahead and completed the 3 mile trip; the worst that could happen is we would have to turn around.
     We found lots of gravel and while we didn't find much in it, I really enjoyed the variety of rocks we were dealing with:  all sizes, styles and colors of rocks, clays and sand which heightened my sense of "any minute now!"

     Slim pickin's still yielded a great fish mouth plate, a meg measuring 2⅞" (and I don't even care that one corner of the root is gone!) and 3 garfish scales, unusual to catch in a screen with ½" mesh.

     The biggest surprise of the day was the cluster that greeted us when we returned to the boat ramp.  There were at least 2 groups of people on fossiling trips and assorted individuals in kayaks and canoes milling around and we all wanted to leave at the same time.  

     In the midst of this chaos was a face familiar to me from FaceBook, Mark Renz, author of the first book I bought about Florida fossils.  I'm probably the only person in my fossil club who hasn't met him but it was still surreal to cross the bridge from laptop to life.  I introduced myself but there was too much commotion for chitchat so I just called out, like the #1 nerd that I am, "I'll continue to follow your adventures on FaceBook!"

Security!