Back in Blue

The official 3rd annual rockhounding tour of the west

started with my fossil friends, husband and wife team of Don and Pam

making a spectacular maiden voyage in their new/used camper from Cape Coral, Florida to the Denver, Colorado airport where I anxiously awaited their arrival.

My anxiety was short lived

since we were in the state of legal marijuana.

I completely understand if you have issues with this issue so please avert your eyes

 for the next photograph.

I did a little stocking up for the road trip, of which I would spend most of my time nested in the back seat, reading, knitting, watching shows on my iPad, 

knocking back G&T's, and experimenting with edibles.

Come on!  I'm grown!

At 52 years of age I don't think there's anything wrong with a little light experimentation.

I lovingly looked at this box of goodies and started singing

(to the tune of "Edelweiss")

"Box of vice, box of vice, 

I feel happy to see you."

And away we went!!!

(please note that ALL edibles were completely consumed before I left the borders of the state of Colorado.)

We had a short drive of 351 miles before we got to our first stop:

The Blue Forest area of Wyoming

and its prized fossil wood.

We rolled in right at sunset, which in Wyoming in June is around 9 pm,

so even though we were only about 10 miles from our digging site, we opted to stay in a local primitive campground and start fresh at dawn, which in Wyoming in June is around 4 am.

We were geared up for our extended stays in primitive desert areas:

a 30 gallon tank of fresh water under the camper that was hooked up to a sink, toilet and shower...

...until we rolled over our very first sagebrush, 

within feet of where we were going to camp, broke a pipe, 

and all the water quickly drained out into the dust.

Regroup!

We had plenty of bottled drinking water 

so all we had to do was adjust our expectations of cleanliness and comfort.

Done!

This was my second trip to the Blue Forest

and a first for Pam and Don.

It's hard digging and dealing with up to 3' of sandy/rocky overburden is a drag

 but we got right to work.

I started morning #1 off with some good wood

(and yes, I set myself up for that ridiculously easy joke):

This was a promising branch but every segment I recovered after this piece was shattered.  I wrapped the fragments of each section tightly in bubble wrap and I will eventually try to reconstruct it like I recently did with the ground sloth molar.

Pam first tried using divining rods to locate wood.

She managed to find water...

but since the wood is everywhere, the best method is to jump in a hole and start digging.

I thought I was being very clever when I came up with the idea 

of bringing a little sun shelter for comfort and protection.

The elevation of the Blue Forest is over 6,000' so the sun is merciless.

What I didn't foresee is that, unlike last year, we were going to spend all 3 days of this year being buffeted by 20-25 mph winds.  I had a brief respite each morning to dig under the shelter but by noon, the option was to dismantle the shelter or watch it get ripped to shreds and carried away.

I plan on taking it back next year because when I could use it, it made digging much more "pleasant."

The other thing that makes digging "pleasant"

is a selection of hydrating fluids, kept handy, ditch side.

These may include, but are not limited to, coffee (in the morning), gin and tonic (in the late morning and throughout the day and evening and night, for the pain, you see), electrolyte mixes, sodas, and of course, water. Lots and lots of water.

The wind complicated beverage intake.

I had this G&T at my lips when I tasted the extra "ingredient" of mud.  Always the trooper, I simply wiped off the lid and sipped it like cowboy coffee.

When in Rome...

We had mandatory rest times

(the times while we were waiting for ibuprofen to kick in)

when we would catch up on light reading,

revel in the changing patterns of light on the unchanging scenery,

or observe the wildlife up close.

I will close with a little info from the internet regarding the Blue Forest and the fossil wood we dig for in that area.  Please stayed tuned for the next installment of my western rock hounding adventure of 2017.

From the website: https://thegemshop.com/pages/eden-valley-petrified-wood-location

Wyoming is a state rich in fossil wood and has several petrified forests. The petrified wood from one forest is known to collectors as Eden Valley Petrified Wood and is named after the town of Eden, Wyoming. Eden is located in the west-central part of the state and is in the center of the 80 mile long area where the fossil wood is found. Three collecting areas are well known.

The Blue Forest collecting area is located in the west end of the deposit about 30 miles west of Farson. The fossil wood found in this area is known for the light blue agate surrounding many of the pieces. The Big Sandy Reservoir is located just north of Farson.   This area is known for Petrified Palm Wood. On the eastern end of the deposit, fossil wood is found around Oregon Buttes just east of South Pass, Wyoming.  Oregon Buttes is a major landmark on the Oregon Trail.

Eden Valley Petrified Wood was formed from plants living about 50 million years ago and the rock exhibits features not found in fossil wood anywhere else in the world. The petrifaction process for this area involved shallow "algae growing" lakes. In many cases, for undetermined reasons, the wood came to be in this water in its live condition (see 1st image on the left below) before it had a chance to dry out and look like old dead wood.  This wood became coated with algae (2nd image from the left) which adhered to the surface making a cast or mold around the wood.  Later the wood dried and shrunk in the mold made of algae (3rd image from the left). Over time these algae casts became part of a layered rock formation.   Silica-rich water solutions seeping through the rock then petrified the wood and filled in the spaces left between the dried wood and the hardened cast with agate, calcite, and quartz (4th image from the left). 

