Trip report - West-central Utah via Wyoming
Apr 29, 2014 2:03:02 GMT -5
Thunder69, fantastic5, and 5 more like this
Post by herchenx on Apr 29, 2014 2:03:02 GMT -5
I'd planned on joining roy and company this past weekend for a rockhounding trip to the Owyhee Mountains of Western Idaho, but as the time grew closer the weather forecast looked less than great, so with much regret my traveling companion and I opted to bow out of the 13 hour drive and look for dryer weather elsewhere.
I'll introduce rockroller (Roland) more in a minute, but he just moved to Fort Collins (my town) this past week. We met face-to-face last Monday night at our monthly rockhounding club meeting and worked out our plans a bit, not being certain of the weather outlook.
Feeling somewhat less concerned about him being an axe murderer after meeting him briefly one time, we went ahead and move forward on planning a time to leave and a time to return.
As the week wore on, the weather looked rainy for the weekend so we decided to make other plans. We talked about some options and at Roland's suggestion we agreed to try out Western Utah - starting at Topaz Mountain outside Delta, Utah.
I went out to Utah with my daughter in January, but we decided not to go that far out since we'd never been - so this was exciting for me to get to try out somewhere I was interested in.
We met up Thursday morning and after a quick stop at the hardware store we got on the road. We headed up Hwy 287 out of Fort Collins to Laramie, Wyoming where we stopped for gas and beer and then caught I-80 West.
We stopped at Penny's diner/motel in Rawlins and had a late lunch, got more gas and headed on down the road.
We stopped again at Wamsutter to get some gas and then headed out to the desert to look for some Turritella Agate and Fossil Stromatolite since we were in the area.
We managed to get up on top of Delaney Rim fairly easily (unlike my previous 2 visits when I first tried to get there in the dark of night and the second time when I just used The Force to try and end up there - but instead drove around the desert for 2 hours until I finally stumbled onto the road I thought I was on initially)
We started seeing Turritella right away and got out to pull some that had been graded out of the road bed and was laying off to the side. After this I returned to my now-familiar stomping grounds to screen some more snails from the top layer of dirt. An unpleasant theme started right away when the wind started howling as we started looking around. I seem to recall unintentionally giving Roland a dirt facewash when I lifted a dusty rock over the edge of the bed of my truck and the wind powdered him pretty good. Another theme started right away as we got a laugh out of it. We ended up spending a lot of windshield time together and did a lot of hard laughing which was great.
We set off for the point which is where I typically start finding stromatolite. I found the small pile I had left there last summer when I visisted with my kids, so it seems no one has been out to the point looking for stromatolite since I was there, as the little pile I left was better than what can be found laying on top there at the point. We left the pile there and took a few photos (I'll let Roland hopefully add some of his photos because as you can tell up until this point I'd not taken any.
We stopped a little further west along the north edge of the rim and collected some stromatolite and ulexite.
Here is the view at the rim:
And here is Roland wandering around looking for good specimens of ulexite and stromatolite:
The truck taking in the view:
and a panorama for fun:
We headed off the north edge of the rim to head back to the interstate, and Roland "Eagle Eye" hollered for me to stop. We pulled off and headed into a ravine to look at a boulder of fossil stromatolite. Roland for scale:
It wasn't silicified or I would have tried to get it into the truck (and don't think I wouldn't have managed to do it) - but we rolled it over, and found a bunch more in the same area, but none as big or as intact as the chunk Roland found:
There were some pretty (small) blue flowers on the hill where he found the stromatolite:
Once we got back to the interstate, we headed West again - which put me in unfamiliar territory. I've explored north in Wyoming from Wamsutter, but never west. The Uinta Mountains were very pretty for a good hour or more as we neared the Utah border - I took photos out the window but they don't do it justice:
Not uncommon any more, but cool windmills with the mountains in the background:
We drove straight through to Delta, Utah Thursday night. I think we pulled in close to midnight and after a checking into a motel and a quick beer headed to bed.
DAY 2
I was surprised to wake up still alive after spending the night in a hotel with a relative stranger - but my concerns about Roland being an axe murderer were starting to subside. We got gas a the local Maverick and I got a decent cup of coffee while we filled up, which became our pattern for the next few days.
