It's Been A While
I took a break from my fossil blog
to follow some other interests, for example,
going to Trinidad & Tobago for Carnival!
But that trip will needs its own blog. :-)
I spent a couple of disheartened years after Hurricane Irma covered up glyptodont heaven, doing a lot of prospecting that yielded nothing, resulting in my 2 worst fossiling seasons since I started this hobby, not to mention wet winters where the water levels didn't cooperate on the days I could dig.
But I've recommitted to my fossil passion.
My back is aging, discs bulging, and none of us know how long we will physically be able to do the things we enjoy. I'm still playing volleyball and gosh darnit,
I'm still digging!
I started prospecting again and quickly found us a spot that while it's certainly no honey hole, it does provide a steady stream of little goodies that keep me interested. I only got to dig there 3 times because it's a very shallow area and we won't be able to get back until the river level goes back up but those 3 visits added a good chunk of alligator teeth to my alligator tooth jar.
It's been a decent spot for giant armadillo scutes, as well, yielding 2 to 3 good scutes each time.
When I looked back, I was shocked to see that I started this blog in 2013.
I had 2 goals in mind for my blog. The first was to make it easy for my friends and family to see exactly what I was doing and finding. I will say, with maybe a touch of hurt, that my family and non-fossil friends admitted long ago that they never looked at my blog. I used to beg them just to click on it so that I would get "traffic" and that didn't happen.
Disappointing because my second goal for my blog was to monetize it in order to offset the costs of gas and gear needed for my hobby. The other big disappointment for goal 2 was that I was never able to figure out how to monetize it. Millions of bloggers monetize their blogs every year yet it eluded me. Using blogger (which is a free service and I need FREE) should be easy but as I dug into the monetizing info it looked more like I needed to be a web designer to accomplish my goal.
(Deer tines)
I got to a certain point in the process and was informed by Google AdSense that I had too many photos and not enough words in my blog.
Well, my middle name is "TLDR" so I thought I was doing people a favor.
I added more words and after I did that for a while, I found someone who works as a web designer/programmer/computer guru.
He ran into a road block that he couldn't get around and I decided it was time to take a blog-cation.
Now I feel rested and refreshed; ready not only to dig but to write again.
I even convinced Pam that the 39ยบ mornings would warm up into beautiful afternoons and she fell for it. She was even nice enough to bring a camp burner and Cup'O Noodles for two this weekend.
It's all well and good to dig for ancient little treasures but it's so much more fun to share my finds and f*ck the word count.
Lots of crystalized oyster shell in our digging area.
I decided to keep this perfect little beauty for the curio cabinet.
Pam pointed out that some of the oyster shell had botryoidal in it so I kept my eyes peeled and found this great specimen.
Your eyes are not deceiving you! Aimee, the meg-less wonder, actually found a few small megs.
Horse and deer tooth.
Good hauls of tiger shark teeth and...
hemis, and of course...
lots and lots of turtle.
We'll have to prospect this coming weekend so it remains to be seen if I'll have anything to write about next week.
Fingers crossed!
to follow some other interests, for example,
going to Trinidad & Tobago for Carnival!
But that trip will needs its own blog. :-)
I spent a couple of disheartened years after Hurricane Irma covered up glyptodont heaven, doing a lot of prospecting that yielded nothing, resulting in my 2 worst fossiling seasons since I started this hobby, not to mention wet winters where the water levels didn't cooperate on the days I could dig.
But I've recommitted to my fossil passion.
My back is aging, discs bulging, and none of us know how long we will physically be able to do the things we enjoy. I'm still playing volleyball and gosh darnit,
I'm still digging!
I started prospecting again and quickly found us a spot that while it's certainly no honey hole, it does provide a steady stream of little goodies that keep me interested. I only got to dig there 3 times because it's a very shallow area and we won't be able to get back until the river level goes back up but those 3 visits added a good chunk of alligator teeth to my alligator tooth jar.
It's been a decent spot for giant armadillo scutes, as well, yielding 2 to 3 good scutes each time.
When I looked back, I was shocked to see that I started this blog in 2013.
I had 2 goals in mind for my blog. The first was to make it easy for my friends and family to see exactly what I was doing and finding. I will say, with maybe a touch of hurt, that my family and non-fossil friends admitted long ago that they never looked at my blog. I used to beg them just to click on it so that I would get "traffic" and that didn't happen.
Disappointing because my second goal for my blog was to monetize it in order to offset the costs of gas and gear needed for my hobby. The other big disappointment for goal 2 was that I was never able to figure out how to monetize it. Millions of bloggers monetize their blogs every year yet it eluded me. Using blogger (which is a free service and I need FREE) should be easy but as I dug into the monetizing info it looked more like I needed to be a web designer to accomplish my goal.
(Deer tines)
I got to a certain point in the process and was informed by Google AdSense that I had too many photos and not enough words in my blog.
Well, my middle name is "TLDR" so I thought I was doing people a favor.
I added more words and after I did that for a while, I found someone who works as a web designer/programmer/computer guru.
He ran into a road block that he couldn't get around and I decided it was time to take a blog-cation.
Now I feel rested and refreshed; ready not only to dig but to write again.
I even convinced Pam that the 39ยบ mornings would warm up into beautiful afternoons and she fell for it. She was even nice enough to bring a camp burner and Cup'O Noodles for two this weekend.
It's all well and good to dig for ancient little treasures but it's so much more fun to share my finds and f*ck the word count.
Lots of crystalized oyster shell in our digging area.
I decided to keep this perfect little beauty for the curio cabinet.
Pam pointed out that some of the oyster shell had botryoidal in it so I kept my eyes peeled and found this great specimen.
Your eyes are not deceiving you! Aimee, the meg-less wonder, actually found a few small megs.
Horse and deer tooth.
Good hauls of tiger shark teeth and...
hemis, and of course...
lots and lots of turtle.
We'll have to prospect this coming weekend so it remains to be seen if I'll have anything to write about next week.
Fingers crossed!
Your non-fossil-hunting neighbor enjoys your posts!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Carol! That means a lot. :-)
Deletehey my name is Tony I have just recently over the last year maybe two became more and more of a rock hound and I still have yet to find how to identify some of the rocks that I've come across and I've come across some really cool ones I live in the Fayetteville Arkansas Area and I'm not sure who to go to as far as finding out what's what and was wondering do you have any suggestions or directions you could point me in I've got a lot of different septarian nodules and some look like they are along those lines like the turtle Rock's end of even got one that is looks like a big coin with a praying mantis on one side and then the silhouette of a completely different bug on the other side and it looks like it's been struck by lightning and crystallized if I knew how to take pictures and put it on these dang computers I would do it but I'm doing good just to be using the microphone on this computer to type out my words LOL
DeleteNice blog - keep up the great work!
ReplyDelete