Caesar Creek State Park

Parents beware. This park may become a favorite one for your young children, forever!

We were on our way home from Cincinnati, driving the most direct way to get home: Hwy 71 North. But we had a stop in mind: Caesar Creek State Park. The kids' first grade teacher told them about this place months ago, and how it is a place where one could collect fossils, real million-year-old fossils, to take home.



Dubious, but hopeful, we found our way to the park as the rain stopped, the sky parted and the sun came out. It was perfect fossil-hunting weather.



To hunt for these fossils legally, one must go first to the visitor's center of the park to obtain a free permit. I am pretty impressed that they still let visitors collect as many (smaller) fossils to one's heart's content! But if you go yourself, you will see why.  This place is COVERED with fossils!! From trilopods, to brachiopods, to corals and shells of all kinds... we were basically standing in the bottom of the 125 million year old ocean bottom and collecting the fossilized shells!

Intrigued? You can do it, too! It's about 1.5 hour drive southwest of Columbus on I-71. Follow signs to Caesar Creek State Park Visitor's center, and you won't be disappointed.