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Today I had the pleasure of attending I & M Canal Corridor Trip to collect on the "actual" Mazon Creek (River) in Morris, Illinois. I believe that this is the 11th year for this trip, which is held on Saturday and Sunday on a 400 acre farm that has access to the river. This is the first time that I have participated in this trip and thanks must go out to Rich @stats for letting me know about this trip last year. In January of this year Rich contacted me again to let me know that the sign-up for the trip was on line, so on 1-6-20 I sent my payment of $150.00 in and reserved my space. Some of you may question the $150.00 payment for this trip when you can collect out at the pits. First off, the money goes to support the I & M Canal and at the end of the day there are drinks, hors d'oeuvres and then dinner, which includes steak, chicken or pork chops, plus vegetables, corn on the cob and dessert. (Social Distancing was in place). We all met around 12:30 pm and the lecture started around 1:15 pm. The collecting started around 2:20 pm and we collected until 5 pm, which was plenty of time. When we arrived back we had dinner and sat around to talk until about 8 pm and then I headed out for the 1 hour drive home. Prior to the collecting portion, there is a nice informative talk given on the history of Mazon Creek fossils, what to look for and also some displays so the participants can visualize what they are looking for and what they might find. There were also a number of Fossil Forum members present and I will let Rich tag those members since I forgot their Forum names. I will start off with a few pictures of the pre-collecting time of trip. There were 3 dogs that were running around the property and I could not stop petting them. Some pics of us driving to the collecting site- The walkway to the river. Here are some pictures of the creek area. Continued on next post.