Day of Discovery
New trails, new fossil hunting grounds, and new ginseng hollows. Those are the things I brought home with me from trail riding today.
It was a beautiful day to be in the mountains. I started out this morning for an all day trip to the woods. I didn’t really go with intentions of exploring trails but was instead looking for areas abundant in black cohosh. That mission was a success very early in the day and since the whole trail network on the Wyoming County side of Bolt Mountain is new to me, I spent the rest of the day exploring.
Today I found the trail. What is the trail you ask? Until today I pretty much had a boundary in my new trail riding area. On top of Bolt Mountain you can take a road that goes by the Ivy Knob fire tower and pretty much explore all the way to Logan County if you wanted to. The trails I have been riding lately had a couple mountains between them and the trails by the fire tower. Today I found the trail that connects the two which basically means when I wrote in a post the other day that I wouldn’t be going into the backwoods much the rest of the year, I didn’t mean to lie. No way to know I would chance upon a trail that takes me straight into the Wyoming County backwoods.
I’ve gotten back into the habit of taking my GPS with me since I’m riding in totally unfamiliar territory. When I’m hiking or trail riding in places I don’t know, I like to use the GPS to mark coordinates of easily identifiable landmarks. Most of the time those coordinates will coincide with where I turn back or change trails. When I get home I’ll punch the coordinates into Google Earth and know exactly where I was. This is beneficial in a number of ways. Today, for instance, the place I turned around for the ride home was at the junction of three intersecting roads/trails. Since I know how to get back there I marked that spot and can better plan which trail to explore from there with the help of Google Earth.
N 37 46.306, W081 29.913 was my turn around point today. If you enter those numbers just like they are in the search window for Google Earth you will see where I was, or at least within 16 feet. If you do look, I came into the intersection from the north trail. 
While following this trail I stopped frequently just to have a look around. One of those places was near a highwall created by an old rock quarry, I think. It could be an old strip mine highwall as well I just know there was a rock quarry somewhere in that area once upon a time. At any rate, I decided to look for fossils.
A highwall is basically a cliff made by man. They are usually jagged, unstable, and dangerous. If you hunt fossils near a highwall, I would suggest you don’t but if you do, be EXTREMELY cautious. These areas are usually rich in fossils because they fell from the cliff face. It would suck dying because a petrified tree fell on you.
(click photo for larger image)
Since there is nothing to compare to for size or orientation, I’m looking up at the cliff face and that fossil is at least 3 feet across with about one foot protruding. I probably should note I’m not 100% certain the photo above is of a portion of a petrified tree. It was probably thirty feet above me and I didn’t want to get close enough to be in danger of falling rocks. But it certainly looks like one to me.
The fossils I found today I would assume to be quite a bit younger than the fossils I have found previously. These fossils were not associated with a coal bed but were instead embedded in solid rock above the coal bed.
The fossil in the stone above was obviously unretrievable by me. The stone itself is about a 4 foot square and would weigh a few tons. I know where it is though if anybody wants to go get it.
All of the fossils I found today were pieces of petrified wood. I found no evidence of smaller plants in the fossils.
Apparently the age of a piece of petrified wood is hard to determine because wood can be petrified quickly under the right conditions. This wood does have some age on it though. It had about 300 feet of mountain covering it at one time.
I brought home eight fossils today for my collection. I call it a glorified rock collection.
The final positive for the day, I found the ginseng and harvest season starts Sept. 1. Sorry, I can’t tell you where it is. 
Denny old friend that’s a good looking bush. I have not seen red berries on any sang yet but I am looking forward to it!
This was the first plant I had seen with red berries, I’ve seen a couple more since then. I love hunting ginseng and will normally look for it any time I’m in the mountains. Like I wrote in another post, I’m not always lookin’ to dig it, but I’m always lookin’.
me too. i have found some within the city limits around here! if it has red berries that is good enough for me, september 1st or not. but i don’t dig much of the stuff, it’s been years actually. i do feed my littluns a leaf as a reward for finding it!
Looks like you are legal to start harvesting some wild Ginseng…Have fun!;)
Thanx CD, that is what I have been doing all day today.:)