As the agate coated the inside surface of the algae cast, perfect impressions of the bark were left in the agate.  Thus there are some rocks that show two 50 million year old "pictures" of the same plant -- one picture of how the plant looked alive and another after it died and dried out!

Because the petrifaction process seems to have been "protected" by the algae cast formation, unusually detailed representations of the wood have been preserved. Exquisite representations of bark both live and dried out have been preserved. Worm holes, insect borings, woodpecker holes, and other events have been observed in the petrified wood.  

When the River Becomes Surreal

Just a little shorty

as I'm headed out west and will hopefully 

have LOTS to write about.

My final visit to the Peace River

had all the qualities of a feverish dream

that verged on nightmarish at times.

The main nightmare was that I didn't find this first!!!

These are associated pieces of mammoth tusk.

Judging by the size and location of the hole they came out of, the tusk was exposed by low water levels and I paddled past it at least 2 times, maybe 4, without noticing it.

The nightmare of it is not only that I didn't find the rest of the chunk of tusk (the hole indicated that it was just a chunk that was discovered) but the person that did find it left behind all this associated material, just taking the best chunk.  

That makes me feel a bit queasy.

I would have lovingly glued everything back together.

Further along the river was the queasiest part

of the nightmare.

I was about to paddle past a family group that was fishing when I noticed a teen boy in the group manning a fish stringer.  I called out, "Whatcha got on that stringer?"

The teen pulled up the stringer to show me a large bass and that is when I noticed a large gun in his other hand.  The hammer was back and his finger was on the trigger while he fumbled with the stringer.  I don't know a lot about guns but I know the gun looked real and the boy was not safely indexing his finger away from the trigger.  If it was a fake gun, then it was the kind of fake gun that people get killed over, because it looked extremely real.

I've never had any problems on the river, knock on wood, but I'm always aware of what's going on around me.

Now, off to rattlesnake country!

I downloaded a book to read for the trip:

So appropriate for someone obsessed with the Peace River. :-)

Hashtags and Fossil Porn

Hashtags.

WTF?!

Back when I was trying to understand what hashtags are all about I asked my sister about the hashtags under all her posted photos.  Her reply, "I don't know what they mean.  I just make them up because everyone's doing it and it looks fun."  

That's good enough for me.

So now I do it, too, and surely by now I'm amassing a fair amount of content for anyone who happens to click on #zookeeperfossils or #solopsart, my 2 main hashtags.

But the hashtag I really want to write under all my photos is

#fossilporn

Why can't we join the ranks of foodies and all their stupid food porn?  

I worry, however, about the extremely diverse fossil fanatic crowd and that someone will take umbrage with the word "porn."  Wikipedia tells me that the #2 meaning of "porn" is: 

television programs, magazine, books, etc. that are regarded as emphasizing the sensuous or sensational aspects of a nonsexual subject and stimulating a compulsive interest in their audience

Sounds about right.  Porn it is!

Anyhoo...

Goodbye, home sweet camp!

We settled on our camping site early in the season and stuck to it even though

 the ground feels the way a funhouse mirror looks.  

Sitting fireside after a long day of digging

 gives one the freedom to eat things they wouldn't normally eat

like a pot full of Chef Boyardee ravioli and spaghetti.

Go ahead!  Make your faces and comments.

I f'ing love it!

Lots of contented childhood memories involve enjoying my very own can.

Exhausted fireside conversations

can be amusing.

One of my rock icons, Chris Cornell, died so I posted, without any comment,  an old photo of him on my FB wall:

Miss Vickie said, "I saw that picture of you on FaceBook.  When was it taken?"

I said, "That's not me.  It's a man."

Without missing a beat, Pam pointed out, "Aimee's hair isn't that curly."

The grind of pulling our kayaks to our campsite instead of paddling makes us all the more tired when we finish for the day,

but it's worth the work.

Glyptodont heaven welcomed us back with open arms.

Even more scutes including unusual edge and specialty scutes.

Pam had an excellent weekend

pulling up a piece of capybara jaw with 2 teeth

(...jealous...)

and a BIG chunk of bone.

My most interesting find was a chunk of mud

holding together an almost complete 4th molar of the ground sloth paramylodon harlani.

It still feels like a miracle that it came out of the water the way it did.

I glued this one back together in the morning, over a cup of decaf coffee, instead of in the evening, over a G&T so the process went smoothly.

I found exactly 1 megalodon tooth and 1 hemi.

The meg has some dings but I choose to believe they occurred during a feeding frenzy.

Cool!

A good handful of chunky horse teeth

including 2 incisors that came out in successive screens.  

Gator teeth and giant armadillo scutes

Antler and assorted "knuckle" bones

Aaaaand...

turtle.

These are just the pretty scutes.  I opted not to post the pile of other scutes this time.

These ladies are troopers!

Now on to Wyoming and Montana!