My back is telling me it's time

Even though I've only been to the Peace River

3 times this season,

I've engaged in enough digging that my sore back is telling me it's time to quit;

the rainy season must be right around the corner.

I have enough fabulous fossilized coral to keep my slab saw running all summer.

I didn't find many fossils this season

unless success is figured by the pound.

Coral is HEAVY but look at the beautiful fan structure visible on this piece.

My kayaks were sorely tested

but mostly by my inexperience at carrying HEAVY objects.

I had to rig impromptu scupper plugs when I learned that a kayak full of water is difficult to steer.

Here's the recipe in case you ever need it: 2 wet paddling gloves, 1 plastic grocery bag. 

 Tightly roll the gloves, wrap in plastic, plug your scuppers!

I trust Intellicast.

It's hard to leave the house at 4:30 AM, in pouring rain, for a 2 hour drive just because Intellicast says there will be a break in the storms.

But they are usually right.

Coral is the new black.

I just made this piece using a baby megalodon tooth and a red coral bead,

then a friend requested a necklace using a red coral bead she'd been given as a gift.

I told her to pick out some other beads she liked and she unknowingly picked 2 black coral tube beads I had purchased on a trip to Belize.

It must be in the air.

Looking for safe harbor

My friend, Jack, will fossil hunt

come hell or high water

and we've all been putting that theory to the test.

Jack's been reduced to digging in areas that have been dug out due to their extreme ease of access but, as he said, he's "looking for any port in this storm."

And then he finds this:

an 8" claw core from a giant ground sloth.

Hmph.

That man could find a 4" meg in the clearance bin at WalMart.

Well, I need a port in this storm, too!

The only accessible sights that I know of are a 3 hour drive from my house 

but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

I always feel a little trepidation when I set off

in my kayak into unknown waters. I motored past a fisherman on the shore last weekend and he called out, "Aren't you afraid of that water?"

"Yes, I am," I called out with a smile

and continued on my way.

I have yet to find a large fossil, like that sloth claw, but luckily those who went before me left some tidbits behind.  A big horse tooth, glyptodont scutes, tortoise leg spurs, turtle scutes and a couple of broken scutes from a giant armadillo.

I feel a little bit better now.

Decent hemis, along with a few other shark teeth

and 5 of my favorites: porcupine fish mouth plates.  Would've been 6 but I dropped one.

And...wait for it...

A great camelid tooth and tiny horse incisor!

The 2 gator teeth on the right are nice, too.

I like my jaw fragments.

Most of what I've found is from small animals like armadillos, opossums, raccoons, etc.

UFO

(Unidentified Fossilized Object)

(I'm sorry my fingernails are grungy.  I just got done fossiling!)

I haven't been able to ID this fossil, yet, and 

I'm still trying to ID this groovy find:

What are these things?

Take a closer look...

Hmm...

I'm still clueless.

It's been suggested that it is a clump of hackberry seeds, an important forage food for early humans, but it's also been posited that it's a cluster of ostracods, also known as seed shrimp.

The jury's still out but I'm intrigued.

Here's a recent necklace I made with a Peace River meg.

If you like, please Tweet, etc, etc, SolOpsArt at Etsy.com.

My fossils need to sing for their supper.

Making do in Georgia

Rainy winter, river's too deep, blah blah blah...

You know the drill by now

but I've been keeping busy with other rock-hunting based activities.

I took a 7 hour drive to Lagrange Georgia with my digging buddy, Pam, in tow, 

to visit the famous Hogg Mine.

The goal at the Hogg is to dig into decades-old spoil piles from defunct mining operations in search of...

Rose Quartz

or, as I like to call it,

Strawberry Ice

(hopefully some crazy drug lord hasn't already coined that term for something else)

and Aquamarine Beryl

(these are Pam's fantastic finds.  The red color is from iron and will be removed later)

It is winter in Georgia 

and I kind of forgot about that

so we did some last minute shopping...

then started digging.

The owners of Hogg Mine, Chris and Don, are so nice and helpful; it's really a fun experience...

if you like digging for hours and getting very, very dirty.

Here's how one of the regulars does it:

He digs down and not too far back so that the rocks and dirt above him don't collapse 

and crush him to death.

Good to know.

If you look closely, you'll see his little mascot embedded in the dirt above, and a nice collection of beryls in his bag below.

When a neighboring digger 

had to remove his jacket and stated,

"Don't laugh at my sweatshirt,"

What could we do but look?

And laugh.

Every time I went back to my truck, 

there were more and more rocks in it.

