Aurora Cook Out 6-2013
The Aurora Cook-Out was a great success. 20+ club members turned out for a day of fun, food and fossils! With the recent rains, the piles were freshly washed, and while some folks collected, others filled buckets to take home with them and hunt through later. Still others visited the museum to view the new exhibits and shop the ever changing gift shop. It was wonderful to see the variety of folks who showed up. In addition to the regulars and you all know who you are (Joy and Bob Harrington, Trish Kohler, Linda and Bruce McCall), there was George Oliver, George Powell, John Powell (no relation), the Downs family, Bobby Tant, Charles Knupp and Darla Liles, John Steffensen, Lisa & Mark McCoy and Willisia Holbrook as well as Andy and various folks from the museum staff. (If I forgot anybody dont shoot me I took too long to write this up and my memory fades ) The weather had looked iffy, but worked out just fine, with the rain holding off right up until it was time to eat. Bruce McCall plied his talents as a chef, cooking up more hot dogs than we could consume, and with all the fixings, sides and desserts, everyone had a full stomach. The camaraderie was excellent and fossil stories (like fish stories) grew ever larger with the telling. As lunch was winding down, George Oliver gave us a very enlightening talk on how to process the Aurora reject material for the best results. Hes found a wonderful variety of interesting and rare specimens from going through buckets of material and passed along his pointers to his eager audience. After his talk was a door prize drawing and everyone won one! Then, after a brief sidewalk sale from John Powell, we all adjourned to the Museum back room for a Power Point presentation on collecting fossil in Texas. That concluded the days scheduled events, but George Oliver, Trish and Linda & Bruce McCall headed out to do more spoil pile collecting, with Trish closing down the house when it got dark. All in all, a really nice experience that we should do again.