My Rockhounder's Dream Adventure With Road Scholar- Collecting Days

    The next few days we would begin our day by caravaning out to various remote sites. We then would make stops at different sites on our way back to Delta. 

The vans and trailer carried everything we needed for the day; picnic tables, chairs, food, drinks, rockhounding tools, and a much appreciated port-a-potty!!!!

     Previously whenever I heard The Great Basin mentioned, I would have a picture in my mind of a smooth, shallow bowl/sink shaped desert surrounded by mountains. (Revealing my ignorance here ) Through the geology portion of the learning day, I had found out that this basin is not how I pictured. Basically, due to an uplift and stretching of the crust in this area a lot of faulting occurred. The faults formed a series of valleys and mountain ranges. We will be experiencing this topography for the next three days!

DAY 1

Fossil Mountain

     We started the day at Fossil Mountain, known for its early Ordovician fossils. We were informed that the views from the top were awesome. So, my plan was to get as high as I could with an empty bucket and collect on the way down.  

Fossil Mountain is at the Southern end of the Confusion Range.

 

Still hiking up, but there are a few fossils in my bucket that I couldn't resist.

     Eventually, I decided this was steep enough and if I didn't head back down  now I would either miss the picnic lunch or not have many fossils.

Jim and a few others hiked a bit higher.

    The views from my highest point.

Quite a view of  Utah's West desert.....and valleys and mountain ranges :-)

     An example of a rock full of fossils, this one was too big for my bucket!

 Mainly cephalopods, echinoderms, and brachiopods.

     An absolutely perfect setting for a picnic!!!

Picnics were a perfect time to hear from the others about their finds and adventures.

All too soon (how I felt at most sites), it was time to pack up and leave.

Obsidian Pit

     Mahogany and sheen obsidian were collected here.

      From a distance, this rubble may not look like much....

Lol, on our itinerary, every day there was a note: "Wear clothes that can get dirty and dusty."

    but, up close the beautiful colors and patterns are seen.

Mahogany obsidian gets its color from high concentrations of iron and magnesium. Sheen obsidian gets its golden color from gas bubbles aligned 'just right'  along the lava layers when cooled.

 Jim is happy with his finds.

    We walked over the hill , where we collected snowflake obsidian. The mineral cristobalite forms white snowflake patterns in the black obsidian-very striking!

     At most sites I liked to look up,and take a little time to just enjoy the views.

      We were quite cozy in the vans....

Another daily note on itinerary: "Van ride for several miles on dirt roads to collect...." Besides dirt roads they were also quite bumpy; in this pic the left leaning is due to being jostled around or over potholes!!

 however, once we were not confined-we usually spread out quit a bit over the landscape! 

Sunstone Knoll

     

     Here, as we ambled into the sun, the 'sparkle' from the reflection of the sun off a small sunstone

Sunstone is a labradorite crystal,a volcanic feldspar mineral. The knoll is formed from volcanic vents that erupted and the crystals are found in the volcanic rocks and the flats surrounding the knoll.

  would announce its location for us to collect.

  DAY 2

Trilobite Quarry (U-Dig Fossils as seen on the Travel Channel) at Antelope Springs

         This site is located in the House range and is known for its quantity and quality of trilobites.  Robin gave us a presentation of what type of fossils we may find and how to find them by splitting the shale.

He made it look so easy!

     This is one of the areas in the House Range that the Cambrian Wheeler shale is exposed.

"The Wheeler Shale contains interbeds of shaley limestone, mudstone, and thin platy limestone."  All I know is that some were much harder to split than others!!!

    We were informed that an experienced rockhounder would find a work area and then bring batches of 'promising' rocks to that work area. Rather than fetching a new piece every few minutes.

Time to get started and find a work location! (The view looking in one direction from my work site- love the mountain backdrop!)

I am not sure what a 'promising' rock piece would look like here, but I would think there would be plenty an arm's reach away :-)

    On the way to picking out my work site, I gathered up several 'promising' pieces.  I picked my location by what my view from it would be...lol, not very scientific :-)

    After I ran out of my 'promising' pieces, I looked around me and found one of my favorites ( two inches from my right leg/knee!), and no splitting required! We were told that if a piece had more than 3 trilobites on it ,it was considered a 'mortality plate'. 
I am looking forward to cleaning this one up and placing it on my future collection shelf with .....

I'll call this my 'catastrophe plate'!!!....or turtleplate :-) At this site, most trilobite fossils range in length  from 1/8" up to 2".

    this activity card !! Will be perfect for how I want my future rock collection to look like (like the Great Basin Museum's-earlier blog).

This label is from the Great Basin Museum, placed by a 'mortality plate'.

 

Happy with our finds at the U-Dig Fossils :-)

Drum Mountain Range/Wonder Stone

     We went to a quarry site in the Drum mountain range to collect the wonder stone. The stone is a type of rhyolite, an extrusive volcanic rock.

