Tripometer – 12,275 mi
Gas Gauge – 923.963 gal
Location – Distant Drums RV Resort, Camp Verde, AZ
Lodging – $28
Cans of OFF – 4
When Kelly finished work this afternoon we headed about an hour and a half East to investigate another rock collecting site from our rock hounding book. Today we’re on the hunt for fossils. The region we are headed towards is called the Mongollan Rim. 330-410 million years ago this area was at the bottom of a huge inland sea inhabited by ancient sea life. The specimens we are after are encased in the local limestone and can only be accessed by breaking open limestone rock with a hammer or similar instrument.
The weather is gorgeous and we were both looking forward to spending time in the pine forest where the fossil bed is located. It has been quite a while since we have seen full size trees and we’re both rather excited by the concept of hanging around outside in the shade instead of in the Arizona sun. We followed the dirt road avoiding the large, possibly deep, puddles and parked the car on the side of the side road to start our search. The fossil grounds were easily 2 miles from the nearest paved road, so we decided to let Ranger roam free for the first time in almost a month outside of a dog park. He lost his mind and spent the next 20 minutes doing nothing but running back and forth by us in the forest as we pounded rocks.
We found some fossils almost immediately. The limestone was, in many cases, easy to open along existing cracks in the rock. We found more than a few species of shellfish, but sadly most of it was fragmentary and certainly not something that warranted spending more time on. After looking for a couple of hours or so we were prowling around the side of a hill when Paul found a spherical rock that turned out to be a beautiful fossilized clam. What we found most amazing was the fact that it was not encased in rock but just lying on the ground like an Easter egg. We assumed for the time that another fossil hunter had left it behind. Returning to the car while patting our backs for the score, we stumbled across two more in the road bed. Some additional searching turned up the collection on the left (by this time we were being relatively selective about quality). Some research on the Googles tells us that these particular guys are from the genus Atrypa and likely from the Devonian period and over 300 million years old… Then we drove the car over 300 million year old fossils all the way out of the fossil beds.
Ranger was a tired boy on the way home tonight. It was really nice to let him free for a while. No puppy should stay this restrained for this long.
Special Note: There’s something to be said for settling into a location. We have settled into Distant Drums. We are taking electricity for granted, the water isn’t sputtering when you turn it on from air in the lines, and we know where the important things like showers and the dog park are without getting out a map or finding an access code for a door lock. Living on the road, it seems like a huge amount of daily energy goes into where the basics are going to come from. When the basics are taken care of, the mind can relax and think about something other than water, shelter, and warmth.