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Hello from Wisconsin! My husband and I are bringing our 10, 7 and 4 year old kiddos to the Pit 11 area at the end of next week for a couple days to try to find some fossil concretions. I have the Wittry book, joined ESCONI, and have read this forum thoroughly and am grateful for all the info provided by you wonderful experts, thank you! I am realistic however that a 4-year-old is going to limit just how much walking we can do, especially as it's rough terrain. Could someone please confirm whether it is okay to just park alongside the road *anywhere* around the Pit 11 area? Specifically W5000 North, Merchants Rd (route 6) and Kankakee? Trying to shorten our walking distances as much as possible, but don't want to be ticketed or towed! I could always have my husband drop us off and go park in the lots, but it would be good to be closer to the vehicle throughout the days for multiple reasons. Also, am I right to be concerned and cautious about venomous snakes? Seems like this would be prime territory, I know it's early spring so not as likely, but stepping into a copperhead den is a concern when exploring with young kids. Thank you so much for any feedback!

This morning I decided to drive the 90 mile round trip to Pit 11 and do a little collecting. I only spent a few hours collecting and it was one of my least productive days ever. I headed past Godley, Illinois and made a right turn on 5000N, heading to the Mazonia South Unit. This below is a picture of the road as you head to the Monster Lake parking area. I park my car on the side of the road versus the parking lot when I am going to climb the tall hills near Monster Lake. The blue dot is where I park. The lake that is right next to the dot is Monster Lake. Here is what the parking lot looks like, I parked there when I was heading to the Tipple area. Here are a couple pictures of a frozen Monster Lake. After parking on the road I headed to the hill. It is very difficult climbing at this time of the year because of the mud and the ice. Even though it has been warmer over the last couple of days, ice still remains in place on the slopes. I use my Estwing stick to help me up these slick slopes. Up on top, I can see 5000N road and my car. Once on top, the area it totally overgrown (see below) and this is the only time of the year I will collect up here, it is too hard to see and navigate in the Summer. I do use a little rake that I cut down to 18” to move some leave. If you put the time in and you know the shape / color of the concretions, they can be found here. The below pics show concretions as I found them. A crack open half of an Essexella asherae Jellyfish. This was probably opened by a collector a 30+ years ago, when no one cared about the Jellyfish. A nice little Pecten clam, I only found the one half. After I collected this hill, I moved my car to the parking lot and then crossed the street and made the long trip to the Tipple Hill. Tipple Hill was alway a favorite of collectors and some great stuff came from that location. Here is the chain that you have to walk around to get to the hill. I travel light into this area, and I only bring a plastic bag for concretions. Back in the 80’s and 90’s, a couple of doctors from Chicago use to lease this are from Commonwealth Edison and the had a similar mobile home that they would use during hunting season. Sometimes they would open the chain so we could drive up to the Tipple area. hThe road keeps going. There use to be a short cut to the right, but that has since overgrown. Here are pictures of Tipple Hill, it always has a sulfur smell to it. They put this fenced in area about 30 years ago, no one really knew what it was for, but it did expose concretions then and still today. I don’t find much Flora at the Tipple, but on occasion I do. This look like a worn Annularia. There is a lot of petrified wood at the Tipple, I believe most suffering from pyrite disease, but I still pick some up for the ESCONI Braceville trip. A lot of coal is also found here. Even though I did not find a lot of concretions or opened fossils, it was still a nice day.