Know before you dig,
forage, or collect

Between the three of us, we've been doing these hobbies long enough to have made most of the mistakes worth making. Stuart has dug holes on beaches that turned out to be in protected zones. Rachel drove three hours to a rockhounding spot that sat inside a mining claim she hadn't checked. Sam nearly walked off with saw palmetto berries from a Florida national forest before someone pointed out that's a felony under state law — not a fine, a felony.

None of us were doing anything malicious. We just didn't know. And the information wasn't easy to find — it lives in BLM land-use orders, USFS permit pages, state park regulations, county ordinances, and agency documents that most people never think to look for. Even when you find the right document, it's often written in a way that's hard to apply to a specific location.

So we started writing things down. First for ourselves, then for friends asking the same questions, then properly — with sources, verification dates, and enough detail to actually be useful before you make the drive. That's what this site is.

We cover four hobbies: metal detecting, foraging, rockhounding, and fossil hunting. For each location we research the rules that actually apply there — not just the general federal framework, but the specific county ordinance, the state park permit requirement, the seasonal closure. If the online information is ambiguous, we call the ranger station. Every page carries a last-verified date and links to the primary source so you can check it yourself.

We don't sell anything — no permits, no tours, no gear referrals. There may be display ads on the site; that's how we keep it running. But advertisers have no say in what we write. This is just the reference we wished existed when we were starting out.