As Kanye says...

...Please, no photos.

     The reality is, I don't want to post anymore photos from last season. 

 I want to post photos from THIS season,

 and this season starts this weekend!

     I am amused but also a bit nervous that I can't seem to get it together in regards to packing my gear.  Oh, I remembered the pint of gin for the campground, but I almost forgot to throw a shovel in the truck!

     I repositioned my trolling motor battery box to the front of the kayak in the hopes that shifting 25 lbs from the stern to the bow will give me a little more clearance when the water really gets shallow but now I'm trying to remember what else goes on the kayak. 

      I learned that when water levels are higher (as in the start of the season), it's a good idea to pack an anchor since tying off on the shore can leave you with a tough slog to wherever you're actually digging.

     It's probably still warm enough for a wet suit instead of the waders, but do I want the farmer john or the step-in jacket?  Decisions...decisions...

One thing I remember from my first visit to the Peace River around this time last year: numb feet.  That's when I was still wearing tennis shoes and wet wool socks.  Now I have heavy dive boots but even those aren't foolproof.  So I throw a couple of chemical hand warmers in my dry bag in case I need to recover feeling in my toes.

     Preparing for the start of my second season on the Peace River, I am once again gung ho in regards to meals and snacks, buying organic apples and prepping containers of chicken and rice, but I know I will quickly revert to a bag of chips from one of the many Citgos on the route, and a dinner afterwards, from McDonald's value menu. 

     Rereading that last sentence makes me want to declare my New Year's resolution right now: 

Maintain your health for better fossiling!

     I think I'm going to add that one to my bumper sticker line.  ;-)

    



A third lung is one lung too many

     Fossil Steve taunted me last season with visions of the amazing things he was finding in a place he fondly referred to as "The Meg Hole", a deep section of the river where, with the right gear, you could potentially recover dozens of megalodon teeth in a day.  All I had to do to access these treasures was use a third lung diving system: the air supply stays above the water (in our case, on a table) and we breath through regulators on long hoses in order to stay submerged.

Easy!

 

If you're not me.

 

     But, of course, I'm me, so, much as I wanted to jump at the opportunity, I dragged my feet. 

     At first, the water was still too cold from the winter but as April crept into May and water temps rose steadily, I had knew I was going to have to give it a go.

     On the appointed day, I launched my kayak and started trolling to The Meg Hole, only to find that one of the nearby phosphate mines had drained a retention pond into the river and the water was completely opaque.

     I met up with Steve and tried to put on a brave face while he tied my regulator to me with string and latched a heavy weight belt around my waist but inside, my anxiety was ruling the day. 

I don't like water I can't see through!

     Steve is older and has seen a lot in his days and he is fairly patient.  He watched me while I dipped my face in the water about 10 times and then waited while I tried to dive to the bottom but for me, it was a total cluster.  You're probably thinking we were diving in 20 feet of water.  It was more like 7 feet of water.  I don't scuba dive and the feeling of the weight belt dragging me down made me want to panic.  I couldn't seem to get my head down and since I couldn't see a thing through my mask, all the meg teeth in the world wouldn't have convinced me to keep feeling around blindly on a river bottom. I managed to get my head above water and gasped, "Steve, help me!" and Steve took my hands and said, "Put your feet down, girl."  I was still in the 5 foot deep section of the river.

     After my initial attempt, I assured Steve that I would try again in a minute and that he should go on about his business of fossil hunting.  He went under water and though I couldn't see  him, I could hear him shoveling gravel into 5 gallon buckets that he would then drag up to a sifting screen on the shore.  Every so often I would dip my face into the water but that was as far as I got and when he emerged about 15 minutes later, his look of surprise was comical.

     "What are you doing?"  he asked me.

     "Hanging out," I replied.  "I think I'm going to skip the 3rd lung for now and head for shallow water."

     The season ended before the water cleared up so I never tried again.  I'm not against another attempt but the planets will have to align before I purposely sink myself to the bottom of the river with a bucket and a shovel.



It's almost time!!!

     In less than 2 weeks I will be back in the Peace River!   I've been emailing Jack, trying to decide where to start and it's a little like being a kid in a candy store, albeit a candy store where the candy is really difficult to find and you don't get to choose what kind of candy you get or even if you get any candy at all, but you know what I mean.

     Time to pull the kayak off the rack and do the general prep work.  I'm still not certain if the new, longer cord for the trolling motor will reach to the front where I want to remove the rod mount and replace it with the battery box.  The shallow water of the Peace River in the winter requires the fossiler to get in and out of the kayak to navigate obstacles and having a battery cable roping off one side of the yak would make that task infinitely more difficult.

     Luckily, I already had the rudder line replaced this summer and had them replace some of the gear bungies while they were at it.