We headed out into the Utah desert toward Topaz Mountain. We stopped along the way, right near the Drum Mountains - so Roland could sort out some family business while we still had cell coverage. I looked around for anything interesting and came up fairly dry but I did snap some photos:
We did stop a little way up the road and got out to find some jasper lying around. After being satisfied that there wasn't too much of interest along the highway we headed to Topaz Mountain and after a little discussion we found the "ampitheater" and found a spot to stop.
This was an interesting rock formation at the top of the mountain. I thought it looked like a giant stone Manta Ray emerging from the top of the mountain to do battle with some mythological god:
There were a handful of people in and around the mountain when we arrived. Probably 4 campers near the mountain and at least 2 folks working a hill chiseling away at the rhyolite to get to the topaz.
I will go off track for a moment and say that historically my experience trying to find any crystals of any type is generally horrible. I look and look and never find. I had some mixed feelings leading up to this stop as to whether my [bad] luck would hold and I'd end up once again empty-handed.
We picked a small hill that had some tailings around it, and I started investigating a couple holes on one side:
I poked around the bottom of the hole, expecting to find a poisonous spider, or snake, or badger - but instead found a very tiny crystal!
It is too small for a cell phone photo, but upon further inspection I started finding crystals right in the rock!
If you are having trouble seeing the crystals, it is because the sky was gray and cloudy, and when these topaz crystals are exposed to sunlight they lose their color. This made seeing these little buggers very challenging.
In spite of this, we started to work some seams in the rhyolite and I pulled out my first colored Topaz:
I found one or 2 other kind of decent ones during the remainder of our time there, but between the gray sky and my inexperience I didn't find anything else very big. I'll see if I can get some better photos of some of the others but this one is the nicest I came away with.
Here is Roland working on a fairly large one:
After a few hours of hiking around in the ampitheater looking for any better pickings, it seemed like the spot we'd started at was about as good as any, and the weather was starting to look ominous so we decided to hit the road.
We headed north toward the Dugway Geode beds and saw some great scenery:
We stopped at this old structure, which appeared to be used to load material through a couple chutes into a wagon or truck:
I got out and explored a little, but as I walked away from the truck a rainbow appeared behind us, and it was a beauty:
I resumed my exploring:
Part of the structure was made from old railroad ties:
Once again we headed on our way and went north to the Pony Express Trail road, where we headed East toward the geode beds. At the intersection, there was basalt everywhere, on top of the hills and spilling down and out onto the flats a little. I saw a large reddish piece and got out to investigate. The piece was more red than most of the basalt, but also had a really cool feature, 5 red stripes!
My foot for a little reference:
I stood, admiring the rock, wishing I could bring it home to join some other pretty basalt rocks I've brought home. Then I decided, it was coming home. There was a problem though, this thing was very heavy. I didn't have a way to weigh it but I'd estimate it was roughly 4000 pounds based on the effort required to get it into the truck.
After much stupidity and danger - and no small amount of help from Roland - the boulder was in the truck bed, where it will likely stay until many weeks have passed and I decide how on earth I'm going to get it where I want it. I'm thinking I will drop the tail gate, pull the truck sideways in my driveway, quickly reverse the truck and slam the brakes in hopes that it will slide out.
We headed out again, still intent on making it to the geode beds before dark. Our view had changed a bit, with the boulder in the bed we were no longer able to see the road and instead looked out over the hood at the sky as we drove along.
We made the mistake of not thoroughly reading directions for the geode beds, which we found out later involve driving until you see a back hoe and a large, conveniently dug pit where geodes are easy to find, and instead stopped where many other poor souls had also stopped to dig random holes on a hill that has no geodes.
Here is Roland digging a hole, he kept coming over and measuring my height as he dug which seemed a little weird but who am I to judge.
I dug and filled in a hole, a little bewildered that every shovel-full wasn't packed with geodes, then I headed to my truck to get some photos of the nice pinstriping I'd given it when I decided to take the VERY LARGE F250 along a set of VERY SMALL atv tracks earlier in the day and discovered just how narrow the path was, and how unrelenting the brush was:
It was getting cold, but the sky was pretty as we headed out:
We were disappointed at not finding geodes but it had been a pretty great day nonetheless, so we were in high spirits as we headed out.
