For our latest Fun Friday of Summer Adventure we left the house early (7 a.m. is crack of dawn for the Hale family) and headed toward Aurora, NC. I took the boys straight from their beds, still in their jammies and loaded up the van for the 2 1/2 hour trip east. They boys were great travelers and not at all grumpy (of course, it helps to have bears and blankets to help adjust as they woke up). A cooler with chocolate milk bottles and granola bars for breakfast also works well for the boys. 
So why the "long" journey to Aurora? It is home to the Aurora Fossil Museum (http://www.aurorafossilmuseum.com) where you can check out different fossils and Native American artifacts and then head outside to dig in fossil piles for shark teeth, ray plates, fish bones, sea urchin spines and many other marine fossils. They also have a large fake megalodon shark that you can take your picture "inside". Look closely and you can see Graeme eaten by this granddaddy of all sharks!
We would have spent more time inside the museum but unfortunately we picked a day that a Craven County summer program also chose to come. It was just a little crowded for us to be able to enjoy the tiny museum so we headed out to the fossil piles to dig.
Another really cool thing about the Aurora Fossil Museum is that they allow you to take some of the fossil dirt with you. With my little helpers, we loaded up a couple of small garden carts to deliver to Hemlock Bluffs Nature Preserve where I still work part-time and a tote for our pile at home. Instead of a sand box, we have filled ours with fossil dirt so that you can play, dig and discover fossils as well.
It was a beautiful and cool morning with the fossils. Liam loved digging and finding the "big" rocks. Graeme was an intrepid explorer out to conquer mountains (though it was warm enough that he quickly shed his explorer jacket ;-). It was fantastic fun with fossils!
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