If you ever visit the Hogg Mine, follow Pam's strategy and have Chris and Don load boulders for you.

The know how to spot the good ones through the layers of dirt and mud.

Pam got some stunning treasures to take home!

The reason I went to the Hogg Mine

was because I bought a used lapidary slab saw from Chris.

Why waste money shipping the beast when I could pick it up in person AND spend the day digging?

Why did I want a slab saw?

I think Lil' Wayne says it best:

And here is my very first coral slab:

(Please forgive the greasy fingernails.  It's a messy hobby)

This weekend the river dropped just long enough for me to dig

and here's my fossil haul:

I captioned the photo for clarity.

That's ok because I brought home a 75lb fossilized coral head

and in case you're wondering,

What wouldn't I do with a 75lb coral fossilized coral head?

Fossiliferous Navel Gazing

Apparently, when I'm not able to hunt for fossils, 

all I can think about are

FOSSILS.

A photo from happier times:

Mike looked at this photo and said, "Why's she smiling?"

Ha!  Why wouldn't she be?!

It might of been raining that day but at least it hadn't rained so much we couldn't get in the river.

A wet winter has kept us stranded on dry land for much of this fossil season.

Oh, hey, here's a little  display of my Arizona brachiopods:

Very pretty.

Sigh...

I have heard many stories of people hunting land sites and finding great things 

but these stories always include the fossil hunter being told to leave, getting a ticket, or going to jail. Please tell me that last one is urban legend!

Regardless, these stories have kept me from stopping my car and looking around.

Until today.

You gotta start somewhere 

so I figured I'd look along some gravelly hills next to a highway.

The first thing I realized is that I need to keep a pair of sturdy shoes in my truck 

for when the exploratory whim strikes.

Foot vs. Cactus

Sooner or later, cactus gonna win.

Here's what I picked up.

Argggghhhh!!!  

I know!  It's nothing!

But those suspiciously rounded rocks?

Git a hammer!

And...

Argggghhhh!!!

I know!  It's nothing!

Sigh...

Oh Ye, of Little Faith

I'm going to change my name to "Robert,"

or some other masculine name, when I'm communicating on fossiling message boards

because I suspect I would get a different response from the mostly male community.

I recently had an opportunity to go to Arizona with a friend and decided to do some

vacation multi-tasking: 

fossil/mineral hunting when I wasn't hanging out with her.

I queried on The Fossil Forum, seeking info for easy access locations where I might find a fossil or two or some petrified wood.  I know we fossilers are a guarded bunch but the men's reactions ranged from condescending (referring back to me as if I weren't on the same message board and stating that my goals were unrealistic) to warnings so over-the-top dire, I suspected they were tinged with the caustic mental remains of a bad divorce.  Know that I didn't post a message stating I was planning on wandering off into the desert in a sundress and flip flops and could you please help orchestrate my demise.  I made it clear I had a small rental car (no high clearance areas), was willing to drive long distances, and had traveled/hiked in the state before so was well aware of its inherent dangers.

One man on TFF came through and messaged me 2 locations with very specific directions.

I am forever grateful.

I also received 2 replies from rock hounders on YouTube, found one low-difficulty site in a book about Arizona's minerals, and gleaned a couple more locations from reading old threads on TFF regarding Arizona petrified wood.  I was often referred to the T-Rat.com site which is filled with a wealth of interesting information about Arizona but not many specifics and since I was short on time, I couldn't do a lot of hunting for areas to hunt.

Here's the scorecard:

6 location goals

1 tiny rental car

1150 miles traveled in 

4 days

2 fails

2 moderate successes

2 wild successes

Winning!

#1 Daisy Mountain

My first location was Daisy Mountain in the Sonoran desert, just north of Phoenix and my goal was geode-like clusters of druzy quartz. I saw this on someone's YouTube video and while they were kind enough to give me the best directions they could, they weren't willing to meet up with a stranger from  the internet and show her the way.  Understood.

I did not find any druzy quartz but I had a fabulous 5 mile hike in stunning terrain.

At one point I thought I had found a shed rattlesnake tail

 but it turned out to be someone's creepy mouthguard:

#2 Camp Verde

Camp Verde is known for glauberite pseudomorphs.  

Allow me to explain it in terms that I was able to understand: the glauberite mineral forms characteristic crystals but over millions of years, the original glauberite is replaced by other minerals, sometimes selenite, sometimes gypsum, etc., and the  replacement minerals take on the shape of glauberite crystals, NOT their own specific crystalline shape.

