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Slurpee, Slushee or Icee Beach......Take Your Pick VA Miocene on 01/14/2018 Since I didn't get to do much fossil hunting in December due to work, I've been determined to get more time out during January. I convinced Mrs.SA2 to venture out with our buddy Mel (MarcoSr's youngest son) and me this morning. We would have brought @Daleksec along with us, but his dad said he forgot to keep his bedroom clean, AGAIN, so he had chores to finish. The morning started out with us getting up at 0400 hours and making the drive to meet Mel at one of our favorite places. When we hit the beach the air temp was 13F with a 15 mph north wind and a 3-5F wind chill. Luckily, we all have "the gear" to keep us warm and dry in this weather and we know some tricks. We were excited and hopeful when we realized we were the first (and only) people on the beach. Pretty obvious why and not sure what that really says about us. When we got down to the beach, we realized that overnight the strong north wind and the wind chill had combined to freeze the surf and push ice on the beach. (The ice wasn't there the day before.) The surf out about 10 feet from the beach had the consistency of a Slurpee, Slushee or Icee, whichever is/was your beverage choice when younger. Mrs.SA2 and I were Slurpee fans (and she still sneaks one in every few weeks during the summers.) Photos of the beach and surf. The ice pushing in from the surf and the frozen beach left by the last high tide were pretty disappointing, until we started finding teeth. Here were my first couple of frozen teeth. All of the teeth we found had to be dug out of the frozen beach. I even managed a two-for. (Please excuse the lack of scale in many of the photos, I had Mrs.SA2's custom pink scale cube made by @aerogrower, but it kept freezing to the beach, then I had to scrape/dig it off the beach.) Here is a decent hastalis I found and dug out. On the walk back the wind had died down a little and the air temp had come up to 20F with wind chill around 15F. Talk about being spoiled, but alas, the beach was still frozen solid and ice covered. Here's Mrs.SA2 and Mel working their way through some obstacles along the beach. Mel is an awesome fossil hunter and has the eyes of an eagle. Mrs.SA2 and I always enjoy hunting with him because we have great conversations about stratigraphy, possible paleo-environments and the local fossils. This morning we chatted quite a bit about fossil hunting this coming spring and summer. As we were walking along, Mel looked down and spotted this beauty entombed in 3/4" of ice on the beach. It was worthy of breaking out Mrs.SA2's pink scale cube, even if it got stuck too. Took quite a bit of digging to "save" it from its frozen, watery grave. I have a great video of him digging it out but I'm going to let him be the first to show it on his Facebook page and website. Here are a couple of photos instead. That 10 minutes sure warmed us all up and it ended up being the biggest tooth we found on the day. At least we didn't get skunked and we all got some much needed exercise. I did manage this smaller hastalis as my last tooth of the morning. Here is what Mrs.SA2 and my finds looked like cleaned up. The vertebrae was a nice addition and you can see my "frag-a-lodon" by the scale cube. Over the 4 1/2 hour walk along the river in the cold, wind and ice, we managed to stay warm and dry and most of all, Mrs.SA2 continues to redevelop her confidence while out fossil hunting, following her fall back at the end of September. She was quite the trooper today and never complained. I'm sure the story she tells tomorrow at work will start with, "it'll be fun, he said......." and go downhill from there. Cheers, SA2 and Mrs.SA2