The Magic Chalupa

It just so happens that there is a Taco Bell between Superpit and Top Secret (our next destination), so we stopped for dinner. This was the second time I had Bell food today. In retrospect, I think that was the key. It was only a few miles later, and we were at Top Secret. We stopped at the end of the paving and examined the road ahead. It looked wet, but solid. The inner redneck in me said I could plow through it with my non- 4 wheel drive truck. Tha duDe warned against it, but I went ahead. We made it! After that, it was smooth sailing all the way to the hunting grounds. We saw some other trucks parked there, and we were almost turned around. Then we saw some guys walking slowly and methodically next to the road. It looked like they were hunting teeth! I pulled up close to the first guy and asked him a few well thought out questions, and when I was sure he was hunting fossils, we parked. More importantly, we avoided the long bike ride in! We left those two guys to the road, and we went into the pit. I knew where I didn't have time to hunt last time I was here, so we made a bee line there first. 30 seconds after we reached the first hill, I found a little 3 1/2" inch meg. I snapped a photo and picked it up. I cleaned the dirt off and saw that it was a keeper. All that kept going through my mind was, "I knew it!" I knew this place was good, and it was only a matter of time before we started finding the big ones. Just a few minutes later, tha duDe found a 2 inch meg. Now we both had a keeper, and everything else was just gravy. I finished up my hill, and I gave tha duDe some space and started looking a few hills later. Just over the edge, I saw it - a giant tooth! I shouted "HOLY CRAP!", took some pictures, said the little "please be whole" chant, and dug it out. The shape of the tooth was whole, but it wasn't until I scraped off the bulk of the dirt that I saw the incredible condition of the enamel and root. I pulled out the keychain tape measure to see how big it was - 6 inches! I showed tha duDe who could only utter "awesome", as he intensified his search. Ok - that's 3 megs in 15 minutes. And we hadn't hunted but 5% of the area!! I had to call my wife to share the good news. Tha duDe was the next to strike meg paydirt. A 4 inch tooth with some root damage, but he was starting to get frustrated with me finding so many big teeth. We split up for a little while, and I walked down a little ditch with layer exposed on the sides. About halfway down, I found another 3 1/2" inch meg exposed in the layer. I was having one of those days that I always heard about but never had! I hit the end of the ditch when I found some Chandler Bridge exposed below the Wando. I had to take a photo (look on the locations page) because it was so awesome looking. I met up with tha duDe again who was just coming up over a hill, and I told him I found another one. With sarcasm in his voice he said, "surprise, surprise". He said he wouldn't find one just laying out. That's not the way it works for him. He said that if he was going to find something, it was going to be by digging. There was still unhunted area, though, and I told him where I hadn't hunted yet, and I went the other way to and area where the layer had been spread out in the field. Minutes later, I came across another 3" killer. Awesome color on it. tha duDe was in shouting range, so I let him know. A frustrated "Dang" was his reply. He helped me finish off the field, and we went off to the white layer area. That's the place where they dug down to the layer and stopped. Its all white rocks, so all the teeth are white, too. Again, he went one way, and I went another. Then, I struck again. A gorgeous 5" + meg completely exposed, just lying in the sand. I called out, "Man, you're not going to believe this. Another awesome one." His reply was, "Man, you suck. I should have left you stuck in the mud at superpit". We finished hunting the area, and again went our separate ways. We went to hunt the big washouts on the other side of this pond of sewage (literally), and I went back to comb the area I hunted earlier. I wasn't finding much, but somewhere along the way, I lost a glove. That's bad because I was going to dig. I spent some time looking for my glove, but I finally decided that I would give it up. I had found enough. I would just go back and see what tha duDe had found. I crossed the sewage stream and found him more frustrated than I left him. He hadn't found anything even though he had been digging for an hour. We both went back to the white layer field, and I just picked little teeth up while he dug. 30 seconds after he started digging, he finally found his tooth of the day. A beautiful white 3 3/4 inch meg. He was right when he said he would find his tooth digging. The sun was almost down, and the bugs were getting bad. With a much happier tone in his voice, tha duDe called out across the field to ask if I was ready to go. We headed off to the truck taking the route that I had taken earlier in hopes of finding my lost glove. We got back to the other side of the "pond" where we found the first megs of the day, and while we were walking side by side, I called out "MEG!" There was another one right in front of us! He shook his head in disbelief. I snapped a photo, and we continued on to the truck. We picked up teeth until we got there.

On the way home, neither of us could believe our the luck. Between us, we had found at least 10 megs. That's pretty good, you have to admit! The only cause that we could come up with that chalupa that my wife brought me. That had to be it. I guess it was a magic chalupa.