I chose this location out of the Arizona mineral book because it was an hour north of Phoenix, on my way to other locations, and seemed easy to get to. 

The directions were perfect and not very far from my parked car I found the target mineral, 

and lots of it!

Here's a pseudomorph in hand.

These were very easy to collect, sweeping them out of the loose soil sides of the gully with my fingers, or gently prying them out of crumbly clay with my chisel.

Here are a few of the clusters after a basic cleanup.

Super cool!

#3 Nowhere, just south of Utah

My plan, after Camp Verde, was to continue north and spend the night in Page, Arizona, but I had found fairly specific directions to a petrified wood location by reading through old threads on TFF.  It was a 100 mile RT detour on my journey to Page and took me through some of the most beautiful red stone areas of Arizona.  Once I found the proper mile marker, the directions said to drive through the gate and park about 1/4 mile from the highway but it was immediately obvious that my rental car couldn't handle the terrain so I walked in with my collection bag and got to work.

Petrified wood was EVERYWHERE!

I tried to focus on finding pieces with obvious wood grain and nice color but it was difficult because not only was the wood fascinating but the ground was covered with rounded pebbles in a rainbow of hues, all against a background of orange-red sand.  I could've used a couple of days there but I only had an hour.  It was late in the afternoon and I was about 90 miles from Page, in the middle of nowhere, on a 2-lane unlit highway. I do have some common sense and it prevailed.

Here's my selfie. 

You can see the peaceful, fossil-rich, happiness radiating out of me.

Check out the detail in this petrified wood:

Arizona's petrified wood is from several varieties of coniferous trees and is approximately 211-218 million years old.  The fossils I found are not as colorful as some of the "rainbow" petrified wood you can see on the internet, but I am pleased as punch with what I found.

I got my druzy quartz after all, and it's on a piece of petrified wood.

Fantastisch!

#4 Big Water, Utah

The BLM area of Big Water, Utah was my northernmost destination, about 15 miles past Page, Arizona.  This was one of the locations from the TFF member and his directions were great.  I took the well-graded gravel road slowly and although I did have to cross a "river",  it was only a couple inches deep and I watched another vehicle drive through it before I tried it myself.

Once again, awesome scenery!

The fossils of the area are associated with the dark gray "tropic shale" layer at the base of the cliffs and the BLM allows you to hunt the eroded flats up to the cliffs.  I covered some serious ground and only came away with a handful of fossils but the TFF member said I did OK for a first-timer.

He said the piece on the left is from a type of giant ammonite. The slim tubular fossils in the middle are segments of a long, straight, tapering ammonoid called a baculite.  The fossil to the right is an oyster shell, numerous and indicative of the areas where other fossils can be found.

The minerals of the area were interesting

so I also collected some samples of those.  

It was cold enough, I initially thought these were thin sheets of ice but I think it may be a form of selenite. I found it in sheets, chunks, and "threads".

#5 Paleo Site

The Paleo Site near Kohl's Ranch in Payson, Arizona is a well known fossiling site that is extremely easy to find and access.  The weather for most of my Arizona trip was cold and rainy and my last day of fossiling was no exception.  The problem this presented with the paleo site is that it's best experienced by clinging to a hillside and picking apart the layers of rock in search of fossils.  With temps in the low 40's and steady rain, I couldn't maneuver on the hillside AT ALL, so I hiked the trail to the top of the hill to see if I could find anything.  The ground was covered with brachiopods and in the rain, they looked so shiny and perfect I had a flash of confusion: 

were there live clams up here?! 

Well, of course not. 

 These were fossil "clams" from the Naco formation which apparently puts them in the age range of 300 million years.  I collected enough to make a big pot of "fossil clam" chowder.

#6 Joseph City

Joseph City was way out of the way for me but it was a location given to me by the TFF member and  my last opportunity to collect petrified wood and since it was closer, geographically, to the rainbow wood of Petrified Forest National Park, I was hoping to find some brighter colors.

As before, his directions were very good and I would have been able to drive all the little backroads until I found the exact spot IF IT HADN'T BEEN RAINING IN THE DESERT FOR DAYS.

What a terrible convergence of weather and intent.

Driving on those muddy, slippery, dirt and gravel roads was the one stupid thing I did but the only thing I was risking was hurt pride if I got stuck as I could see the highway the whole time and I was never more than 2 miles away from town.

I gave up after slipping and sliding along 2 roads that quickly dead-ended in 

"No Trespassing" signs.

Back to Phoenix.

You served me well, little Fiat.

Now I just gotta get my rocks home.