Club camp-out: Tonz of DRAMA!

Not!

     Just thought it would get more people to read my blog.  :-)  The reality of the fossil club camping trip was a group of really nice people getting together to indulge in a shared passion for fossil hunting.

Day 1

     My fossil-digging buddy, Pam, arranged the weekend for us at the Payne Creek State Park primitive camping area.   I liked the "Youth Camp" sign and there were actually a couple of "youths" in our group.  And what a group of prepared campers!  Everyone was completely set up to be lost in the woods for a month.  

I think it speaks to the success of the backyard chicken movement that everyone had at least a dozen eggs from their own hens.  I calculated a gross of happy hen eggs in the campground.

     I kayaked and dug with Pam and 2 other ladies on Friday but a wet winter has kept the river level frustratingly high and we didn't find much.  I worked an area that yielded tantalizing fragments of megalodon teeth with light brown roots (not the usual black of the Peace River) but I never found a complete tooth.

     A camping caution:  don't be a hero and try to find your toothpaste without turning your headlamp on.  It could go terrible wrong.

Day 2

     Day 2's selfie shows I am still smiling, feeling good after a solid night's sleep to the sound of gentle rain.  The only problem was, the gentle rain was forecast to turn into a monsoon later that afternoon but I shelved my concerns to focus on the river.

     The group went downstream of me for some distance as I was already embedded and I spent the day digging alone which doesn't bother me.  What bothered me was not finding any fossils.  By 1pm the thunder was rolling and clouds blowing in and I was ranting out loud, "Could you people (previous diggers) not have left me one single good fossil?!"  I was mid-curse when I saw this in my screen:

     Not perfect but a pretty darn good meg by my standards, measuring 2.75".  My work for the day was done so I packed it up and headed back to camp where it was starting to rain and get dark from storm clouds.  The ranger showed up to tell us that very bad weather was coming and we could hang out in the visitor center if needed.  

     And so I made the executive decision to leave.

     True to my nature, I have stubbornly been hanging on to one of the oldest 2-man tents in continuous usage.  It's tiny and the UV-ravaged fly is about as waterproof as cheesecloth.  I own an almost brand new 4-man tent and I was suddenly wishing, very badly, that I had it with me.

     I announced to the group that I was packing it in and heading to a hotel for the night and was amazed at the amount of ribbing I got.  I'm thinking they were trying to make themselves feel better about the tornado watch and maybe a little bit jealous.  Either way, I've earned my chops camping in inclement weather so I didn't waste a second waving goodbye.  The storm was horrible and I would have been terrified and miserable so, no regrets!

Day 3

     I started day 3 clean and refreshed and very determined to find something good.  I didn't bring my new GoPro on the trip but, as I made my way down river, I pondered how it would do with slow, plodding activities.  Fossiling is the opposite of, say, snowboarding.  I'll test it out in the near future.

     The group stayed together to dig.  There is plenty of gravel in this area and we found a few little things but for all the work, there wasn't much to show.  The water and wind were both cold and only Pam and me were outfitted in wetsuits.  Spirits were flagging.  We called it a day by 1pm but I admired them for sticking it out that long.  I hate being cold and I wouldn't have made it without my thick neoprene skin.

     

Conclusion

     First, I'd like to apologize for the hole in the butt of my favorite camo shorts.  I didn't realize it until I got home so I'll mend those before I bring them out in public again.

     I found 4 interesting small teeth in addition to the meg.

     The top tooth is either from a manatee or a baby mastadon, both exciting possibilities.  The teeth below it, from left to right, are (probably), small bison, porpoise, and deer.  All 4 are curio cabinet-worthy.

     The rest of the haul was a bit bland as everything was very worn or broken.  

     I'm back home and running around like crazy playing catch up so I probably won't do a 2 night camping trip again.  But I'm still open for the occasional overnight on the river.

Fossils are SEXY

     I've been trying to convince people for a couple of years now that fossils are sexy but I never really knew how to get the message across.

Until now.

     I came across this photo while researching dolphin earbones.  I like things that make me think and this artist's work really made me think about my fossils.  I'm getting some ideas for my personalized Christmas card!  (Be not afraid!  I will hire a body double, lol!)

     My day to dig is Friday.  Always.  But last week encompassed spring break and due to visits from out-of-town guests, I switched to Saturday.

     And I liked it.

     I had myself all worked up to believing that weekends sucked because, heaven forbid, I might see other people on the river, but it was nice.  Everybody that floated past was happy, and the Orlando traffic was a breeze, and there were no more paying groups with guides than I see on Fridays.  Logistically, Friday is still the best day but I won't rule out weekends when availability crops up.

