By Monte

This last week, Michelle and I went on three different adventures. We went trilobite hunting and fishing, more trilobite hunting, and fossil hunting in South Alabama! We always have fun no matter where we go and what we find (or not!) Enjoy our week of adventures....We sure did!!!.......

Tuesday was just a beautiful day. We decided to go try to find a site that was supposed to contain trilobite fossils. We had only general instructions on where this place was located at the time.

We knew that the fossils were located in shale. We searched several areas hoping to find the right spot. We didn't find the trilobites, but we found some really interesting layers and folds in the shale that we did find.

As we were walking and hunting for shale outcroppings along the river, we came across a pile of huge crappie that someone had recently cleaned. We had been searching for the fossils for quite a while and were getting a bit tired....until we saw those fish. Michelle said she had poles and a tackle box at her house. We looked at each other and took off running to the truck!

It didn't take long before we were pulling out bass one right after another.

Now we love rockhounding, but after pulling out six of these beauties, WE were the ones that were hooked! You can bet we'll be "fish-hounding" again soon!

There was an email waiting for us when we got home that afternoon giving exact directions to the trilobite collecting spot. So, Wednesday, after work, we just HAD to go check it out! We found it, no problem and the first piece of shale I picked up had a trilobite fossil in it.

Michelle got hyper! She took a couple of photos of the one I found and jumped down in the lake looking for more!

I took the drier approach and dug down to the sheets of shale burried under the mud.

We had been pulling out all kinds of small trilobite fossils when Michelle let out her "Awesome Find Alert" by shouting, "WOO-HOO!". She found a plate of 1"+ sized trilobites all clustered together.

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