We pulled back into Delta pretty late and had dinner at the only place open: The Rancher - which had a hotel attached to the restaurant. As we contemplated the events of the day over some greasy food we were treated to the most blatantly sexist and harassing business owner (we assume he was the owner) that I've ever had the pleasure of listening to. He was as mouthy a person as I've encountered, and was talking loudly (and I suspect was somewhat intoxicated) about all the activity he'd like to engage in with the pregnant waitress and her not-pregnant friend. It was surreal to say the least.
The waitress was very pleasant in spite of all this, and we asked her if there was a room they had available, as it was already after 11 and I felt too tired to look for another place to stay. She gave us a key and we headed to the room.
This place was something, the paint in the bathroom was peeling off the wall and ceiling, the controls for the lights and fan in the bathroom were all push button, the heater was gas and smelled like it was burning, and the bathroom sink and tub were covered with dirt that I assume had fallen from the ceiling due to wind or bats.
Roland was obviously unsettled at the surroundings, but I was OK with that because I thought it might distract him from axe-murdering me for at least one more night. I was so tired I fell asleep pretty fast and we closed the books on day 2.
DAY 3
I was a little less surprised to wake up on day 3 as Roland and I had begun to build a rapport with one another. In spite of my attempts to kill us through many questionable decisions the day before I was still intact and actually felt very well rested at the start of day 3. Part of the reason I was so well rested is that we slept in pretty late, which was largely due to the fact that it had been raining, which always helps me sleep very well.
We got ready and then headed over to the Maverick to get gas, and Roland joined me in getting a large cup of their finest, most masculine dark roast coffee, which we promptly filled with vanilla creamer until it was the color of vanilla creamer.
We decided to start the day and Sunstone Knoll, which is about 25 miles south of Delta. Given the fact that this place is on every map of the state, and in every rockhounding book and blog, I didn't have very high expectations. It was right off a busy highway and was the only thing not flat for miles, so this place has to be hit all the time.
We got out in a light drizzle, and within 30 seconds Roland had found a decent little sunstone right in the parking lot.
It turns out that while gray clouds make crystals hard to see, that for sunstones at least - when it rains this effect is reversed, and they are pretty easy to spot when wet and the sky is gray. They are yellowish and really pop against the dark volcanic rock that is their host until they weather out or are bashed out with a hammer. We split up and both started finding sunstones, which proved to be a lot of fun. In addition to helping us find the sunstone, the increasing rain also helped to soak me completely to the bone and give me early stages of hypothermia.
While I have no doubt many people come to this area, the constant weathering of the rock, coupled with the abundance of the sunstones, seems to make for decent pickings. It should be noted that we are still early in the season and it may just be that not many folks have been out since the snow melted.
Roland did tell me that while looking he ran into a couple-inch-long scorpion, so there are critters that can hurt you in this area.
I tried to take a photo of the sunstones in the baggie I was using, but in the process managed to focus on the hill I hunted (background):
Here were some of the prettier ones I collected during our morning swim:
We stayed as long as we felt we could and finally headed out for dryer hunting elsewhere.
There was a spot on the directions we were following with reports of amethyst and smoky quartz about 1.5 hours away. In spite of my aversion to hunting for crystals, the morning's success finding sunstones, paired with the day prior and the topaz crystals, I felt optimistic.
We headed West and after a couple wrong turns due to roads with no labels, we headed toward the canyon of the alleged crystals (called the "Amasa Valley"):
We headed higher and higher, and the rain we had been in earlier in the day yeilded to snow, which you can see frosting the evergreens here:
My 4WD got a workout on this road, as the slick conditions, steep terrain and hairpin turns would not let a lesser vehicle pass.
We gave this area a fair shot. We looked for a couple hours, in spite of wet clothes, coats and boots, but other than some very tiny, low grade quartz in granite martix, we did not find any sign of decent crystals.
