Spring 2003 Aurora, NC - Day 1 - The spoil pile

Da f0ssZ and I got spots to go into PCS on Sunday, and we thought that it would be cool to leave a couple hours early so we could arrive in NC while it was still light so we could hit the Cox crossroads spoil piles. The ride up was 5 hours of gleeful anticipation at what would await us at the piles AND at the mine on Sunday when we would be the first group to walk the hallowed ground. Our spirits were lifted when nearly every river we drove over was flooded above their banks. That could only mean that lots rain had fallen, thus further increasing our chances for big finds at the mine. We made better time than we thought we would and arrived at the pile around 3. To our surprise, there were already 3 other collectors there who had the same idea as us. We hurriedly gathered our equipment so we could begin our hunt. It wasn't long, though, before we noticed that the material was much to wet for our 1/4" mesh to be effective. No problem, though, because there were so many teeth on top of the piles that we really didn't even need to sift. It seemed like I was picking up a tooth every few seconds - the BEST kind of collecting. Roy and Rob from Times Scientific even dropped by to say hi and tell us about their day at the pit. Not good, they said. They were in the first group of the season to hit the NCPC site, and they said they found nothing, and neither did anyone else who went with them. They told us that our group would hit a better area on Sunday (Block 26), but that unfortunately, another group (teachers, I think) had been allowed to hunt our area on Saturday. Man, I felt like someone kicked me in the gut just then. Oh, well. what could we do? We kept picking up teeth as long as we could, but in the end, the darkness made us leave. Just as we were filling our buckets with material to sort at home, we got another visitor. Miocene Marine Mammal Man from the Calvert Marine Museum dropped in to say hi. I've been emailing this dude since way back in the day when this site used to be hosted on Geocities (like 5 years!) and I had never met him before today. He got there at dark, though, so we didn't have much time to chat. We all parted ways, and df and I chalked the day up as a success. We were crazy hungry after our long drive and hunt and it was a hunger that only Taco Bell could satiate. We ended up eating at the New Bern TB, and, as we have become accustomed, it was fantastic. I ate a little too much though. I convinced myself that I was storing up energy for the REAL hunt on Sunday! We had time to examine our finds from the pile back at our hotel, and we found some sweet ones. My best ones were two little cow shark teeth, and finding cow shark teeth was the reason we went to the pile anyway. I passed out sometime around 1 in the morning with visions of Yorktown Megs dancing in my head.