6/7/15 Join Us As We Dig 300Myo Fossils In The Francis Creek Shale

[fossilized6s]

Come and join us as we dig up nodules from the Francis Creek Shale and celebrate Ken's (Digit) birthday! We will be heading to Fossil Rock campground in Wilmington, IL on Sunday the 7th of June.

Our Floridian friends Ken and Tammy will be heading North to Chicagoland for business and pleasure.

We WILL BE DIGGING, so digging tools, buckets and gloves will definitely help in your hunt. It also will cost $5 per person to enter and dig the campground.

Here is a weather link for weather updates http://m.accuweather.com/en/us/wilmington-il/60481/extended-weather-forecast/629

Suggested items list:

+Shovel, spade, pickaxe, screwdriver, garden claw, rock hammer (anything you're comfortable digging tough shale with)

+gloves help. I sometimes forget mine and then my blisters have blisters. But sometimes I over do it and can't stop searching.

+bug spray. There are a ton of mosquitos, ticks and spiders.

+water.

+snacks and/or food

+buckets. Two is better than one. Evening out your load between two buckets helps while hiking up and down the hills.

+backpack, bag or whatever to carry tools, water, phone, etc.

+sandwich baggies. I like to keep these handy for long broken nodules that can be pieced back together at a later time. It keeps all of the fragments separate from your other nodules.

+boots are suggested. It does get muddy and slippery.

+an extra pair of clothes and shoes definitely helps on the ride home, especially if we get wet.

+knee pads, if you got em'.

Those are my basics. If anyone else has any suggestions, feel free to post them.

You can find mainly Carboniferous flora. But insects, horseshoe crabs, shrimp and even Eurypterids have been recovered from here.

Edited May 20, 2015 by fossilized6s

[fossilized6s]

We'll be meeting at the Shell station directly west of rt.55 between 8:30am-9am.

Here's an address:

3195 E Division St

Wilmington, IL 60481

Hope to see you there!

[fossilized6s]

I'll bump this for anyone interested. We have several people going and a few experts. So if you're a noob or from out of town, don't be shy. You're bound to finding something. It all depends on how much work you're willing to put forth.

[jcbshark]

Good luck out there Charlie: )

Edited May 26, 2015 by jcbshark

[MrTrilobiteMan]

I want to go so bad. I work Sundays but I am trying to find one of the guy's to trade shifts. If I do I will let you know by Friday. Sounds like a fun trip and an amazing opportunity to meet everyone that shows up.

[fossilized6s]

Good luck out there Charlie: )

Thanks, Jeff. I appreciate that.

I want to go so bad. I work Sundays but I am trying to find one of the guy's to trade shifts. If I do I will let you know by Friday. Sounds like a fun trip and an amazing opportunity to meet everyone that shows up.

Just a heads up, it's about two-two and a half hours to get down there, depending on traffic. Hopefully you can make it.

[squalicorax]

My GF and I will possibly be attending if we dont have to work.

[fossilized6s]

Good deal, Nathan. There's not much surface collecting though.

[fossilized6s]

Less than a week away, guys. Anyone else want to join us?

So far, I believe we have about 10 fossil nuts going. There's plenty of room for more.

Edit: Unfortunately it's calling for thunder storms on Sunday. But as most of us fossilers know, if we played our cards on what the weather man says, we would never go hunting. I'm still going. I've been wet before.

Edited June 2, 2015 by fossilized6s

[PFOOLEY]

Less than a week away...

Nothin' like trying to get through a work week with an adventure on your mind...getting excited yet?

[fossilized6s]

Nothin' like trying to get through a work week with an adventure on your mind...getting excited yet?

I hear ya'. I'm pumped! I just know how much work it is. Dig, dig, dig. It's definitely a welcomed distract from my almost "unbelievable" life.

[squalicorax]

Unfortunately i was informed of previous plan. Maybe next time.

[squalicorax]

Yall find some nice stuff!

[Stocksdale]

I'm thinking about showing up.

[digit]

Just saw that Charlie started up this invitational topic. Looking forward to meeting any and all that brave the iffy weather forecast and want to come out and dig some nods. I few up from South Florida with a bunch of empty suitcases so you can be sure that I'll be putting in some effort to try to fill as many to the 50 pound limit as possible (padded with newspaper and other stuffing). I had a really special birthday there last year and met a log of great TFF members. Making it back again this year formally makes this a tradition, and a fun one at that.

Hope to see some of you there.

Cheers.

