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This past weekend my wife and I, a few friends and a few other fossil hunting fanatics braved the sweltering heat and humidity that is eastern NC summer. Forecast was for temps in the low - mid 90s F, high humidity and 50-70% chance of showers and thunderstorms. This was our 3rd attempt at accessing a Cretaceous deposit along one of the rivers after 2 unsuccessful attempts earlier this spring due to high water. With many of the eastern NC rivers running higher than normal so far this summer, we wanted to take advantage of a lull on this particular river, since there is no guarantee a tropical storm/system won't flood us out for an extended time period at any point from now through late fall. Even though we knew we were going to be hot and sweaty, harassed by mosquitoes, biting flies & gnats as well as the possible snake or 2, we had to take what low water we could get. We were all drenched in sweat (and sand / mud) the entire 2 days we hunted. Coming along on its inaugural fossil hunting trip was a new photo scale cube custom made by Ray/ @aerogrower for Mrs. SA2, in pink. She was quite surprised when a box addressed to her showed up a few days before the trip and it contained her very own cube, in pink. When I explained that its a 1 of a kind, she was even more excited. Even more importantly for me, Mrs. SA2's new, pink cube proved to have "the magic" that so many TFF members have come to expect and enjoy in Ray's cubes. Here are a few photos of it beside the massive, almost complete Deinosuchus rugosus vertebrae I found on Sunday morning. These photos were taken right after it was found and given a preliminary rinsing off. Note how nice the cube looks with pink paint. Mrs. SA2 was not impressed with my muddy finger prints on her new cube and promptly cleaned it off before the last photo. It is by far the most complete and largest Deinosuchus vert in our collection. Once I finish cleaning it and the other goodies we found, I will post some more photos. Quite a few teeth and verts of Deinosuchus and other crocodile species were found by the group as well as the normal massive amount of Squalicorax, Scapanohrynchus and Carcharias teeth. Numerous Cretaceous fish teeth and even a few Hadrosaur teeth and 1 theropod tooth were also found over the weekend. What we didn't expect when we made the trip, was for the wildlife to be so determined to keep the fossils away from us. Here is a photo of a big crayfish holding onto a sharks tooth. Determined little thing so we traded him a clean getaway for his tooth. One of our group even snapped this photo along the river bank while she was scanning for fossils. Of course, its all fun and games until you slip on the sloping, wet clay and fall face first at the snake you are attempting to photograph. (YES, that really happened.) More to come......