Coyote Mountain

Wisteria Candy Cottage, established in 1921, is located in the middle of nowhere.  Naturally we combined our fossil finding trip with our chocolate finding trip, because we had to go through the middle of nowhere to get there.  

Eric and I discovered the candy cottage from a TV show, Ken Kramer's About San Diego. 

It is pricey (23.95$ per pound) but fun, and I am sure it is factored into the price of having nieces.    

Our first stop in Coyote Mountain (in Anza Borrego State Park) was Fossil Canyon.  

6 million years ago this entire area used to be underwater, part of the Sea of Cortez (the Gulf of California).  3 million years ago sediment carried by the Colorado River created a boundary between the sea, changing it into a lake, which eventually became the desert that we know of today as Anza Borrego.  The sea fossils are evidence of the past marine environment. 

It didn't take long to start finding fossils.  

This spider probably has a shell couch in its living room. 

The rock at the top of this picture has an oyster embedded within it.  

I think we were all surprised, even me as the group leader, how many fossils there are at Coyote Mountain.  

This sedimentary rock wall is full of shells.

From Fossil Canyon we drove a few miles to Domelands trailhead.  Surprisingly enough, there were more fossils at Domelands than Fossil Canyon.  

On this little hill were hundreds of sand dollar fossils.  Elle, very eloquently, said, "it's really strange that we are looking for shells in the desert."  

All we can talk about is returning to find more shell fossils.  I thought we would be lucky to find a couple, I never would have guessed that it would be difficult to not find fossils.