-Ken

[digit]

Stopped by Fossil Rock this morning to scout out a place for tomorrow's dig. Worked on continuing someone's existing efforts in working on a sideways excavation of one of the fossil bearing ridges. Spent a little less than 4 hours there today and came back with a nice variety of nodules (about 1/3 of a 5-gallon bucket). After last year's experience I have a little better feel for what are more likely fossil bearing nodules verses just large irregular chunks of siderite containing little more than more siderite. At the risk of leaving a fossil bearing rock behind, I'm trying to optimize the ones I schlep through the airport back to South Florida with me. Got some nice round "hamburger bun" shaped ones (which I'm secretly hoping might contain a horseshoe snarge--oops, I guess not so secretly). Many of the nodules were from blunt oval shapes to fairly elongated ones approaching "cigar shaped" in form. My wife Tammy found one that is so elongate it likely contains a fossilized Cuban Cohiba cigar (or maybe some other form of plant material like a fern pinnule or maybe an Annularia)--only time (and several freeze/thaw cycles) will tell.

I'm dosed-up on ibuprofen and will get a good night's sleep tonight so I can meet any who show up tomorrow at the gas station off I-55 exit 236 in Wilmington tomorrow. See you there.

Cheers.

-Ken

[Chrisalyne]

Severe weather tomorrow. Thoughts on this?

[digit]

Talked with Wayne (the campground manager) when I checked in. Told him we had a group coming tomorrow that was willing to brave inclement weather.

He claims the local forecast has the rains starting around 2pm. We'll likely meet-up at at 8:30-9:00am at the gas station off I-55 exit 236 (the exit with the brown sign for Fossil Rock campground). We'll head over as a group (in case any new hunters come along who are unfamiliar with how to get to the campground). We will likely be checked in and shifting shale by a little after 9am. This gives us several hours in the field before we are increasingly likely to get wet. That being said--the clouds rarely listen to the weather report to plan their day so it is always possible we could get sprinkled on earlier.

Unless it gets so incredibly wet as to get sticky and slippery enough to seriously impede digging, I'm planning on staying till one or more body parts give out.

Hope to see you there (but understand if you don't make it).

Cheers.

-Ken

[Chrisalyne]

Sounds good :)

[Raggedy Man]

I would of loved to join you all, but I'm in Buffalo, NY hunting trilobites. Good luck all!!

[digit]

Wanted to post an update to this topic. I've just finished a huge amount of copy editing for a book which is going to the printer today so I now have a bit of time to catch up on TFF.

My wife Tammy and I are on a trip up from South Florida to the Chicagoland area to visit with friends and family (and eat our weight in great food daily ). We were hoping to make it back to Fossil Rock campground for the first anniversary of a very memorable outing with TFF members last year. This year the weather looked like it was going to be more of an issue than last year so when the forecast for last Saturday (6/6) looked optimal for a day in the field, I took a break from editing on my laptop and grabbed my gear and headed down I-55 to go hunt fossils.

I got up early (always finding it hard to sleep before the prospect of an enjoyable day hunting in the field). Tammy and I grabbed a quick breakfast and headed over to one of the big box hardware stores to pick up a crucial piece of equipment that I had been mulling over in my mind while trying to sleep--a large flat-blade screwdriver. I envisioned using the screwdriver to pry nodules loose from the clay/mud and shale matrix in which they are located. We already had a 5-gallon bucket given to us by Rob Russell from last year's hunt and a small spade we bought last year for digging. In addition to some thick work gloves, the screwdriver would complete our modest field equipment.

I am indeed fortunate that Fossil Rock is only about a 45 minute trip down the expressway from where we are staying so it is hardly an effort at all to go there (much quicker than the 3 hour trip across Florida to get to the Peace River). We arrived at the campground at just about 9am and found a note on the office door with a phone number to contact Wayne, the manager. We called and told Wayne that we had arrived and were wanting to pay our $5 (one of the best deals in fossil hunting—but don't let them know ) so we could go dig for nodules. He asked where we were and we told him we were standing in front of the office. He said he couldn't see us and while wandering around with the cell phone taking directions from Wayne we finally located him near a bunch of picnic tables arrayed with a variety of items. He was supervising the campground's "garage sale"—quite a novel concept! Turns out that Wilmington was having a city-wide garage sale on that date and the seasonal campers had decided to get in on the action.

