Dig deep

     After a week off due to house guests, I was anxious to get back to the peace of the river.  I lent my spare kayak to a fellow club member and we started paddling (or motoring in my case) about 7:15 AM.  I followed him to an area where he had been finding some good megs in deeper water.

     He kept calling me over to dig in a fissure he had discovered a few days earlier.

     I, of course, stubbornly poked around in shallow areas with nil results.  Finally I conceded and waded over to see what he was doing.  What he had uncovered was a long, deep, twisting crack through the bedrock of the river.  Very interesting!  BUT it was too deep for my regular shovel and for some reason, I was having trouble in the narrow space with my long handle shovel.  My mind kept drifting to thoughts of expensive fossil scoops...

   

 I kept digging...

Near miss!

Fail!

Success!

     I found it interesting that we separately described our day to a fellow fossiler and I was the "glass half empty" person while my digging partner was the "glass half full".  I'll work on my attitude. :-)

     I go to sleep each night thinking about where I will dig the next time I go to the Peace River and I keep thinking about the BIG rocks I found a few weeks back.

     Look at those suckers!  Why, oh why, isn't one of them a mammoth tooth?!

Maybe it's still there...

     On the homefront, I finally fixed up the curio cabinet a client gave me for my fossils.  It needed some new shelves and a door replaced.  I spent 3 mornings transferring and arranging my fossils.

Not a job for the over-caffeinated!

    

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.

     

Off to the phosphate mine

     I got to go on the fossil club field trip to the Mosaic phosphate mine!!!

     Only 30 spots were available for club members to visit the mine this year and I tried to accept that I probably wouldn't get to go but I got to go!

     I'd been rambling on and on about it in the days leading up to the trip but my friends and clients seemed to have a little trouble understanding my excitement:  I get the opportunity to scour a desolate wasteland for 4 hours in the hopes of finding something fossilized.

     My first trip to the phosphate mine was last year and I was overwhelmed and confused as to how to go about it.  This year I knew what to do:  eyes fixed on the ground, scanning non-stop until the whistle blew.

     My method was to cling, mountain goat style, to the steep hillsides, in the hopes that the danger and difficulty of negotiating the gravel-strewn incline had prevented previous fossilers from working those areas.  It seemed to be a good idea.  I immediately found this 3.5" fatty meg and even though it has root damage, I am in love with its perfect serrations and ultra-cool green color.

     I tried to stick to a pattern of working my way up the slippery incline (remind me to wear crampons next time!) until I encountered footprints of other searchers, then I would scooch to the right and carefully move back down the slope until I reached the mucky ooze at the bottom.

     Last year I only found 1 megalodon tooth.  I did a LOT better this year and I had a blast!  Every so often someone would peer over the top of the hill, catch sight of me and say something like, "Oh!  Is that safe?" to which I always replied, "Nope."  And it's not "safe" but I fully believe that if I had lost my footing, though it would hurt like a mo-fo, I would definitely survive with only minor injuries. 

     The last 2 pictures make it seem like the megs are all laying right on the surface but sometimes all you can see is a suspicious ridge in the gravel that you check out in the hopes it's a tooth.

     Around the 3.5 hour mark, I was starting to lose my mountain goat prowess and feeling more like an out-of-shape middle-aged woman (which is what I am).  Time to retrace my steps!

     I worried that since I had already worked the slopes I was about to retrace, I wouldn't stand a chance of finding anything else.  Wrong!  Found the best meg of the day (my life?) on the way back to my truck.

Absolutely perfect!

     Jack sent me a quick comparison from the internet:

     No plans to sell my meg and I realize that the "asking" price is different from what someone might actually get for an item, but it's fun to think about.

Here's my meg take for the day (including a perfect hemi in the lower left and a mako in the lower right):

Lots of beautiful small shark teeth:

Tooth from a 3-toed horse:

And fragments of stingray barbs:

Fingers crossed I get to go next year!!!

Why is it still raining?!

     I know I should be grateful for a less-than-arid winter in Central Florida but...

      Enough already!

     We've been having quite a bit of rain in the Orlando area and every time it rains here, I can see it reflected in the rising river level on the waterdata.usgs.gov gage.

     Even though this measurement is taken at a location almost 3 hours away, you can see the correlation.  It makes it hard to revisit some of the places I went to last season as they are still in deep water.

     High water levels don't stop me from going, of course.  I spent my Christmas money (thanks, Daddy!) on new tires for the old Ranger.

     They're not the best on the market but they are new and have TREAD and I get excited every time I see them.  I might even try to avoid hitting curbs for awhile so they can stay new-looking a little longer.

     I had my bicycle loaded, as well, for a few days and it got so much good-natured attention, I considered making it a permanent fixture in the bed of my truck.  Apparently, having a kayak AND a bicycle on my truck gives me an air of being "ready for anything."