Besides in the quarry pit, there were wonder stones all around and above the pit.

    Wonder Stone was an absolute delight for me to collect. I could have spent hours looking at the different individual rock pieces and all their swirling designs and colors. 

The colored bands (red,pink,purple,cream,and orange) are created from the different minerals seeping through the rhyolite.

    Above the quarry I found a piece with a beautiful design and gorgeous colors. One problem, it was huge!! Luckily, Jim agreed to try and break off a piece.

After a few whacks with the sledge hammer, a good sized piece was ready for me to collect :-)

   These are not the pieces Jim broke off for me, but I do hope I put these in my collection bucket!

   

 Drum Mountain Range-Ghost Town "Joy"

    

    While still in the Drum Mountain Range, we stopped for a bit of storytelling.

     We heard about the mining town of Joy. After 30 years, due to the cost of transporting ores and supplies from/to this isolated location, the mines were shut down. Joy is now a ghost town, but memories of its founder,Henry Joy, and colorful characters such as "No-Nose-Maggie"  remain.

At one time 1000 residents lived here.

  From the time of early settlers to recent times, mysterious drumming sounds have been heard coming from these mountains. It is from these noises that this mountain range got its name-Drum Mountains. There are several theories for the origination of these sounds involving barometric changes and the air movement in the numerous caves, or from the shifting of the various fault lines.

' Ripley's Believe it or Not' featured the Drum mountains and its mysterious rumblings.

Agate Hill

       Jasper and agate were the last collectings for the day. Again, we spread out widely and scoured the surface for our findings.

I enjoyed the beautiful mountains with their soft lighting and shadows while collecting. 

DAY 3

Apache Tears

   Soft morning light, the sound of Johnny Cash singing "Apache Tears"(Album:Bitter Tears-released in 1964), and we have the perfect setting for our collecting of Apache Tears.

   We make our way up the hill....

 finding tears laying on the ground...

or in its vein of pale gray perlite matrix.

To see the Apache Tears all lined up in a row, in the matrix it was made was pretty fascinating for me!

Kathleen (group's co-leader) lending her hand to the picture for a size reference :-)

I had to pause my collecting here for a bit, to just take in the serenity I felt in Utah's Great Basin's peaceful scenery.

While we were collecting,co-leader Gary,(sky blue shirt) seemed to enjoy the view from here, too.

Topaz Mountain

Now it is time to collect Utah's state gem, topaz, in the Thomas Range. Quite a gorgeous setting for this adventure!

East of the Thomas caldera, hence volcanic rock, rhyolite.

This site is a privately owned claim and we were introduced to topaz collecting by Rhonda.

Rhonda's high energy and cheer throughout our stay was contagious :-)

We made our way up to the collecting site on the 'rock path'.

    Like the trilobite collecting, here we gathered 'promising' rocks to a work site (a large,flat rock surface). Promising rocks here would have a series of gas holes, or vugs. Then you would try to break the rock in order to expose the vugs, with possible topaz's within those holes!

Jim chisel/hammering a rock.

My work site, it probably took me an hour to get a large rock into these more manageable chunks.

The large flat work surface was necessary to catch any topazes that fell out of the rock while hammering it. 

Topaz formed within the cavities of the rhyolite. Once exposed to the sunlight, the sherry-colored topaz will gradually lose its color, but is still a beautiful clear crystal.

I ended up taking chunks home to work on later :-)

Views from my work site.

Views from picnic area at Topaz Mountain.

Dugway Geodes

    The last rocks to be collected are the geodes. Again, this is a rhyolite area and cavities were made by trapped gasses. In these cavities geodes formed by ground water circulating with minerals depositing into the cavities. We were told to dig +/or rake into the pile of rhyolite for round, bumpy rocks.

I chose to go down to the end of this pit.... 

to do my excavating.

(Photo courtesy of Carol) By now the sun is out in full force and there is very little air movement at the bottom and I am getting pretty hot and tired, so this is the one place I didn't mind when they said it was time to stop collecting here!!

Between the two of us, we had about 3/4 of a 5 gallon bucket filled with all these mini (possibly) geodes.

Before being washed, these were covered in white rhyolite dust, reminding me of russian teacakes :-)

I had stopped a few minutes for a break to take in the view and drink some water.

The area around here is the 'Dugway Proving Grounds'(?)- A practice range for Hill AFB

Scenes from the van

Road to somewhere

layers of mountain ranges

wild horses running free in the desert

View on the way

same view on the way back with afternoon lighting

pony express marker- the express went through the mountains

Pronghorn

 We knew our excursion for the day was coming to a close when we would pass by the Millard County Cosmic Ray Visitor Center. An international collaboration of research institutes and universities are measuring ultra-high cosmic rays and are trying to figure out where they are coming from.

 Over 500 surface detectors covering a wide area are part of their research.

Very memorable days :-)