We handed over a couple of $5 bills (always feeling like we are getting the better end of that transaction) and told Wayne that we were trying to get a group together for Sunday but that the weather looked so nice on Saturday that we felt compelled to get in a sneak peek. Wayne mentioned that the local news had forecasted the rains to hold off till 2pm on Sunday and that there was no rain in the forecast for Saturday. We thanked him and headed back to our car. We didn't need a gate code to get in as they had raised the access gate to allow potential bargain hunters easy access to the variety of items for sale. We made it through the campground to the small road at the back past the campers that lead to the fossil hunting area. We parked off the side of the road in the weeds and popped the trunk. By the time I got around to the trunk the first thing I was frantically searching for was the bug spray. Until we were safely enveloped in a dense fog of DEET the swarms of huge mozzies were so think I thought I was back in South Florida.

We bundled up our digging gear and our backpack of snacks and drinks. We purchased a backpack cooler several years ago which is insulated and water tight (mostly). It has been a great way to pack-in cold drinks without having to drag a traditional hard sided cooler. We trudged through the underbrush along the trail, up and down the ridges which are the hunting grounds. We made it back to the hole that I had dug last year. When I dug this on my birthday last year I dug deep enough that it was tricky getting in and out of and narrow enough that it was difficult to work even with a short handled spade. We came back the week after and I decided it was best to widen the hole and backfill the hole a bit with material from the sides. In the end the narrow deep hole had transformed into a more wide shallow one. Even though it is mostly fossil hunters that wander around back in these parts I didn't like the idea of leaving a deep "trap" hole behind. I inspected the site a year later and it looks like a few others have extended the pit widening it a little and a year's worth of rains and snow had caused the walls to slump a bit.

I decided not to dig in this spot again but to investigate a location a little bit away near where we had finished our digging at last year. We found a fresh spot that someone had recently excavated and decided it would be most efficient to continue that effort. At this point I would usually illustrate a post like this with copious photographs but, alas, photos will have to wait. I remembered to bring my camera but forgot to bring the (non-standard) USB cable. The memory card too is rather unique and so I have no way of pulling photos off my camera till I get home next week. But since a picture is worth a thousand words and I have no problem rambling on for a few thousand words I’ll describe the site textually.

If you can picture it, the area we are hunting in is a series of parallel ridges maybe 10 feet high or so from peak to trough which were created when overburden from the shallow coal beds was carted off from Pit 2 many years ago and dumped into these elongated piles. You can dig down from the peak of one of these ridges like I did last year (creating quite the human size burrow) or you can use the slope and dig into the side of one of the ridges. This is what someone had started to do and we decided to extend that effort. They had started digging below the peak and then continued sideways opening up a wall as they went. This seemed a good way of digging deep and not ending up in a vertical shaft.

The only trouble about digging sideways along a growing micro-cliff face is that spades are not particularly efficient at removing material from the sides of a hole. The overburden that is piled here is a real mixture of materials—some of it is softer muddy clay and some is big sections of harder shale material which shovels bounce off very well. This can be real hard on the hands after a while and I realized I was going to have to look for a less abusive method if I was going to dig for long. I may not be the sharpest crayon in the box but I soon discovered that the large screwdriver that I had purchased that morning was a really excellent tool for prying into the softer spaces between the rocks and harder shale areas to loosen and drop chunks of the matrix. I let Tammy work with the screwdriver as she slowly excavated horizontally through the wall of the pit we were digging. She was able to discover most of the nodules, calling out when a particularly nice one was found and dropped into the awaiting bucket. I used the spade to scrape the crumbled clay and shale to a deeper trough I had dug at the base of the wall. It was then very easy to step down onto the shovel to lift and clear this material onto a large pile a shovel-throw away from the pit.

We continued like this for some time with Tammy slowly eroding the wall surface back and uncovering nodules and me shoveling away the debris. Every so often I’d switch places with her and trade duties. We continued to work on like this with frequent breaks for drinks and snacks like dried fruits (mango) and salted nuts and potato chips (our traditional fossil hunting diet). At around 2pm we had gotten in almost 5 hours of digging and I was quite pleased at the new screwdriver-spade combination method I’d “discovered.” I’m guessing that most hunters likely fall upon this method as a natural way to work efficiently so I’m not running to the patent office just yet, but I am happy to have found a method that works well and isn’t overly tiring. We ended the day with a little less than half a bucket of nodules. After a little experience from last year seeing which shapes of nodules tended to produce fossils, I was trying to be a bit more picky. Sometimes larger sections of the siderite material seem to form which are not actual concretions but just part of larger sheets of material bearing nothing interesting inside. This time we were trying to avoid the more irregular large chunks that just didn’t look like they would contain anything. Last year I erred on the side of caution not wanting to have tossed aside any rock which could contain a stunning fossil. This year I hope I’m developing a bit more of an eye for what are potential fossil bearing nodules and what are Leaverites.

Cheers.

