Coon Creek

Playing a bit of catch up here...

Last Saturday we took the monkeys and JP to the Pink Palace members' day at Coon Creek (near Shiloh, Tennessee). It was a beautiful day and a lovely drive. The three monkeys spent most of the trip asking, "Are we there yet?" (They learned that from JP.)

Warren enjoyed pointing out all of the places he has been digging over the past few years as well as telling me about the local eateries.

The most exciting moment of our trip was saving a turtle from oncoming traffic. Warren pulled over, grabbed the box turtle from out of the middle of the road, and placed it in Satchel's eager hands. "We'll let it go at Coon Creek," Warren said authoritatively. (We are no strangers to saving turtles.)

This turtle had quite the personality. Rather than hide in its shell, it peeked its head out, released its legs, and tried to make a mad dash for it. Satchel, a little freaked, put the turtle on the floorboard in back.

As I was sitting looking out the window, I felt something very strange on my leg. The turtle had climbed under the seat! I held it for a few minutes, but it continued to try and break free.

Jiro said he wanted a turn. I tuned out again and before we knew it, the turtle had crawled under Warren's seat.

"Don't let it get under the break peddle!!" Warren commanded.

Completely freaking out, I tried to lunge between Warren's leg and the dashboard to retrieve the turtle, which appeared to be dead set on getting out of the car. By the time Warren pulled over I thought for sure it had made its way to the engine!

I held it until we got to Coon Creek and was not sad at all to tell it good-bye.

After all of that excitement, Coon Creek was mildly anti-climactic. We were treated to an overview of the area and briefed on how to keep our fossils intact. The instructor looked at the monkeys clutching the hammers Warren had supplied them with and said, "Uh, guys, I don't think you'll need those out there."

The monkeys were hot to start digging, so we skipped the crafts area and went right to the big pile-o-dirt that was awaiting us about a quarter mile away. In no time we were all uncovering (and breaking) fabulous shell fossils from millions of years ago with mere plastic knives. JP soon decided this is what he wanted to do for a living and was truly astounded to learn that Warren was an actual archaeologist.

About five minutes later everyone was ready for lunch and wanted to know when we were going home and if JP could spend the night. Over sandwiches, cold hot dogs, hard boiled eggs, and potato chips I explained that JP could in fact spend the night, but only if he found a really cool fossil.

This re-energized them to get back to the matter at hand.


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After an hour or so of digging, and some minor exploring (which was officially off limits), we packed up our belongings and headed back to the car.

"Did I find anything cool enough?" JP asked me hopefully.

"Yes," I replied much to everyone's excitement.

The ride home was filled with much talk of what TV shows the children would watch, followed by much talk of what games they would play. We made a couple of quick pit stops--one at an Amish bakery and one at a meat market.

At one point we saw another turtle trying to cross the road. "Should we get it?" Warren asked.

"NO!!" we all cried in unison.