Yesterday, Bucky (Dr. Gates), Juliana, Kimberly and I drove almost 3 hours out to Aurora, NC to check out the fossil mine.  In 2008 the Aurora Mine created 6.6 million tons of phosphate ore from which they produced 1.3 million tons of phosphoric acid!!  This mine has the rights to mine 22,000 acres and is still growing today.  For a comparison, the city of Raleigh is 91,392 acres.

Anyways, enough about facts, back to the experience.  We left Prairie Ridge Ecostation at 8 am with our wonderful driver, Tara.  We drove all the way to Washington, NC with only a few wrong turns, before we stopped at Bucky’s favorite place for hotdogs, Bill’s Hotdogs.  Even though it was only a little after 10 am, we scarfed down 3 hotdogs (Bucky had 4) and got back on the road to Aurora.  Once we got there we were able to see part of the Phosphate mine, owned by PCS Phosphate, grabbed a few pictures (below), and talked to a very nice man who worked security there.  We travelled to the Aurora Fossil Museum where we were able to dig through the “dirt” (the mine dumps what they don’t use here and it is full of amazing fossils and teeth!), found some great fossils (below) in the very hot sun, and check out the museum.

This was an amazing experience that I was so fortunate to be apart of!