     Last week also encompassed my birthday and one of my dearest friends sent me this surprise from the great midwest:

     My very own GoPro!!!  The box is emblazoned with the slogan "Be a Hero" and I'm letting you all know that won't be happening, but I plan on having some serious fun with this.  Too bad I can't figure out how to post video to my blog.

Baby steps...

     So, as usual, I was cruising through WalMart, looking for a fight, and I saw a fabulous shovel head that would be perfect on my $25 Kobalt mortar hoe handle.  

This shovel comes with a built in step to make it easier to dig holes and you might think that would be the attraction for me but the real reason I wanted it is that the built in step helps keeps everything from sliding off the back of the shovel head as I'm transferring it to my floating strainer.  Easy!

...not...

     I took the raw materials to Mike's house and told him I needed "X" shovel head transferred to "Y" handle and could he please weld the finished product while he was at it and that's when it got crazy.  He couldn't get the head off the shovel and was bending the built in step all to hell and back with a 10 lb sledge hammer and kept going at it with a grinder and I was getting more and more agitated and hovering until he missed with the sledge and took out his finger instead.  That was a bad moment.  I waited a full 24 hours before asking him if he could finish the welding on the shovel.

     After all that, my new long handle shovel is fabulous!  The photo was taken after ONE DAY in the river.  I'm rough on my gear.

     It may seem anti-climatic to post pics of the fossils I found Saturday but I'm going to do it anyway.

     Here are the aforementioned dolphin ear bones.  The top 3 are called bullas and the bottom 3 are periodics.  I assume they perform different functions within a dolphin's ear but as you already know, I got distracted during my research.

     These are fossilized fish mouth plates.  Not perfect but the form is so distinctive and eye-catching, they always stand out in a sieve full of gravel.

     And here's the haul for the day.  Not too shabby!  Another tapir cap (I must be on a tapir cap kick), a sweet mako blade and some decent little megs, loads of small teeth, turtle scutes, etc., and a worn canine that I am still attempting to ID. 

     Counting down the days til my next dig!

Orange blossom season

     This is a wonderful time of year to be in the river because all the orange groves in this largely agricultural area are in bloom and the smell is amazing!  Much better than the smell of the dead cow we dug next to last season.
     The only constant thorn in my side is the cost of filling my gas tank for the 4 hour round trip every week.

Ouch!

    And I drive a very small pickup truck.  At least the rest of the hobby is inexpensive.  

     I am trying to capture the mural painted on a grocery store in Wauchula but there are always trucks parked in front of it so I will share it in segments.

Part 1

     So I had an amazing day on Friday and it was made possible by friends who shared knowledge and experience and access to an otherwise difficult to reach part of the river.  I am serious when I say, "I would be nothing without them."  I did have to paddle in a canoe and I think I've made my feelings regarding paddling abundantly clear, but it was a small price to pay for a stellar day.

     We got to the area where the guys were going to dig in holes they had already started.  Hmmm....Where to dig?  Since they had previous success, I moved a little downstream and tried to imagine the line of gravel they were working.  It seems funny now that Steve kept telling me to go to another area and I know he was doing it to improve my chances of finding good fossils but as usual, I stubbornly stuck to my guns and got to work in my chosen spot.

And it really paid off...

A baby mammoth tooth!

     It's so tiny and perfect and even has some of the root.  Hard to believe how big the teeth were in adults by comparison.

     That is my hand on an adult mammoth tooth; not one that I found as I have yet to find anything that big, but I'm cleaning up on the little stuff!

     

     I also upped my meg game by finding my NEW best river meg to date.  This one measures 2" on the diagonal and has almost perfect serrations all the way around.  Two perfect tapir caps exactly doubles my collection of tapir caps (being a newbie, I only had 2 in the fossil cabinet).  There is also a lower mako in the above photo but its root is damaged.

     I could have ended my day right then and there but I aspire to be a human excavator so I kept digging gravel and had a full bucket of goodies for the first time this season.

     Variety is the spice of life and my Friday was plenty spicy.  Glyptodon scutes, turtle puzzle pieces, TWO horse incisors (one with most of the root) as well as other horse, deer, and camelid teeth, loads of various armadillo scutes, garfish scales, a tiny toe bone (not sure which animal it came from), tortoise spurs and foot pads...

     ...and lots of other goodies including loads of smaller shark teeth.

     What a banner day!  I don't know when the opportunity to return to that area will arise again but I'll jump at the chance if it comes.

      The perfect day was rounded off by the discovery of the last 2 bottles of $5 clearanced (but excellent) wine, languishing on the bottom shelf of a rack at the Wauchula WalMart.

      No complaints.

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.