     I'm also feeling a chill in the morning air so I need to remember which wet suit or waders or fleece or...I'll just bring everything the first time.

     I sorted through two boxes of less than perfect fossils and most of them are going to the club meeting to be used in sand box digs for the kids at different fossil functions but I still have a cabinet full of interesting things and the question is, "Where will I put everything I will find this season?"

     My quest for the perfect, affordable curio cabinet continues.  It will be devoted to fossils and minerals and is destined to bore the pants off of my friends but provide hours of enjoyment for ME!

          This mammoth toe bone is one of the biggest fossils I've found so far but this season...who knows?  Get me to the candy store!

Home away from home

     I really wanted someone, anyone, to camp on the river bank with me so that we could dig for 2 days without all the travel time, but no one's schedule ever coincided with mine.  I briefly considered and quickly rejected the idea of camping by myself on the river.  I don't honestly think anything bad would happen but there are laborers and homeless men and backwoods types with crossbows hanging around and I wouldn't sleep well thinking about them.
   

(glyptodon scute necklace)

     I stayed at 3 different campgrounds along highway 17, which were great in regards to proximity but absolutely sucked in all other ways.  They were expensive,  $50 for an afterthought patch of weeds to put my tent on, and noisy: either mere feet from the highway or stuck half a mile back in the brush with all the partying rednecks.

     Eventually, I widened my search area and came up with Highland Hammocks State Park in Sebring, FL, my new home away from home when I'm fossiling.  It's a bit of a haul, 20-30 minutes from my launch sites, and the first time I visited I was put off by all the RV's but it's so well-managed and peaceful, I quickly settled in.  I always get the same couple of campsites and the surrounding wall of RV's creates a pleasant white noise, devoid of humans, as they never leave their rolling apartments.

     The rangers and campground hosts got to know me but the first time I went into the office for my site assignment, the ranger looked me over and said, "Quiet time is 11 pm but I don't think we'll have to worry about that with you."  I kept my mouth shut but in my head I was replaying the gin-soaked kayak camping trip only weeks before when, by 9 pm, the other campers had to ask us middle-aged folk to please settle down.  I'd be lying if I said I don't mix a big G&T to enjoy after a long day in the river, but fossiling takes all the rowdiness out of me so the other campers at Highlands are safe.  In fact, I had a very nice lady come to my tent and offer me the fixings for s'mores but I was too tired to make them.

(turtle scute necklace)

     On my second visit, the campground hostess came over and announced, "My husband is jealous of your campfire; he says you must have been a Girl Scout," while pointing behind her where I saw a glum man seated in front a small pile of smoldering logs.

     "No," I called over to him, "I cheat and use fire starting cubes from WalMart."

     "So did I," he said, defeated.

     "Use more!"  His fires improved dramatically after that.

     

(turtle scute necklace)

     One time when I was checking in, I waited in line behind 3 young orthodox Jewish men wearing white shirts with tzitzit and yamulkes.  It was Friday evening, Shabbat, and they were asking if there was a grocery store within walking distance.  There was not.  Highlands has a "middle of nowhere" feel to it which made the presence of these men seem all the more surreal, but then, I was really, really tired.

     Another time, rising in the predawn gloom to head back to the river, an elderly campground host greeted me, "Good morning, young lady!"  It's good to be home.

A very expensive handle

     Towards the end of the fossiling season I received an invitation to meet one of the old timer river diggers and spend a day digging in one of his favorite spots.  I know there's no such thing as a secret spot on the Peace River but having found a genuine "undug" location, I know that some areas are better than others and there's always the chance of finding one little picket that everybody else missed, like a Peace River lottery win.
     I was told that the water at this location was deeper and I would need a shovel with a long handle and since I am very gung ho regarding my hobby I ran to the hardware stores and started checking out shovels.  None of them had a handle any longer than normal BUT I spied a long, strong handle on a Kobalt mortar hoe and figured I could lose the hoe and replace it with a shovel head.

    When I saw the price tag, I hesitated.  $24.95 is quite a chunk of change for a wooden handle.

Sold!!!

     Mike saw the mortar hoe in my truck and when I admitted I had just bought it for the handle he asked, slightly bewildered, "Kobalt? How much did you pay for it? For the handle?!"  But he's a good sport, removing the hoe and welding on a shovel head for me.  Hindsight being 20/20, I probably should have chosen an equally expensive shovel head but I did find out that the Kobalt handle is the one to use so I felt vindicated regarding the cost.

Here's a little helper demonstrating the length of the handle, well-used when this photo was taken.

     And having that extra handle length made a big difference.  I now know that digging in deeper water is not for me;  it's physically exhausting and not as productive since I work so my slower.  Fossil Steve likes to fill a 5 gallon bucket, drilled full of holes, with sand and gravel, bounce the bucket until most of the sand sifts out, then dump the bucket on a screen supported by a stand  on the bank.  This method has lots of merit because you don't keep refilling the areas you are working on with debris, but I'm not strong enough to do this all day long and even filling a floating screen in deeper water takes its toll.