Here is Roland diligently looking for crystals while obviously plotting to find a believable alibi:
We saw some really pretty clusters of flowers, my camera couldn't get the amazing saturation of color of these very pink blossoms:
After the disappointing hunt, we headed back down, and stopped at one of several large tailings piles that appeared to be some sort of slate or shale:
This stuff was really cool, but other than some small veins of crystal and nice color, we couldn't understand why all the mining activity had taken place. Possibly for roadbeds? We found areas that had been drilled for dynamite, and in some of the other places the entire hillside had been removed and the piles were dozens of feet tall, but other than the shale and crystal nothing obvious was there.
We talked a little and since the rain was letting up we decided to head back to Sunstone Knoll and try again.
Here are better pictures of a couple of the hills:
We found the second time around more challenging, at first. The lack of rain, but presence of gray sky made the sunstones all but invisible. I finally worked out that laying flat on the ground, literally inches from the earth, I could find the stones fairly well, so we stayed until the sun finally set and then headed back to Delta.
In spite of the sketchy-ness of The Rancher, we decided to stay again, as it was a lot cheaper than the first place we stayed, and in spite of the Bates-like vibe we actually slept pretty well.
DAY 4
We woke up to a beautiful albeit chilly morning.
Gas at the Maverick along with girly-man coffee and then we headed East. We hadn't planned on staying in Delta as long as we did, but we really had a great time over there and had some cool stuff to show for all the driving and work we put in.
As we left town, the prior day's weather left behind some pretty scenery:
Roland thought it was pretty, too:
As we headed east, I had an unsatisfied feeling left from my last trip to Utah, I really wanted to get a decent ammonite fossil. I plead my case to Roland, and he graciously agreed to head back up to Castle Dale to see if I could pick up where I left off before - to follow some directions-on-a-napkin-from-a-local-allegedly-sending-me-to-a-great-ammonite-spot - to find ammonites.
We both walked a couple miles in different directions, but other than some tiny fragments of [something unknown] there were no fossils to be found.
I did get a nice workout, and I saw some pretty desert flowers:
And the scenery was pretty:
While we didn't find any ammonites, we did find a lot of crystals:
And the crystals eventyally led us to a whole lot of septarian debris. We didn't find any whole nodules, and the material here tends to come apart fairly easily, but I'd bet if a person dug they might find an intact nodule, but it would be a needle in a haystack.
Here is a chunk I brought home:
We drove back to the interstate and followed some out-of-date directions to Last Chance Road. We saw some old structure along the road as we went, I recall seeing this in another post about Last Chance here on RTH from a few years ago:
After a little time trying to sync up our directions, with the road map, with our flaky GPS, we finally landed in the jasper/last chance agate area. There is a lot of small jasper here:
It is in a giant mound, a almost looks like it was piled here on purpose. The colors are white, red, and some yellow and we got some to bring home. Most was tumbler sized, but some larger chunks were there to be found.
There are some nodules of other material here as well, in several large piles. I didn't get any individual photos of those - I will probably get some specimen shots once I've sorted everything out.
The scenery of this area is different than other areas of Utah, but like most areas of Utah it is beautiful and rugged.
After Last Chance we got back on I70 and headed East. There was one last stop I wanted to make, to try and find some Yellow Cat Agate.
We hauled tail to Green River, got gas and Arby's - which gave us more gas - and then hoofed it to the Yellow Cat exit.
The large mountains south of Moab stood in the distance, and through the clouds some sun lit up some of the features in Arches National Park. My cell phone camera didn't do this scene justice at all.
We arrived at the area in our instructions right at sunset. I managed to scramble up a tall bluff just in time to witness the sun setting behind some clouds, while turning them all a brilliant crimson.
Unfortunately in my rush I left the cell phone in the truck so not pics.
The only "agate" we found was within 100 feet of where we parked, and was a pretty red and white jasper embedded in gray limestone, and we had to bash it out with our rock picks.
We were again a little let down at the lack of awesome material at this point, but we had a truck full of great rocks and a bunch of good time spent talking rocks, life, relationships, rocks, kids, rocks, not killing me, rocks and a bunch of really good laughter along the way.
We crashed last night in Grand Junction Colorado and drove a good part of the day today.
I stopped to snag a pic of the haul:
Here was a pic of some of the Yellow Cat Agate in matrix:
We hit some pretty intense snow as we headed across the Rockies this morning:
But we made it home safe and sound, putting almost 1800 miles on my new tires in the process of a whirlwind rockhounding adventure.
