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I didn’t really intend to go fossil hunting today, but fossil hunting just happens sometimes. I go to church on Saturdays. After church my daughter and I headed out towards Athens, Texas to see the Bluebonnets. Often they are just amazing out that way, but for whatever reason they were somewhat scant out that direction. They even have a wildflower festival out that way, primarily in honor of the bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes. The two often are seen growing together. On the way back on highway 175 I saw a large pond with erosion all around it. I was on the freeway and had to loop back around to get back to it off the service road. I had never explored this area or formation. It looked really sandy and I typically don’t find any fossils in the sandy areas around here, if I do they seem to be marine Cretaceous environments. Today was different. The area was the Calvert Bluff formation in Henderson county, Texas, which is Eocene. It was a very windy day. There were a number of wild flowers around. Most were being blown by the wind and wouldn’t hold still for me. I got blurry pics of several and some where the flower was out of the shot from the wind blowing it. So I had to hold them with my hands to get the shot. These are called Indian paintbrushes. This is called crimson clover. This is some other flower in bloom on a shrub. Sorry it is out of focus. The wind was blowing so hard. This was not taken at the site. It was taken on the drive around that day. It is taken through my windshield along the freeway. It is the shoulder covered with bluebonnets, but it is not an uncommon site. The Texas highway department seeds the shoulders with them. Here are a few shots of the exposure. It looks like a mini Bryce Canyon in the making. There was even a little arch maybe 15 inches tall. When I first started looking for fossils I was finding some dark marine shell material, but there were piles of gravel above the exposure I was looking at. Some of the gravel had been washed down into the exposure and was mixed in with it. I couldn’t tell what was what. So I moved further down the exposure to a place where no gravel was seen. I wasn’t seeing any fossils at the top of the exposure so I worked my way to the bottom where it leveled into a sand bed. I assumed if any were present there would be some at the bottom. The first thing I found were little, thin whiteish chips about the size of my fingernail. At first I thought they might be broken pieces of PVC (plastic plumbing tube), but looking closely they looked almost like fresh wood, but they were too hard and definitely not plastic or PVC. I continued looking and found slivers about an inch long. I came to a place with a dozen or so little chips and picked them up. I found more in other places, but they were basically the same and also small. I walked on and then saw a pile of iron sandstone. On top of the sandstone were 2 larger pieces of the petrified wood. One was loose. The other was still partially embedded in the slab of sandstone. You can see it here in the pic below, on the bottom left, but the sandstone and tip of the wood were covered by sand. I brushed the sand away. The sandstone was largely eroded and the piece was easily extracted. It is about 12 cm long. That is one thing I have never seen, petrified wood embedded in sandstone. Whatever fossils I have seen in such iron dense sandstone have been heavily pyratized and basically crumbled when you attempted to extract them. I hiked around 1/2 of the exposure, but didn’t see more wood. I saw an iron rich sandstone on the far side of the pond and worked my way to it, but didn’t find more pet wood. I found tubes of red sandstone standing upright that were hollowed out on top and through the center. Generally they were 1 inch tall and 1-3 cm in diameter with a hole of 3 mm to 1.5 cm in diameter. I did find one such tube that was about 7 inches long and 1.5 cm in diameter. These were unusual. I haven’t seen them in Texas before, but I haven’t been in this formation before either. I’m not sure if the tubes were some sort of fossil remains of burrows or tube worms or if they were a geologic form. I’m going with geologic form since the fossils I found were wood. I did find one fragment of a large oyster, but since it was the only marine fossil I found I tend to think it may have been a contaminating item somehow. My daughter is good natured and has a very pleasant disposition, but she doesn’t enjoy fossil hunting that much, unless ammonites are involved. She goes along with me, because she enjoys being with me and enjoys my company and humors my fossil hunting escapades. She does enjoy certain aspects of the outdoors though. From there I headed towards Cedar Hill State Park on Joe Pool Lake. We were going to hike some of the trails and do a little exploring, but to our disappointment ALL the trails were closed! Evidently they were doing some controlled burns and prairie restoration and had closed all trails. I was in shock and didn’t even think to ask when they would reopen. They only had 3 areas on the lake that were open and all the campgrounds and that was it. We went to the boardwalk. This is my daughter walking the boardwalk. The wind was blowing quite strong. I love how her hair looks as it’s being blown by the wind. There were people on the boardwalk that crosses the wetlands off the lake. Some were out for a stroll and others were fishing. You can see fishing polls on the far left. We walked the boardwalk and then strolled along the beach. The wind was blowing so strong as to make it not that enjoyable. We walked and then sat looking through the pebbles and sand for fossils. We didn’t see a whole lot. There were many tiny Inoceramus clam fragments. I found a tiny piece of coral and a cool looking ammonite fragment and that was about it. It was getting close to sunset and we had a 45 min drive home from there. So, we left and headed to Braum’s, an ice cream place. I always take her to Braum’s after hiking or fossil hunting so there is a treat or reward at the end to look forward to.