Pirate booty, food, fun, music, shows and gems, minerals, crystals and stained glass as we set off for Lompoc, California for the Annual Pirate Fest. Lompoc River Park will once again be the site of this fun, family filled event this weekend.
We enjoyed our visit with family in Palmdale, some craft time, as well as some R&R.
5 to 20 million geologic years ago Central California was covered by the ocean during what is called the Miocene Era. Bakersfield, in addition to being a great depository of oil, is home to fossil beds rich in marine fossils. The area is known for an abundant collecting of fossil shark teeth.
We venture out into grass covered hills. The best digging is on hillsides, just below a caliche layer of sediment. Dig, shovel, sift, repeat is the process that yields fossil finds. Some shark teeth are a mere 1/8″ and easily fall through the sieve. Some megalodon shark teeth have been found up to five inches. We have never found such a treasure, but have found teeth that make nice pendants and earrings.
Our fun and family visits are coming to a close, here in Bakersfield. Next stop: the Annual Mountain Festival in Tehachipi. Hope your week has been blessed.
While kayaking with our cousin, I managed to tip over my kayak. Surprisingly, it was not the “panic” event I thought it would be. The water was summer warm and our octogenarian cousin paddled back and rescued me. Drowning was averted by standing up. His gentle encouragement and advice helped this landlubber. We saw a lot of birds, including wild parrots. And we saw some homeless people that live along the river. It was a fun morning.
Oil is big industry here in Bakersfield, California. They have been pumping oil for almost 120 years and prior to environmental laws about 50 years ago, waste water from oil pumping was discharged into the Kern River. Today that water is cleaned and put back into the aquifer. The oil pump pictured is representative of the hundreds that dot the landscape.
We are enjoying some R&R with family and hope to dig for shark tooth fossils later in the week. Our next show is the craft fair portion of the Mountain Festival in Tehachipi. This event brings 20 to 30 thousand people to that small mountain town. Hope to see you there.