I didn't really know Roland at all when we started out, but now feel like I've got a good rockhounding buddy out of the deal.
I'm tired so I'm going to forego proofing for tonight, thanks for reading!
I'll introduce rockroller (Roland) more in a minute, but he just moved to Fort Collins (my town) this past week. We met face-to-face last Monday night at our monthly rockhounding club meeting and worked out our plans a bit, not being certain of the weather outlook.
Feeling somewhat less concerned about him being an axe murderer after meeting him briefly one time, we went ahead and move forward on planning a time to leave and a time to return.
As the week wore on, the weather looked rainy for the weekend so we decided to make other plans. We talked about some options and at Roland's suggestion we agreed to try out Western Utah - starting at Topaz Mountain outside Delta, Utah.
I went out to Utah with my daughter in January, but we decided not to go that far out since we'd never been - so this was exciting for me to get to try out somewhere I was interested in.
We met up Thursday morning and after a quick stop at the hardware store we got on the road. We headed up Hwy 287 out of Fort Collins to Laramie, Wyoming where we stopped for gas and beer and then caught I-80 West.
We stopped at Penny's diner/motel in Rawlins and had a late lunch, got more gas and headed on down the road.
We stopped again at Wamsutter to get some gas and then headed out to the desert to look for some Turritella Agate and Fossil Stromatolite since we were in the area.
We managed to get up on top of Delaney Rim fairly easily (unlike my previous 2 visits when I first tried to get there in the dark of night and the second time when I just used The Force to try and end up there - but instead drove around the desert for 2 hours until I finally stumbled onto the road I thought I was on initially)
We started seeing Turritella right away and got out to pull some that had been graded out of the road bed and was laying off to the side. After this I returned to my now-familiar stomping grounds to screen some more snails from the top layer of dirt. An unpleasant theme started right away when the wind started howling as we started looking around. I seem to recall unintentionally giving Roland a dirt facewash when I lifted a dusty rock over the edge of the bed of my truck and the wind powdered him pretty good. Another theme started right away as we got a laugh out of it. We ended up spending a lot of windshield time together and did a lot of hard laughing which was great.
We set off for the point which is where I typically start finding stromatolite. I found the small pile I had left there last summer when I visisted with my kids, so it seems no one has been out to the point looking for stromatolite since I was there, as the little pile I left was better than what can be found laying on top there at the point. We left the pile there and took a few photos (I'll let Roland hopefully add some of his photos because as you can tell up until this point I'd not taken any.
We stopped a little further west along the north edge of the rim and collected some stromatolite and ulexite.
Here is the view at the rim:
And here is Roland wandering around looking for good specimens of ulexite and stromatolite:
The truck taking in the view:
and a panorama for fun:
We headed off the north edge of the rim to head back to the interstate, and Roland "Eagle Eye" hollered for me to stop. We pulled off and headed into a ravine to look at a boulder of fossil stromatolite. Roland for scale:
It wasn't silicified or I would have tried to get it into the truck (and don't think I wouldn't have managed to do it) - but we rolled it over, and found a bunch more in the same area, but none as big or as intact as the chunk Roland found:
There were some pretty (small) blue flowers on the hill where he found the stromatolite:
Once we got back to the interstate, we headed West again - which put me in unfamiliar territory. I've explored north in Wyoming from Wamsutter, but never west. The Uinta Mountains were very pretty for a good hour or more as we neared the Utah border - I took photos out the window but they don't do it justice:
Not uncommon any more, but cool windmills with the mountains in the background:
We drove straight through to Delta, Utah Thursday night. I think we pulled in close to midnight and after a checking into a motel and a quick beer headed to bed.
DAY 2
I was surprised to wake up still alive after spending the night in a hotel with a relative stranger - but my concerns about Roland being an axe murderer were starting to subside. We got gas a the local Maverick and I got a decent cup of coffee while we filled up, which became our pattern for the next few days.
We headed out into the Utah desert toward Topaz Mountain. We stopped along the way, right near the Drum Mountains - so Roland could sort out some family business while we still had cell coverage. I looked around for anything interesting and came up fairly dry but I did snap some photos:
We did stop a little way up the road and got out to find some jasper lying around. After being satisfied that there wasn't too much of interest along the highway we headed to Topaz Mountain and after a little discussion we found the "ampitheater" and found a spot to stop.
