Shark tooth Hill…. or The Other Hobby!

From time to time, in the cooler months of the year, Ted and I like to head over to Bakersfield to Sharktooth Hill – or the Ernst Quarries.  Rob Ernst runs the quarries now since his dad passed.  Under Rob’s management you can make reservations for the days of the week that he might be open, meet at the gate near the road at 7:30am and spend a 1/2 day or whole day up on the hills looking, digging, sifting for shark’s teeth!

For Ted and I it’s a whole day affair.  Often we go over the night before and have a relaxing evening at the Padre Hotel downtown Bakersfield – there’s the Wool Grower’s (Basque restaurant) or a good steakhouse near the hotel.  It’s only a 2 1/2 hr. drive from home – but the 4am wakeup means an early poop-out by mid-afternoon….  One of the best parts about going over is hitting the Speedway Market for biscuits and gravy breakfast to go!  Best ever.

Rob has two sites open for general hunting – Slow Curve and then East Quarry.  This last time we went over to the East Quarry.  Brian from Florida and a trio from Reno joined us.  We pretty much all dug and sifted around the same area.  Mike from Reno found a small Megladon early on (the coup de gras) inspiring us to be even more diligent.

We did not find a Meg…  We have not yet to date found one.  We did find more than 200 shark teeth (around 15 million years old), some whale bones and maybe bird bones and seal teeth, porpoise teeth, whale teeth, stingray crusher plates and a bit of a stingray tail.

Andi-pup joined us and she had a great time!  I was worried she would be trouble and she was not!  She had her picnic lunch and enjoyed chasing the ants and the stink beetles, … and rolling in the dirt.