Time Machine

 Calvert Cliffs State Park, MD

Calvert Cliffs is part of a geological formation found throughout parts of the Chesapeake Bay region. You walk through woods, past a creek trickling through a swamp, to the edge of the Bay. American lotus bloom in the swamp. Sand bluffs tower over the flat landscape of southern Maryland and the Bay. Birthday cake layers of sediment in various colors and textures border the water, the bottom layer full of fossils. You often find ancient seashells; oysters and scallops and barnacles. Sometimes an ancient shark tooth. Clay blobs are smoothed by wave action to cobbles the shape of river rocks; these "rocks" crumble in your hands. You can carry out as many fossils as you can hold in your hands. It's a great place to take young explorers, armed with beach strainers and sand buckets. Or carry your own camera, and collect what you can't carry out.