-Ken

[FossilDAWG]

I can hardly wait to see what you guys get out of those nodules. I'm not holding my breath or anything as I know a lot of freeze-thaw cycles are needed, but personally I would have a very hard time resisting giving them a little "persuasion" (i.e. a whack with a 5-pound sledge). If nothing else, Mazon Creek nodules teach one the meaning of patience.

I'd love to get up there and try my luck some time.

Don

[digit]

So here is the next chapter in the continuing saga of the Fossil Rock Campground. After having had a terrific time efficiently working through the matrix of clay and shale and locating half a 5-gallon bucket of nodules (mostly small but some nice larger and elongate ones) we were ready to head back on Sunday. We watched the weather forecast and it looked dodgy but possible. As we were headed out to grab a quick breakfast we got a call from Charlie (fossilized6s). He was headed south from Wisconsin with his dad and had just encountered the storm front and ensuing heavy rains. I told him it was cloudy where we were at but had seen no sign of rain yet. Charlie decided that since he was over halfway there already that he’d continue down to see what conditions were like at our destination.

We arrived at the rendezvous point a few minutes before Charlie (and Charlie Senior). During the last part of the ride down we could see a dark storm front to the west. It was hard to tell how fast it was moving while riding on the expressway but now that we were stopped we could see its steady advance. About the time that Charlie pulled in to the parking area the front was nearly upon us. We could feel the cool breeze being pushed along ahead of the dark menacing line of clouds that made up a very visually distinctive transition in air masses. Always considerate, Charlie had picked up a nice assortment of doughnuts for any intrepid hunters who cared to join us. I had a delicious chocolate-covered cream-filled tasty treat but it looked as if Charlie was going to have to consume more than his quota of sugary fried dough balls as any other potential hunters thought better of making the journey.

Undaunted (for the moment) we chatted for a few moments before retreating into our separate cars as the rains that followed the front opened up on us and proceeded to drop, at first, a fine mist which was soon followed by a steady rain and then something ranking right up there in the ‘pelting’ category of precipitation. We waited in our cars listening to the rain beat ever more loudly on our windows for probably 10 or 15 minutes before we all reluctantly decided that despite our strong wills we were not finding any nodules that day. On the ride back we had steady rain till about the time we left the expressway near home. As the weather was coming from this direction it was apparent that we could have waited for some time before seeing a break in the precipitation. I was so looking forward to sharing the day hunting with Charlie and his dad (aka “Senior”) who seemed to be a really great guy. The apple tree doesn’t grow far from the fallen apple (to reverse an old idiom). Hoping that we soon get a chance to hunt with Charlie (possibly both of them) and maybe a few other TFF members in the not too distant future as the social aspect of interacting with others sharing the same goal adds quite an enjoyable bonus to a fun hunt.

Cheers.

-Ken

[digit]

Here is the final part in this trilogy of posts—a bit less verbose than the Lord of the Rings trilogy and with fewer difficult-to-pronounce character names to memorize.

Having been rained-out on the anniversary of my first birthday nodule hunt at Fossil Rock I was determined to get back there again while up from Florida on this trip. Monday was a bit damp and rainy and Tammy and I had tickets to see the Robert Cray Band up in a small theater in Arlington Heights that evening (spectacular show by the way) so I didn’t attempt to make the same journey three days in a row. Tuesday, however, looked to be the driest day for the week and so I tried to get caught-up on a bunch of copy editing so I might be able to play hooky and have another chance at some nodule gathering. Tammy was unfortunately busy with a schedule full of conference calls so she’d not be able to come with me so I had to go solo.

I was up even earlier than the last two times. Since it was a work day and traffic can be intense during the morning rush hour in the Chicago area, I wanted to be on the road and well into the rural stretch of I-55 before traffic got dense. I made good time and very quickly arrived at Fossil Rock Campground before I’d expected to be there—a little before 8am. I gave Wayne a call to get the gate code which he gave me over the phone and said I could get him the $5 fee on my way out. I thanked him and said that I hoped I hadn’t woken him. As expected (for a Tuesday) I was the only car back in the “parking area” near the hunting area. I wasted no time in gathering my gear, spritzing on some DEET before disappearing into the underbrush. It wasn’t long before I made it back to the spot that Tammy and I had worked a few days back on a sunny Saturday. It was apparent that someone else had been there after the rains and had continued to work this spot. Wayne had mentioned that it did in fact rain the entire day on Sunday (the large puddles along the road in the campground were solid evidence of this) so whoever was digging here must have been there the day before on Monday.

