Today, we went digging in the dirt.
And I have to tell you, it was a lot of fun.
We went to Penn Dixie Fossil Park
Here’s what AI has to say about it:
Penn Dixie Fossil Park in Hamburg is a great example of Western New York accidentally turning its industrial past into something pretty remarkable. The site was originally a quarry, where companies mined shale and limestone beginning decades ago to supply the nearby cement plant.
In the 1950s, the quarry came under the Penn-Dixie Cement Company, which hauled the rock about a mile to its plant along Lake Erie and used it to make Portland cement. Quarrying ended by the early 1970s, leaving behind a seemingly barren pit—but that exposed rock turned out to contain an extraordinary record of a shallow sea that covered Western New York about 380 million years ago.
After years of abandonment and illegal dumping, local residents and scientists fought to preserve the site, and the Town of Hamburg purchased it in the 1990s. Today, that old industrial quarry is Penn Dixie Fossil Park, where you can walk into an ancient Devonian seafloor and actually take home the fossils you find.
We went early for a 10 am slot and stayed almost two hours, digging in the dirt.
We picked a spot to dig and then we started to …well, dig. At first we didn’t do too well for some reason - she found a few but a few feet away other families were having much better luck than us, but that’s okay because Dad brought snacks so we drowned our sorrows in orange slices.
We finally decided to move, and she found a little puddle about 2 feet wide that she decided that the fossils must have lived so she dug there. She dropped her hat, got both feet in the mud but had a great time so whatever. Today it was all about the water for her.
It took me about ten minutes to get back on my feet. This is a young person’s game. There were a few seniors out there, and I am pretty sure they have been there since last week sometime.
Then I mentioned we might go to McDonald’s for lunch because it’s a special treat with Dad mostly because rightfully so Mom doesn’t want to go and Mom had a meeting at home so we had to kill a bit of time. Besides, it was lunchtime and the toy was Hello Kitty meets Godzilla or something like that.
Home, and a much needed shower for her and a nap for dear old Dad and that was our day!
Oh, the roof: ALMOST DONE. We just need to have gutters installed sometime next week
Until Next Time,
TH and Co.