Something Old and Something New

 Hi all,
Fishing buddy Jay Z asked if I would help him catch fish for the annual wild game feast that is held here each year. Well I suppose I could sacrifice a few days for the cause. The first day we headed to Cold Brook for crappie and bass. We had a pretty good day keeping 22 good sized crappie and 10 bass. The next morning Jay wanted to head for Angostura Reservoir. This is a huge lake just south of Hot Springs that is suppose to be a good walleye lake but also hold some good crappie and bass.
 Jay figured we needed to get there early before the jet boats start making waves around us. So up at 3:30 am was the plan, crazy part I was up before the alarm even went off. We fished pretty hard but it was just not to be, at the end of the day all we had was one crappie and 3 bass. I hope the gang isn't to hungry. I guess another day may need to be sacrificed.(wink, wink)

Jay and Maggie

Maggie doing what she does mostly in the boat

 The past few years there has been a group of campers here that spends time digging in a cave. The core of the group is from Pennsylvania University but they also have volunteers from all over. I have talked with them many times and they invited us to come and see what they are actually doing, well part of it. Sadly they were almost finishing up and Wendy was unable to come along.
 To simplify an explanation they have the floor of the cave sectioned off and they dig a small area a few inches in depth at a time. The dirt is bagged and tagged then sent to be screen washed. They are looking for bone fragments that will help tell the story of the cave and area over time.
 John and his wife Juliann were very gracious to tell me what they were doing and even let me pick a few bones. The finds here are usually rodent or rabbit bones, though they are trying to remove what they believe is a coyote or canine of some type.This may not be as exciting as a dinosaur dig but was neat seeing the high amount of caring that these people have for what they are doing.

Juliann weighing a bag of cave dirt

 Recording data that will get entered into a computer later

lots of water is used to flush dirt and fine particle away

a small rodent jawbone

screen on right all washed

small bones that were found

 The remaining stuff was then bagged back up and sent to another group that would do a more thorough picking. After that they would still take it back to the university for final picking even utilizing a microscope.
 Pretty interesting stuff huh?