A trip with the kids to St. Clair PA

My wife works overnight Friday into Saturday so I'm always looking for things to do with my kids on Saturday mornings while my wife sleeps. I had heard about St. Clair and it is about 2 1/2 hours from where I live in NJ, so I figured what the heck. I packed up the kids and off we went. After the long trip, we finally arrived at the obscure 1/4 telephone pole landmark. I knew that my son, who is only 2, wouldn't last long, so I figured an hour of collecting would all we would have. As it turned out we collected for 45 min. and it was just enough. We found 2 or 3 really nice plates, along with many other smaller pieces. We really couldn't carry much more out with us. The area is littered with pieces of shale containing fern fossils, although the pieces that are laying on the ground generally have had the white wear off leaving just the imprint. To get the pieces with the famous white on black, we had to find the undisturbed formation and chip out a couple of plates. It really wasn't very difficult. Keeping my son off of the hill covered with broken shale was. Luckily there was a large puddle right where my daughter and I were collecting that my son enjoyed throwing rocks into - it kept him busy for about a 1/2 hour. Unfortunately some of the rocks he was throwing were the fossils my daughter had stacked neatly near his jogging stroller - ahh little brothers.