The current drought brought us to a favourite site in the Conasauga formation in Cherokee County, hoping that low water levels would have exposed more finds. Unfortunately, it proved to be a double-edge sword in that, while more shoreline was exposed, with the lack of water washing the rocks, the trilobite pickin's were slim, indeed. However, our first stop was at a Dresdachian stage site which produced a bumper crop of brooksella, so, win some, lose some. Stop 2 was an Albertan stage site where a few really nice trilobite finds kind of made up for the scarcity.

A trip to a quarry in the Mississippian age, Fort Payne chert was on the schedule for BPS' field trip in September. It was a beautiful day with a good turnout. THe quarry had been dug out since out last visit so we were able to look around the freshly-exposed areas. Sylvie and Michael made a heroic effort to find a trilobite in some of the material that resembled Frog Mtn. formation, but to no avail. We wandered freely over the huge quarry area, finding crinoid stems, brachiopods, corals and a number of nice geodes.