@roy
I am with you! I regularly fossil hunt and have shoe boxes upon shoes boxes of fossils and more fossils displayed. DH does not share my passion and probably would like his space back... I recently found what appears to be a 20,000+ yr-old bison metatarsal in a creek north of Dallas. I need official confirmation before I do my happy dance.
Texas has awesome fossil finding opportunities. There are 300 million-year-old fossils in the old pit in Mineral Wells, it's open to the public. The North Sulphur River has Late Cretaceous fossils (60-90 million a year told), public access in Ladonia. There are many creeks in North Texas that produce fossilized shark teeth; it's more difficult to find public access to creeks, but once you're in the creek bed it's legal to walk the bed and hunt (not along the banks though).
The Ellis County mammoth discovery team was allowing volunteers to dig alongside a few paleontologists. That is actually who did all of the excavation, not the Perot people. Perot just stepped in recently after the work was done with only the plastering remaining. I wanted to go so badly, but it would have absolutely crushed my little paleontologist daughter if I went without her, as they wouldn't allow children on the dig site. The sacrifices of motherhood. Lol! But, we still have many, many more fossil hunt adventures to come!