Peace River Trips - You sometimes find the weirdest stuff

[Bone Daddy]

Hi Folks,

 

Let me say up front, there won't be any photos in this report, unfortunately. To make a long story short, I am having camera and PC issues. Next trip out, I will have this fixed. I was reluctant to write a report without photos, but I wanted to share a couple of weird finds and events that happened out on the river.

 

We went out twice last week. The first trip was to Gardner - one of my recent favorite spots to hunt. This trip out, I grabbed a bunch of that micro-matrix material, which was my main focus for going to Gardner. We had a nice paddle and spent an entire day on the river - we put in at the ramp at about 9am and stayed until 5:30pm. We paddled a couple miles from the ramp to one of our usual spots and found a decent amount of common fossils - small shark teeth, turtle, deer, mammoth tooth/ivory fragments, dugong ribs, and the usual suspects. Nothing to write home about, but good stuff for trades and give-aways. 

 

On this day, it was pretty outside - mild temps, cool breezes, and sunny. While taking a break and having lunch on the side of the river, my wife spotted a large softshell turtle that was stuck (wedged) into some dead tree branches on the bank. He was stuck pretty good, and looked like he was drying out. How he got there and how long he had been there was not known, but when we released him, he bolted to the water without so much as a thank you. LOL. So, I guess we did a good deed that day.

 

A few days later, we decided to hit a new stretch of river. I will call it "Location A" because we did pretty good and I may have found myself a new honey hole. So, I am keeping this location to myself for now. I will say it is on the middle Peace and near an overpass. We had a nice paddle and found a remote spot with a lot of small teeth and other fossils. I found a nice tapir cheek tooth and more small to medium teeth than I usually find at Gardner. We spent the whole day on the river again, and on the way back, we decided to stop at the overpass and do some magnet fishing.

 

My grandson just recently got interested in magnet fishing thanks to YouTube. He had just received is magnet fishing kit in the mail the day before, so we brought it with us. The overpass looked promising. The water was shallow and the sun was overhead, so the water was well illuminated. We could see a lot of rocks and debris in the water. We beached the kayaks got out. The water was about knee deep on me and waist deep on my grandson. Right away we found some odd stuff. Beside the usual steel bolts and rusty iron chunks, we found a Toshiba laptop. It was smashed and in two pieces. I wondered why it ended up in the river. I was suspicious. It looked like it was a nice laptop. Did it have some evidence of a crime on it? Well, it was in bad shape, so we put it in our garbage bag and kept searching. 

 

We found a lot of trash. Lots of bottles, cans, and just junk. We removed most of it (the stuff that wasn't too heavy) and paddled it out to dispose of properly later. Right as we were getting ready to leave, I saw a rectangular "rock" that was covered in algae and just didn't look right. I called my grandson over and had him throw the magnet on it. It stuck strongly and we hauled the object out of the deeper water and into the shallows by the bank. It was a safe. A small, personal-sized safe. The type that was about 12x12x12-ish (inches). It had one of those digital keypad mechanisms, which was missing from the front - obviously removed by a thief. The door to the safe was stuck in a slightly-ajar manner. Water and sand drained from the opening as we pulled it from the water. It was very heavy and we couldn't get the door open. So, we put it in the kayak to bring home. At this point, it was getting late, so we called it a day and headed back.

 

The next day, after a good night's rest, I worked on the safe. I didn't have high hopes. The locking mechanism was missing and the door was ajar. I guessed that some thief stole it, broke it open, removed the contents, and tossed the empty safe off the bridge into the river. Well, my guess was pretty close, but the safe was not entirely empty. What we had apparently found was some drug dealer's safe. The inside of the door had a pot leaf sticker on it (still intact). There was a terry-cloth hand towel, a broken glass pipe, and some little plastic baggies that appeared to be empty save for some river sand. It was quite a disappointment and not the stash of gold coins we were hoping for. LOL. But, it was an interesting find for a first-timer and my grandson was pretty excited about it. He got to go to bed that night dreaming of gold coins and diamond jewelry inside the mystery river safe. He's definitely fired up to do some more magnet fishing.

 

I still have a few oddball fossils that I found that need ID'ing and will try to get those photo'ed soon.

 

Weather permitting, we might go again this coming week or the next.

 

Edited March 7, 2022 by Bone Daddy

[Family Fun]

Interesting reading without the pictures. It sounds like you and your grandson had quite a day on that beautiful river.

 

Rick