Fossil Hunting!

Saturday we went to Fossil Beach in Westmoreland State Park to hunt for fossils! Ashley and Daniel go all the time and invited us to go with them. We hiked down the 0.8 mile trail to get to the beach (wasn't so easy going back up).

Daniel and his brother were already down there getting an early start at low tide because it's the best time to find shark teeth on the beach. We set up our chairs and packed lunches and walked around, taking in the scenery and then we found a spot on the beach to start hunting. I laid down on the beach on my stomach and just skimmed my hand over the top layer of sand the teeth are just below the surface. I probably looked pretty weird, but I found 5 small teeth.

Ashley found a bunch of stuff and Bonnie was hunting for sea glass to add to her collection. Daniel took a colander and was wading by the shore, sifting through loads of sand. I think he found a porpoise ear bone and a whale vertebrae. We planned on asking the park ranger to confirm, but he wasn't at the visitor center when we were done hunting for the day.

Towards the end of the day, a girl came running down the beach to her parents saying she found a message in a bottle! We overheard her say the bottle was from 2007 so it couldn't have been regarding buried pirate treasure, but HOW COOL! She had some trouble getting the message out of the bottle because she didn't want to break the glass on the beach, so her father used a stick to retrieve it (all the while with a lit cigarette hanging from his mouth - a multi-tasker!). She and her sisters read the message and just laughed, but we didn't ask what it said. Once the treasure was ruled out, we lost a little bit of interest :)

See below for pictures!