Yesterday’s “hike” wasn’t really a hike. Not the kind with switchbacks and summits, anyway. This was slow, head-down wandering… moving from one patch of rock to another, eyes scanning for anything that didn’t quite match the rest.I first saw Thistlethwaite Falls on TikTok just yesterday morning, in fact. I’d just woken up, still half tangled in my blankets, when this video popped up showing this cute fall you could get right in. The next video showed the fossils. You know I was SOLD! It was one of those moments where the phone goes down and you just know you’re going. Within hours, we were in the car, snacks packed, bags ready, heading toward Richmond with no real plan except “play in a waterfall and find as many fossils as possible.”
It was me, my home slice Sky, and the baby, out on a late-summer day at Thistlethwaite Falls in Richmond, Indiana. The water spilled wide over its limestone ledge, humming in that steady, drum-like way waterfalls do. The spray caught in the warm air, carrying the smell of wet stone. And right there, underfoot, was where the real action was… fossils embedded in the rock like the past had been gift-wrapped for us to find.
We started small, a crinoid here, a shell impression there but things escalated quickly. Before long, I was hauling multiple bags of fossils back up from the falls to the car. And then back down again. And then up again. The baby, apparently inspired by all this rock action, decided to test her throwing arm. At one point, I took a direct hit to the head and felt it rattle around my skull like a maraca. Sky caught a rock to the face not long after. Adventures are never without their battle scars.
Next stop was Richmond’s Fossil Park, which felt like a fossil hunter’s open-air market . A broad gravel bed scattered with chunks of rock, each one a possible time capsule. This is where I found some of my favorites: a few pieces with shimmering quartz inclusions, and a whole brachiopod! The dude has both valves, hinge and all . It was like it had been waiting all this time just to be found. The creek bed here and the gravel is also just basically nothing but fossils and stuff. That’s actually where I found one quartz piece.
The front floorboard of my car became a rock bed of its own, layered with crinoids, coral pieces, and other prehistoric odds and ends. Along with two bags in the back seat full… well overflowing if I am being honest. The sun was dropping toward the horizon by the time we finally looked up around 7:30 p.m. and the baby’s rock-throwing streak had given way to full on running baby.
We never made it to our planned third stop. Time just slipped through our fingers, as it tends to do when the hunt takes over. I’m not mad about it. That place will still be there. And now, I have more than enough reason to go back . Let’s pretend as if the fossils alone weren’t reason enough.
Rockhounding isn’t fast, and it isn’t clean. It’s slow, deliberate, and sometimes chaotic. It’s a mix of patience, luck, and a little chaos courtesy of the smallest member of the crew. But it’s always worth it. Because in the end, you walk away with more than just rocks. You walk away with pieces of the earth’s history and the stories you’ll tell about how you found them.
