Calvert Cliffs State Park

This morning Hans asked "would you like to go for a walk today?" as I was pouring myself a cup of coffee.  I hopped onto the internet and quickly did a few searches for parks and trails in the area.  I found a link to Calvert Cliffs State Park and saw that there were a few nature trails and a small beach.  I asked Hans if he minded driving a little ways today.

We packed a small cooler with ice packs and water, grabbed our light hiking packs, and stopped at a grocery to pick up a few snack items before driving about an hour southeast to the Chesapeake Bay.

Calvert Cliffs is a small park with easy-grade nature trails.  After walking a little under 2 miles along small streams and a noisy marsh (full of frogs) we entered the tiny beach area.  Since we've had a lot of rain recently, the beach below the cliffs was closed because there had been a few landslides earlier in the week.  Upon entering the park we were told that we were allowed to beachcomb for fossils on the non-cliff parts.  What?

Later, I read that the cliffs are full of fossils from the miocene period and anyone is allowed to harvest any that have fallen onto the beach.  Obviously, you can't dig into the cliffs themselves because they could be unstable, but we were pretty interested in seeing what we could find.

After a while Hans discovered that the really dark rocks were likely suspects, though we're pretty sure that they are relatively early fossils.  But in any case, we came home with five!

As we were leaving the area we stopped at Cove Point Lighthouse, one of the oldest still in operation in Maryland.