This was an interesting rock formation at the top of the mountain. I thought it looked like a giant stone Manta Ray emerging from the top of the mountain to do battle with some mythological god:
There were a handful of people in and around the mountain when we arrived. Probably 4 campers near the mountain and at least 2 folks working a hill chiseling away at the rhyolite to get to the topaz.
I will go off track for a moment and say that historically my experience trying to find any crystals of any type is generally horrible. I look and look and never find. I had some mixed feelings leading up to this stop as to whether my [bad] luck would hold and I'd end up once again empty-handed.
We picked a small hill that had some tailings around it, and I started investigating a couple holes on one side:
I poked around the bottom of the hole, expecting to find a poisonous spider, or snake, or badger - but instead found a very tiny crystal!
It is too small for a cell phone photo, but upon further inspection I started finding crystals right in the rock!
If you are having trouble seeing the crystals, it is because the sky was gray and cloudy, and when these topaz crystals are exposed to sunlight they lose their color. This made seeing these little buggers very challenging.
In spite of this, we started to work some seams in the rhyolite and I pulled out my first colored Topaz:
I found one or 2 other kind of decent ones during the remainder of our time there, but between the gray sky and my inexperience I didn't find anything else very big. I'll see if I can get some better photos of some of the others but this one is the nicest I came away with.
Here is Roland working on a fairly large one:
After a few hours of hiking around in the ampitheater looking for any better pickings, it seemed like the spot we'd started at was about as good as any, and the weather was starting to look ominous so we decided to hit the road.
We headed north toward the Dugway Geode beds and saw some great scenery:
We stopped at this old structure, which appeared to be used to load material through a couple chutes into a wagon or truck:
I got out and explored a little, but as I walked away from the truck a rainbow appeared behind us, and it was a beauty:
I resumed my exploring:
Part of the structure was made from old railroad ties:
Once again we headed on our way and went north to the Pony Express Trail road, where we headed East toward the geode beds. At the intersection, there was basalt everywhere, on top of the hills and spilling down and out onto the flats a little. I saw a large reddish piece and got out to investigate. The piece was more red than most of the basalt, but also had a really cool feature, 5 red stripes!
My foot for a little reference:
I stood, admiring the rock, wishing I could bring it home to join some other pretty basalt rocks I've brought home. Then I decided, it was coming home. There was a problem though, this thing was very heavy. I didn't have a way to weigh it but I'd estimate it was roughly 4000 pounds based on the effort required to get it into the truck.
After much stupidity and danger - and no small amount of help from Roland - the boulder was in the truck bed, where it will likely stay until many weeks have passed and I decide how on earth I'm going to get it where I want it. I'm thinking I will drop the tail gate, pull the truck sideways in my driveway, quickly reverse the truck and slam the brakes in hopes that it will slide out.
We headed out again, still intent on making it to the geode beds before dark. Our view had changed a bit, with the boulder in the bed we were no longer able to see the road and instead looked out over the hood at the sky as we drove along.
We made the mistake of not thoroughly reading directions for the geode beds, which we found out later involve driving until you see a back hoe and a large, conveniently dug pit where geodes are easy to find, and instead stopped where many other poor souls had also stopped to dig random holes on a hill that has no geodes.
Here is Roland digging a hole, he kept coming over and measuring my height as he dug which seemed a little weird but who am I to judge.
I dug and filled in a hole, a little bewildered that every shovel-full wasn't packed with geodes, then I headed to my truck to get some photos of the nice pinstriping I'd given it when I decided to take the VERY LARGE F250 along a set of VERY SMALL atv tracks earlier in the day and discovered just how narrow the path was, and how unrelenting the brush was:
It was getting cold, but the sky was pretty as we headed out:
We were disappointed at not finding geodes but it had been a pretty great day nonetheless, so we were in high spirits as we headed out.
