Digging in the dirt......
Well
the long awaited day came and with the car loaded up, my daughter and I
departed to the Aurora Fossil Festival to start our two days of our first daddy
/ daughter fossil hunting expeditions.
Almost every half hour I hear, “Are we almost there?” After the sixth time I decided to made a pit
stop (no pun intended) just inside Pitt
County to grab some
McDonalds. “One hour to go”, I thought. After filling our stomachs, we continued the
trip. Thirty minutes later I end up
telling her “We are almost there”. No
reply. I then see two shut eyes in the
rear view mirror.
She
finally woke up after I did a U-turn trying figure out where to park. I was shocked on how big this festival
was. This was my first time at the
festival and with all the cars parked in the fields I had a hard time figuring
out where the Aurora
Fossil Museum
was located at / where to park at.
We
finally found a spot, got out and decided to do a “walk about” to get our
bearings. After I knew where we were at,
we ending up going directly to the museum.
While on our way there, Skylar saw
the big Pungo Pile across the street and all she wanted to do was dig for
fossils. I convinced to see the museum first
and then walk around some more and ended up checking out various vendors and then
to the Special Fossil Exhibit displays.
I
guess all my “teachings” of the various fossils that have been on my home
office floor paid off. Or should I say
all the times I turned around to answer, “What is this one dad”? She was pointing out, as she says, “fossil
poop”, whale ear bones, mosasaur teeth and snaggletooths all about (which
surprised / shocked some of exhibitors).
Teach them young and plant that fossil seed I guess.
After
leaving the displays, I ran into Mike (MikeDOTB) who introduced me to Greg
(sggdlg). After a short conversation
Mike pulled out his fatty-of-a-mosasaur that he recently found at the Run. WOW, that thing had some serious weigh to
it. I believe it was used as a shot put
for the first ever Kid’s Pungo Pile Mosasaur Shot-Tooth Competition. I heard later that it ended up taking some
kid’s eye out.
My
daughter and I made another round of the festivities and located / met nobody
else so we decided to finally dig on the outskirts by the 1st Street Pungo Pile. Some workers at the museum stated that
because it was far away it was less crowded and you can park your car right up
to it. As stated, we were able to park
right next to the pile and I unloaded the gear. I first started by filling up two 5-gallon
and one 3-gallon bucket with material to replenish the backyard sandbox. I used my ½ to ¼ inch plastic graduated
screen to sift out a more “condensed” tooth filled mix for the kids.
More
people arrived and comments were overheard about how much items at the auction
were going for. So with the buckets all
filled and loaded in the car we decided to take a break and go to the
auction. I finally located Gerald
(GReel) who was sitting in the back and said he looked for us / checked out
every Pungo Pile except the one we were at (LOL). We ended up watching first hand on some
quality Aurora megs fetching for multiple “C” note bills that you needed two
hands to count on. We stayed at the
auction for a while and then Skylar wanted to get some homemade ice cream.
After
her sugar high reached maximum level, we ended up getting her shovel to dig at
the main pile across the museum with Gerald.
I was hoping to find my first cow shark; however, like a big meg find….
it still eludes me. The only cool tooth I
found was a tiny tooth which I think is a Carcharocles chubutensis posterior
tooth (possibly pathological? / uneven pre-serrations). If it is, then that is my first one, and
believe me, the next one I find will definitely be bigger.
We
all decided to call it a day @7:30 p.m. with my daughter very upset that we had
to go. I know if I didn’t say we had to
go, she should have been digging under the street lights in the wee morning
hours. So off to the hotel we went to
rest up for our big day tomorrow at the Green Mill Run.