     Friday we went to a location that was new to me.  It was very close to where we parked, which was nice, but it was hard digging.  I tweaked my back right off the bat and am still nursing it back to health but it didn't stop me from digging on Friday (even though it probably should have).  I kept poking around until I found a shallow trough of gravel and rock laying on top of thick white clay.  I scraped up  a small selection of fossils but the coolest things I found were 4 crystalized shells.

     These are the first whole ones I found and they are so pretty!

     I've included my first river marble in the above photo for scale.  Being a lifetime gardener, I've found many marbles buried in the dirt over the years but this is the first one that's turned up in my fossil screen.

I thought this tiger shark tooth had a nice color; a little different from most of the teeth I find in the Peace River.

     Mastodon and mammoth enamel, turtle scute, bird bone, deer tooth, ray mouth plate tortoise foot pad, etc., but excited to find 2 snake vertebra (middle of photo) in fairly decent condition.

     This weekend is shaping up to be cold and rainy so I'll have to play it by ear.  I can layer more wool and fleece under the waders but at some point, my hands and arms are going to get wet.  Can't dig with numb hands!

3-day fossil blowout!

     Last weekend I experienced my first ever 3-day fossil dig and I had the same thought that I had after a 3 hour massage on a trip to Thailand:  

That was a bit much.

     Both experiences sounded good in my head; something I really enjoy x3!  But the reality was exhausting; too much of a good thing.

     I prepped for my weekend by constructing the poor man's long-handled shovel.  

     Why spend $25 on a Kobalt handle when I can buy a rake handle for $12?  Probably because the rake handle made me feel like I was digging with one of those long, flexible poles a tightrope walker holds for balance.  Couple that with mental images of the thing splintering in my hands and I'm back to square one. That's $12 down the drain and $25 more to go when buy the Kobalt handle.  Sigh...

     The method of attachment seems secure but I got that idea from another fossiler.

     My plan to camp coincided with the onset of actual winter temps here in Florida but an electric space heater made my tent feel like a spa.  

     Lots of fleece and free firewood at the Pioneer campground kept me in a cozy frame of mind.

     I had ample opportunity to study this poster in the camp restroom:

     Definitely on the graphic side but that avoids any confusion about the meaning.  If you've traveled, you know that in a lot of countries the old plumbing can't handle toilet paper so you have to dispose of it in a (hopefully) nearby trash can.  In the best of situations, that still  makes for some unpleasant trips to the toilet and has always reminded me to be grateful for the modern plumbing I usually take for granted.

      

     Friday's digging took place at the hole I pulled the tire out of.  After 4 visits I truly feel like I'm done with that spot.

     Still found some nice odds and ends including a couple more tiny megs, horse tooth, glyptodon scute, etc. but I'm ready to move on.

     I chatted with Steve Friday afternoon and he drew this map for me to guide me to a digging location for Saturday.

     Before Pam and I set off in our kayaks the next morning, I studied the photo I had taken of the map and believe it or not, I actually found the place!  Steve's got an amazing memory for detail.

     I found some interesting things and might go back when the water is a little lower...or I get a better long shovel handle.  The above photo shows mostly turtle material including a record 8 "puzzle piece" turtle scutes (bottom of photo) and 3 turtle spurs (lower right).  

     I also found, in the same area, some shark teeth, mammal teeth, and a curious fossil in the upper right of the photo. It is either the root of a large tooth in a bit of jaw bone, or an unerupted gator tooth.  I'm taking it to the February club meeting to get some ID opinions.

     Day 3, unfortunately, was the SNAFU day.  I was already exhausted but had the invitation to go to a good area for megs and I couldn't say no to the opportunity.  The problems started when our host had to cancel but in a phone conversation, described the location and gave the distance as 3 miles.  For me, that's a commitment.  The 3 mile return trip would be upstream with a depleted trolling motor battery but we set off on our journey with visions of megs dancing in our heads.

     At 1.5 miles I noticed that the surroundings exactly matched the description we had been given but we second guessed ourselves because the distance was wrong.  We kept going...and going...and going.

     At 3 miles, we realized we were almost to the bridge where we park on Fridays.  Another call to our host and he pointed out that we had passed our destination and were 2 miles from the bridge.  We were actually ONE mile from the bridge and that is when I came to the realization that, for some reason, this person doubles all his distances.  Who does that?!  Is he giving the round trip total?  Being secretive about his digging locations?  I don't know but I had to do some mental wrangling to try and manage my attitude.  Sorry, Pam, for getting pissy!  lol

   

     The fossils in the above photo are all I found when we finally started digging on Sunday and within an hour or so, threatening clouds convinced us to call it a day.

     The day after my 3-day marathon was discouraging.  I don't feel like I'm 24 because I'm twice that.

I'm in fairly good shape but I'm not a member of the generation that National Geographic says is going to live to 120.  BUT, the day AFTER the day after my 3-day marathon wasn't too bad.  I've got a lot more fossiling left in me.