We pulled back into Delta pretty late and had dinner at the only place open: The Rancher - which had a hotel attached to the restaurant. As we contemplated the events of the day over some greasy food we were treated to the most blatantly sexist and harassing business owner (we assume he was the owner) that I've ever had the pleasure of listening to. He was as mouthy a person as I've encountered, and was talking loudly (and I suspect was somewhat intoxicated) about all the activity he'd like to engage in with the pregnant waitress and her not-pregnant friend. It was surreal to say the least.
The waitress was very pleasant in spite of all this, and we asked her if there was a room they had available, as it was already after 11 and I felt too tired to look for another place to stay. She gave us a key and we headed to the room.
This place was something, the paint in the bathroom was peeling off the wall and ceiling, the controls for the lights and fan in the bathroom were all push button, the heater was gas and smelled like it was burning, and the bathroom sink and tub were covered with dirt that I assume had fallen from the ceiling due to wind or bats.
Roland was obviously unsettled at the surroundings, but I was OK with that because I thought it might distract him from axe-murdering me for at least one more night. I was so tired I fell asleep pretty fast and we closed the books on day 2.
DAY 3
I was a little less surprised to wake up on day 3 as Roland and I had begun to build a rapport with one another. In spite of my attempts to kill us through many questionable decisions the day before I was still intact and actually felt very well rested at the start of day 3. Part of the reason I was so well rested is that we slept in pretty late, which was largely due to the fact that it had been raining, which always helps me sleep very well.
We got ready and then headed over to the Maverick to get gas, and Roland joined me in getting a large cup of their finest, most masculine dark roast coffee, which we promptly filled with vanilla creamer until it was the color of vanilla creamer.
We decided to start the day and Sunstone Knoll, which is about 25 miles south of Delta. Given the fact that this place is on every map of the state, and in every rockhounding book and blog, I didn't have very high expectations. It was right off a busy highway and was the only thing not flat for miles, so this place has to be hit all the time.
We got out in a light drizzle, and within 30 seconds Roland had found a decent little sunstone right in the parking lot.
It turns out that while gray clouds make crystals hard to see, that for sunstones at least - when it rains this effect is reversed, and they are pretty easy to spot when wet and the sky is gray. They are yellowish and really pop against the dark volcanic rock that is their host until they weather out or are bashed out with a hammer. We split up and both started finding sunstones, which proved to be a lot of fun. In addition to helping us find the sunstone, the increasing rain also helped to soak me completely to the bone and give me early stages of hypothermia.
While I have no doubt many people come to this area, the constant weathering of the rock, coupled with the abundance of the sunstones, seems to make for decent pickings. It should be noted that we are still early in the season and it may just be that not many folks have been out since the snow melted.
Roland did tell me that while looking he ran into a couple-inch-long scorpion, so there are critters that can hurt you in this area.
I tried to take a photo of the sunstones in the baggie I was using, but in the process managed to focus on the hill I hunted (background):
Here were some of the prettier ones I collected during our morning swim:
We stayed as long as we felt we could and finally headed out for dryer hunting elsewhere.
There was a spot on the directions we were following with reports of amethyst and smoky quartz about 1.5 hours away. In spite of my aversion to hunting for crystals, the morning's success finding sunstones, paired with the day prior and the topaz crystals, I felt optimistic.
We headed West and after a couple wrong turns due to roads with no labels, we headed toward the canyon of the alleged crystals (called the "Amasa Valley"):
We headed higher and higher, and the rain we had been in earlier in the day yeilded to snow, which you can see frosting the evergreens here:
My 4WD got a workout on this road, as the slick conditions, steep terrain and hairpin turns would not let a lesser vehicle pass.
We gave this area a fair shot. We looked for a couple hours, in spite of wet clothes, coats and boots, but other than some very tiny, low grade quartz in granite martix, we did not find any sign of decent crystals.
Here is Roland diligently looking for crystals while obviously plotting to find a believable alibi:
We saw some really pretty clusters of flowers, my camera couldn't get the amazing saturation of color of these very pink blossoms:
After the disappointing hunt, we headed back down, and stopped at one of several large tailings piles that appeared to be some sort of slate or shale:
This stuff was really cool, but other than some small veins of crystal and nice color, we couldn't understand why all the mining activity had taken place. Possibly for roadbeds? We found areas that had been drilled for dynamite, and in some of the other places the entire hillside had been removed and the piles were dozens of feet tall, but other than the shale and crystal nothing obvious was there.