     Currently, it's a moot point.  I was out with Pam, probing a shallow, well-dug area of the river and managed to find a fissure in the rock; potentially very exciting.  I dug and dug, pulling up all manner of odd things including 2 old brown glass whiskey bottles and a 3' long aluminum probe, but not a single fossil.  I continued to pry large stones out of the way until I bent my shovel head!  Then the prying stopped.  I admitted defeat.

     Mike, bless his heart, was doing his best to knock the bent shovel head loose and broke the handle.  Oh well...it's not the most expensive hobby but between $25 shovel handles, lost prescription sunglasses, trolling motor batteries, and gas to get there, it ain't cheap, either!

Part of the next generation

     I know I will never find a complete mammoth tusk or the full skeleton of a sabertooth cat; those days on the Peace River are over.  Do I wish I was hunting the river back then, at least a couple of decades ago?  Part of me wishes for that, but the other part of me realizes that now I would be a couple of decades older than I already am so I'll stick with what I've got.

     I hear many stories about this first generation of fossilers and it sounds like most of them sold off the bulk of their collections, excuses ranging from making money (of course), trading for other items (a Camaro in one instance), or the simple fact that a mastodon leg bone and skull takes up an enormous amount of space in the house.

     I joined the search after the finds got smaller but are still just as beautiful. I never come home with an empty bucket and it will take decades for these little treasures to jam up my house.

     I helped guide a club field trip early this summer.  I ended up only having 3 people to look out for and they pretty much knew what they were doing so I started poking around and found a pocket of gravel under the mud that everyone else was avoiding, understandably because it's very mucky and slick and not much fun to force through a screen but I figured it was my best bet for finding anything in a well-dug area.  My newbie luck held and I uncovered a little mud hole that kept me busy all day, not petering out until right before it was time to go.  Here's a laundry list of my finds:

sloth tooth

deer tooth

fragment of beaver (?) tooth

6 decent megs

3 makos

dolphin ear bones (2 bullas, 1 periodic)

alligator scute, vertebrae, and teeth

glyptodon scute

pieces of deer antler

big joint bone

big chunk of mammoth tooth as well as little fragments

chunk of mastodon tooth

turtle and ray parts inc the big chunk of shell in the photo above

fragments of horse teeth

dozens of shark teeth inc. great hemis and tigers

The Zookeeper powers on! (Albeit, more like a petting zoo with small, common animals)

     Right now the most beautiful photo of all is this:

     I've gone back to checking the river gage every day and this graph shows that it is almost at a manageable depth for me.  Last season I learned to extrapolate the depth shown at this one spot to the areas where I would normally dig but for the most part, when it's down, it's down.  I finished out last season digging in this deeper water but it was even more exhausting than usual, harder to find much, and I ended up losing my prescription sunglasses, although I was surprised it took me that long as I had a bad habit of pushing them up on my head and forgetting about them.

     It will be a while before I can afford new sunglasses but I do have a new battery for the trolling motor and I finally got a little thermos for a good price so I don't have to be jealous anymore while I watch Jack sip steaming hot coffee from his kayak.

     I've been working out and realize I can't slack off on that.  I got lazy last season and was completely shot by June; if I'm not bounding out of bed on fossil day, something's wrong.

     I'm already dreaming of all the amazing little things I will uncover in my second season on the Peace River...

     

A bad day fossiling...

     To co-opt the sentiment on a popular bumper sticker, a bad day fossiling is better than a good day at work.  Word!

     After I cleaned out my amazing fossil honey hole it was back to the newbie world of poking around in the river and looking forlorn while the old guy's announced their treasures, one find at a time.  I no longer received any sympathy, however, as they were all aware of my good fortune and never hesitated to point out that I was entirely able to find my own fossils now.  

     We gathered in the river one weekend and I moved off to the side to dig around a tree stump.  I felt a sharp disappointment that I wasn't finding anything good.  Mentally, I was bitching and moaning and trying to decide whether or not to move to a different spot, etc.  I made myself a little bit miserable doing something I love.  

  It wasn't until that evening, when I was sorting through the day's fossils, that I realized I had actually had a pretty good day.

     I found an assortment of beautiful shark teeth, 3 full glyptodon scutes, a perfect scute from a giant armadillo, tortoise foot pads, turtle scutes, interesting shell casts, etc. I had to step back and rethink how I was going to approach this hobby.  I have yet to suffer a total shutout but it could happen and if it does, I don't want to view that day as a loss.  Every day I spend on the river is an opportunity to not only find some great fossils but to also be active, be outside, and be witness to a unique activity and a side of Florida that relatively few people ever get to experience.