Hungry Hollow, Arkona, Ontario
Well this will definitely go down as a Thanksgiving weekend to remember....temperatures rose up to the mid twenties with lotsa sun and clear skies. Too beautiful to pass up so the kiddo and I headed off on a day trip for a little fossil hunting in Hungry Hollow. The drive thruogh farm country during the peak of autumn color was well worth the trip itself, the hills and copses of trees were ablaze with bright reds and yellows at every turn. Hungry Hollow is located just off County Road 12 on the outskirts of Arkona, Ontario, you have to keep a watchful eye as you drive in because the sign for Hungry Hollow is set a ways back from the roadside and can be a little hard to spot. Follow this road about a half kilometer down , as you cross the bridge over the Ausable River turn left onto Fossil Road and just a few hundred yards in you will see the gate
You can park here and head down to the river bank. The bank is composed of soft limestone and fossils are constantly eroding out of the banks, making it an easy excursion for the young ones to start getting fossils for their own collections. Just beyond the gate is a rock quary and although you would think this would make is easier as everything has been broken up, we have found the collecting to be very poor here. Just past the gravel pit is a small field where we have seen small groups camping so it is possible to make this an overnight excursion if you wanted to add to the adventure. One of these days Alyssa and I are gonna make this trip and stay for a night on the banks of the Ausable River, I wonder what the fishing is like?
Early spring , just after the snow has melted is the best time to visit Fossil Road, the meltwater leaves behind a treasure trove of fossils that have eroded out of the limestone banks, I will give one piece of advice that I really encourage you to heed before heading there, bring lots of cold water or juice, sunscreen, and a hat, you are going down into a narrow gully surrounded by bare rock, the sun beating down into the gully, even in October creates an ovenlike effect. But even in fall there was no shortage of fossils to keep an 8 year old busy for an afternoon...with the occasional break to chase butterflies.
We stayed for about 3 hours this time, had a light snack before headin home to survey all our goodies that we had found, trilobytes, snails, corals, bivalves and even a couple of samples of a small squidlike critter called Tornoceras.
From left to right... a Trilobyte, a trilobyte body and a head, (Greenops Phacops), the tiny circular one is Tornoceras, the larger one I haven't been able to positively identify yet, four bivalves, (Mucrospirifer Arkonsis and Mucrospirefer Thedfordensis) and a horned corral (Zaphrentis prolifica),
A nice haul of fossils, including other bivalves, leatherback corals, crinoid stems, and other species of coral.
Even if fossil hunting is not your cup of tea, an autumn drive through this part of southern Ontario reveals other treasures that are just as beautiful and rewarding.......
I hope you enjoyed this report!
Kirk
