Fossil Fest attracts the biggest crowd yet
A move to the great outdoors certainly did a world of good on Saturday, with warm weather and clear, blue skies.
For Fossil Fest, that meant a whole lot of people coming to take a look at the remains of prehistoric animals, buy some of them for family and friends and much more.
Fossil Fest returned to the Shell Factory this past weekend for its 11th annual festival, and it featured a fossil dig and coloring for the kids, silent auctions, a grand raffle, games, vendors, exhibits and a great learning experience for people of all ages.
With the show outdoors this year, more than double the attendance was expected from last year’s show in the Dolphin Room, especially with the flea market crowd in the parking lot nearby.
Thanks to the great weather, it looked like that estimate would be conservative.
Louis Stieffel, president of the Fossil Club of Lee County, which hosted the event, said people were having a good time, thanks, in part, to sunny skies.
“Every week it was raining during the weekend. But we got lucky and everyone is enjoying themselves. It’s hard to get attendance since it’s a free event, but we’ve had hundreds of people.”
All day, kids crammed into the sandboxes to dig for fossils and went to the activity table to make fossil-related items.
Dr. Robin Harris and her husband Dr. Rick Batts, had a table where children could color dinosaurs and, perhaps, have their parents buy a coloring book that Batts authored and illustrated titled “What Do You Mean Dinosaurs Live in Hawaii?”
“We thought it would be fun to create a coloring book so people can come and think about why dinosaurs were or weren’t in Hawaii,” Harris said as Batts was creating a Jurassic coloring book. “They can learn about our deep history with claws and stones.”
It was also a great opportunity for the Shell Factory, as it brought two great events together.
“Last year with the event inside, people didn’t know what it was. Now, you can see we have a great crowd and we hope the crowd gets bigger,” Rick Tupper, CFO and marketing director of the Shell Factory. “It’s like most events we have, it starts out small and cost effective and gets bigger.”
Honey Phillips, a recreation specialist for the city of Cape Coral, is also a member of the fossil club and organizer of a similar fossil event in that city in April. She said these types of shows are very family and kid oriented, which is why they are so successful.
“Florida has a unique fossil history. We didn’t have dinosaurs, but there were a lot of cool animals,” Phillips said. “I enjoy this. I try to come every year and have been with this club since I was 19. It’s nice it’s here because there are things to do after.”