We talked a little and since the rain was letting up we decided to head back to Sunstone Knoll and try again.
Here are better pictures of a couple of the hills:
We found the second time around more challenging, at first. The lack of rain, but presence of gray sky made the sunstones all but invisible. I finally worked out that laying flat on the ground, literally inches from the earth, I could find the stones fairly well, so we stayed until the sun finally set and then headed back to Delta.
In spite of the sketchy-ness of The Rancher, we decided to stay again, as it was a lot cheaper than the first place we stayed, and in spite of the Bates-like vibe we actually slept pretty well.
DAY 4
We woke up to a beautiful albeit chilly morning.
Gas at the Maverick along with girly-man coffee and then we headed East. We hadn't planned on staying in Delta as long as we did, but we really had a great time over there and had some cool stuff to show for all the driving and work we put in.
As we left town, the prior day's weather left behind some pretty scenery:
Roland thought it was pretty, too:
As we headed east, I had an unsatisfied feeling left from my last trip to Utah, I really wanted to get a decent ammonite fossil. I plead my case to Roland, and he graciously agreed to head back up to Castle Dale to see if I could pick up where I left off before - to follow some directions-on-a-napkin-from-a-local-allegedly-sending-me-to-a-great-ammonite-spot - to find ammonites.
We both walked a couple miles in different directions, but other than some tiny fragments of [something unknown] there were no fossils to be found.
I did get a nice workout, and I saw some pretty desert flowers:
And the scenery was pretty:
While we didn't find any ammonites, we did find a lot of crystals:
And the crystals eventyally led us to a whole lot of septarian debris. We didn't find any whole nodules, and the material here tends to come apart fairly easily, but I'd bet if a person dug they might find an intact nodule, but it would be a needle in a haystack.
Here is a chunk I brought home:
We drove back to the interstate and followed some out-of-date directions to Last Chance Road. We saw some old structure along the road as we went, I recall seeing this in another post about Last Chance here on RTH from a few years ago:
After a little time trying to sync up our directions, with the road map, with our flaky GPS, we finally landed in the jasper/last chance agate area. There is a lot of small jasper here:
It is in a giant mound, a almost looks like it was piled here on purpose. The colors are white, red, and some yellow and we got some to bring home. Most was tumbler sized, but some larger chunks were there to be found.
There are some nodules of other material here as well, in several large piles. I didn't get any individual photos of those - I will probably get some specimen shots once I've sorted everything out.
The scenery of this area is different than other areas of Utah, but like most areas of Utah it is beautiful and rugged.
After Last Chance we got back on I70 and headed East. There was one last stop I wanted to make, to try and find some Yellow Cat Agate.
We hauled tail to Green River, got gas and Arby's - which gave us more gas - and then hoofed it to the Yellow Cat exit.
The large mountains south of Moab stood in the distance, and through the clouds some sun lit up some of the features in Arches National Park. My cell phone camera didn't do this scene justice at all.
We arrived at the area in our instructions right at sunset. I managed to scramble up a tall bluff just in time to witness the sun setting behind some clouds, while turning them all a brilliant crimson.
Unfortunately in my rush I left the cell phone in the truck so not pics.
The only "agate" we found was within 100 feet of where we parked, and was a pretty red and white jasper embedded in gray limestone, and we had to bash it out with our rock picks.
We were again a little let down at the lack of awesome material at this point, but we had a truck full of great rocks and a bunch of good time spent talking rocks, life, relationships, rocks, kids, rocks, not killing me, rocks and a bunch of really good laughter along the way.
We crashed last night in Grand Junction Colorado and drove a good part of the day today.
I stopped to snag a pic of the haul:
Here was a pic of some of the Yellow Cat Agate in matrix:
We hit some pretty intense snow as we headed across the Rockies this morning:
But we made it home safe and sound, putting almost 1800 miles on my new tires in the process of a whirlwind rockhounding adventure.
I didn't really know Roland at all when we started out, but now feel like I've got a good rockhounding buddy out of the deal.
I'm tired so I'm going to forego proofing for tonight, thanks for reading!