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Got up with the chickens yesterday morning and got on the road at 7:00am with my wife Tina, stepdaughter Rebekah, and grandson Ben. Tina, Ben, and I were in "the barge" - my big flat tandem kayak that maneuvers like a battleship. Rebekah took the single kayak. We got to the ramp right about 9:00am and went upstream with the goal of heading far north to a good spot we had scouted previously. Immediately it was obvious that the river was extremely low - lower than I have ever seen it. Several kayakers were launching at the same time as us and most of them didn't look local - it must have been some kind of meetup and group paddle. Only one of them had a sifter visible, so I figured most of them were not hunting. We ended up talking to a nice young woman in a tiny kayak who asked us about this stretch of the river. She had no idea how low it was or how high it could get. She was moving quicker than us and she soon vanished upstream ahead. On the paddle up, we passed a couple of casual hunters in a rented Canoe Escape canoe. They had those scoops on a long handle that is better used at the beach to collect shells. It's not really the right tool for this stretch of the Peace. We exchanged brief pleasantries and moved on - eager to reach the spot I wanted before anyone else could park on it. I hadn't expected so many people on the river on a tuesday, so I was a bit worried about losing our spot. Eventually we stopped seeing people and we took a brief break on the side of the river to catch our breath (I am paddling for three). By this point, we were about half-way to the spot. Already I had to get out of the kayak and pull it over sand in an inch or two of water. The river was so low that this trip was turning into more of a "wet hike" than a paddle. The sun was out and bright, the water was well illuminated, and so I walked in ankle to knee deep water, pulling the tandem kayak behind me while my wife and grandson rode in it like royalty. LOL. On a couple of occasions, everyone had to get out and walk - the water was that shallow. We finally reached our desired spot after almost two hours of walking and paddling. This spot is known to the locals, but it's not hunted as heavily as some of the spots closer to the ramp. I didn't see any bomb craters or recent spoil piles, so I was hopeful we might find some good stuff. With two shovels and two sifters, we took turns and moved a lot of chunky gravel. I must have turned over 100 sifters full and found chunko(a)saurus, turtle, dugong, and tiny teeth. This spot has a ton of large gravel and I started noticing the total lack of quality or larger teeth. It soon became obvious that this gravel bed had been largely hunted out, despite it's seeming remoteness from the ramp. The first thing to go in any gravel bed is the triangles - megs and larger teeth. In a bed this big with gravel this big, we should have found at least a meg or two and many larger snaggles, bulls, etc. Instead, we found tiny teeth and not even many of those. The "triangle hunters" had hit this place up pretty good. Oh well. I did find some decent stuff by digging one deep pit and by sheer volume of gravel searched. I picked up three tiny to small verts, a big partial vert (?), some nice river-polished ivory chunks, a deer metatarsal, and a few oddballs that will get posted in the ID forum soon. After a few hours of digging and picnicing, we saw a lone hunter approaching from downstream. He was a middle-aged guy walking and pulling a nice Hobie kayak behind him. Had a sifter, a shovel, and a probe. This guy wasn't a casual hunter. We spoke for a few minutes and he told me that this gravel bed had been uncovered a couple of seasons back and had been hunted to death. He said he was taking advantage of the low water to see if any new spots were accessible further upstream. He moved on upstream and we never saw him again. I did something unusual also - I left a big spoil pile in the middle of the river, poking up out of the water like an island of rocks and chunkosaurus. My grandson was having a fun time helping me build it. At the end of the day, we made a face on it with rocks and driftwood. If you come across a big gravel bed with a "smiley face" spoil pile in the middle of it, you know you found our spot. It was a beautiful day and not as hot as we feared it might get. The humidity was still moderate and we had nice breezes all day. We had a little picnic on the side of the river and my wife took a couple hundred photos which she is downloading now. At one point, Ben turned to me and said "Pops, we should do this more often. This is really fun." and I agreed that we should and we would come more often if we lived closer, to which he replied - "I would live here. We should live here!". That made me feel good and was better than finding a sack full of megalodons. We'll make a river rat out of that boy yet. We stayed at the spot until about 4pm and then took a long slow drift back to the ramp - I had to jump out several times and pull the kayak over exposed sandbars and shallow areas, but it was a nice leisurely float (a few inches lower and it would be too darn low). We saw a lot of wildlife - deer, gators, turtles, herons, turkeys, hawks, fish, cows, and a lone big blue crab who must have wandered up from the Gulf - weird to see him there. Well, rainy season is around the corner. Not sure how many trips are left until after summer. Get out there while you can! Will post some photos later, stay tuned. PS - when we got back to the ramp, there was a party going on. A big monster truck was parked in the middle of the river (!) with lawn chairs around it and a boom box blasting music. You gotta love Gardner. LOL.

I just got this bone fragment refered to as a scute from either an ankylosaur or a turtle from the lance formation. Upon further inspection,I dont see the typical ankylosaur blood vessels or the turtle carapace type features.

Theres a few pictures so I'll upload them in seperate posts. Anyways, I was hunting in the Edmonton ravine area and found odd shaped specimen. Based on the shape I'm pretty sure its a fossil, its just awfully dense. I know for a fact that within 1km Edmontosaurs have been found. I'll post photos of the location too since you can clearly see the layers of rock, I'm just not sure what exactly im looking at. I

Evening folks. Here’s a chunk of I’m sure is M. Atherfieldensis found at err Atherfield on The Isle of Wight during my trip there last week. I’m thinking bottom end of fibula but not sure. @Troodon @jpc @LordTrilobite