I have no way of knowing if the other hunter that had been digging this section the previous day was the same person who had started this excavation or someone else taking advantage of the excellent opening into the ridge to be able to access some of the deeper buried nodules. They had made a bit of progress toward the left side of the mini-wall that I had been excavating a few days before with my wife. There was a few sticky muddy areas near where the dig location but overall not as messy as I had expected it to be. I did a little pre-dig maintenance and cleared away some of the loose debris at the base of the wall and then got to work with my screwdriver. After a while I had a bucket that was slowly becoming less empty and fell I into a pattern of alternating between picking away at the wall with the screwdriver and shoveling out the loose material to clear the way for more picking.

I stopped a few times briefly to gulp down some water and much on a few light snacks but pretty much dug like a machine for several hours. It’s funny how the nodules tend to be clustered together. You will find several nice ones within a minute or two near by each other in a little pocket of treasures and then, it seems, dig away for a long time with no reward other than progress toward the next cluster of finds. To even things out a bit I started playing games with myself. When I uncovered the corner of a nodule still well embedded into the matrix, I’d leave it and not dig it out fully. I’d then dig around the area to try to see if I could find others before returning to fully free the nodule. Often I’d be able to cache several partially uncovered nodules before finally removing one and tossing it into the bucket. This psychological trickery seemed to make it feel like the nodules were more abundant than they really were which made the hunting even a bit more satisfying than it already was.

Though the wait between nodules was sometimes a bit protracted there seemed to have been a reasonably steady supply since I was able to nearly fill my 5-gallon bucket with them. As I continued to work the surface of the wall further and further back the top foot or so which was mixed in with a network of old roots started to form quite the overhang. The site started looking like a breaking wave frozen in time. I realized I had to do some maintenance on this top layer as it was getting dangerously dangly. This upper portion was well saturated with the previous heavy rains and was loose and heavy. It looked like the upper surface was likely composed of the spoils dropped there from nearby holes so it was quite surprising when I found several nice (and large) nodules within the upper portion of this overhanging rootbound layer.

I worked back some of the wet and loose material that had been hanging over my head while sitting below it and excavating further into the wall with my screwdriver. After a while it seemed that the finds near the surface had gone cold and I was only working through a bunch of wet clay-like mud. I decided to take a rest and get a drink. I sat on a small ledge to the right of the main wall that I’d been digging into where someone had started another digging face. I poked around this with my screwdriver to see if it would reveal anything of interest. Within a few minutes I had hit upon the corner of a nice size nodule. While working the rest of that nodule out I could hear small bits of wet mud dropping from the ceiling that I’d just been digging back. Shortly after this the entire ledge had given way with a mighty thump. I’m sure glad I hadn’t been sitting under this muddy time bomb when it heeded the call of gravity. I don’t think I’d have been seriously injured but having 50 pounds or so of wet mud drop on my head would not have been the highlight of my morning (though it might have been at a later date while recounting the tale).

At around 2pm I decided I had to call it quits—6 hours of solid digging was enough. Though I was having the time of my life, enjoying the pleasure of the hunt and being rewarded for my efforts, it was time to go or I’d need a stretcher and bearers to get me out of there. At this point I was wishing I’d been smart enough to bring a second bucket to divide up the load of nodules. The distance back to the car is easily 10 times as long as it was in the morning and the ridges higher and steeper too . With short rests to catch my breath and trade hands, I managed to carry that 5-gallon bucket full of nodules back to my waiting car. I had just enough energy to change into some cleaner clothes for the ride back and collapse into the driver’s seat.

When I got back home I left the bucket of nodules in the trunk for the moment and dragged my carcass in to greet my wife who, when she saw my spent condition, knew I had had a great time. After a few fistfuls of ibuprofen and a shower I had just about enough energy to collapse onto a bed. Just about every joint in my body ached but I didn’t mind—I’d just spent the day doing something I love and I was ready to pay the price.

I was apparently in too much of a rush to get out in the morning as I’d forgotten to repack the camera so I have no photos to document this spectacular day in the field and only my memories (and hopefully a few prized nodules) will remain as a reminder of this hunt.

</saga>

-Ken

P.S.: I'll try to add a few photos to this topic when I return home and can access the images on my camera. I'll start a new topic once these nodules start popping. Good thing I brought 4 suitcases to spread the load for the return flight home.

[digit]

BTW: Just weighed the nodules before starting to pack for the tip back home to Florida tomorrow. Looks like I found 25 pounds (a little over 11 kg) on my first trip out on Saturday. My return trip on Tuesday netted me 53 pounds (24 kg) so I'm glad that I brought a number of suitcases.

-Ken