Nolan's 1st GMR Trip

I took Friday off from work so I could drop my wife and daughter at the airport for a 6:30 AM flight to NJ and spend the rest of the day with my son. Nolan will be four in September and doesn’t really have the attention span for a prolonged fossil outing, so I figured we could spend an hour at Greensmill Run and use the rest of the day to do some reconnaissance around the eastern part of the state for future collecting trips. We arrived at GMR at 6:30 and upon climbing down into the stream were startled by what I initially thought was a snake in the water, about two feet from where I stepped in. I generally don’t mind snakes (as long as I’m sure they’re not poisonous) so after getting back to a safe distance I took another look and realized it looked and swam more like an eel than a snake. I walked up to within three feet of it and could see that this thing was about two feet long and had two small legs at the front of its body - it was a type of giant salamander (a “Greater Siren”as I later learned). I showed Nolan who thought it was pretty neat and this huge salamander then proceeded to nestle itself under the nearest submerged log. We screened for about an hour and by then Nolan had had enough. We picked up one small, mostly complete Great White and a fairly nice Mako that landed in literally the last few pieces of gravel in the last screen. We spent the rest of the day visiting as many of the spots I had mapped out from old geological surveys as we could, mainly along the Tar and Neuse rivers. These areas are accessable only by boat so while no fossils were found, I was able to get a handle on where I could launch my boat for future trips. We also had a nice stop at the Nature center in Kinstion where we were able to see just about all of North Carolina’s poisonous snakes up close - Nolan’s favorite part of the day!