Here's where I admit to my failings

I am impatient, selfish, competitive,

and have a short temper when things don't go my way.

I wanted to camp where I wanted to camp,

and that was at the petrified wood site in northern Arizona.

We 4 fossil hunters, on the Great Western Fossil Adventure, were tired of being in the car, tired of dealing with rain, worried about setting up camp in the dark, 

and each had a distinct rockhounding agenda brewing in his or her mind.

It was 6 pm, 2 hours from our campsite, when I gave in and suggested a motel.  Little did I know, there was a national Little League tournament in the area and everything was booked solid.

Lots of hope, then lots of dashed hope. Ugh!

Wisely, Vickie began pointing out potential campsites as we drove through the national forest but as the miles wound down, I was more determined than ever to see it through and 

camp where I wanted to camp.

This would be a good time for a disclaimer:  long before this trip happened, I let everyone know that I had a specific agenda, which I was happy to do on my own, but if they wanted to go with me, 

they would have to bend to my will!

The beauty of the scenery as we emerged from pine forests and began our descent to a desert valley ringed in vermillion cliffs was astounding but our joy was mixed with trepidation as part of the impressive scenery included lightening and sheets of rain in the distance.

I LOUDLY cursed my way through setting up camp.

The wind was trying to grab our tents out of our hands and it was impossible to hammer stakes into the rocky ground.  Pam patiently did what I yelled at her to do and with a little adaptation (I weighed  down the inside of each tent corner with boulders), and a little luck (the rain didn't hit until the middle of the night),  we were all safely in our sleeping bags just after nightfall.

Rest assured, I apologized to everyone for my cursing.  

Jim said he couldn't hear me over his own cursing.

Best decision of the trip!

Look at our little camp in the distance.  What a great place and so interesting!

Everywhere you look there's petrified wood from tiny splinters to trunks, whole trees laid out on the top of the hills, ravines cluttered with it.  

I suppose since it's not "rainbow wood" (the highly colorful agatized wood from around the Petrified Forest National Park) there's not a lot of interest in it, but to us, it was one of the best places on the whole trip!

I sat by this tree, on the top of a hill, for along time, trying to take it all in: the beauty of the location, the antiquity of the material, that there was once a forest of conifers in this desert location.

I love how the lichens growing on the surface make it look like it's still wood and not stone.

Depending on where you looked, the petrified wood had different characters.

The tree in the photo above was very light in color with areas of cream-colored druzy quartz crystals.

Jim discovered a single gully with the smooth, more colorful agatized wood.

I found one hillside that had wood with dark tinted druzy crystals.  It looks like bark in the photo above but that was the inside of the tree, and through mineral replacement over millions of years,

it transformed into big quartz crystals.

There were also lots of small druzy pieces on this hillside.

These look like seed pods or fossilized ears of baby corn but they are pieces of the inside of the trees.

Hard to capture their full beauty with my inferior camera.

This is the top view of some of the druzy fragments which initially led me to believe they were petrified twigs but later we spotted sections in situ, inside a whole tree.

We all agreed that at some time in the future we would return and camp for longer so that we could do more exploration but by lunch time that day, my whirlwind schedule dictated

We had to go!

To be continued...

And you probably thought I wasn't hunting fossils anymore

There's an old saying,

"When one fossil season closes, 

another one opens somewhere else."

(I just made that up)

The official close to my river season came with these 2 momentous finds:

I know what you're thinking and no, it doesn't work.

This was fun to find because this is the exact lure I fished with ALL THE TIME 

growing up in Missouri.  It's called The Killer

 and we definitely slayed a lot of bass and bluegill with them.

While my fossil friends were closing out their "river season"

with absolutely amazing finds

my "desert season" was just about to begin!

I've traveled a lot and every time I come home from a great trip I have an overwhelming need to go right back, asafp, and capture some more of those wonderful memories.

Unfortunately, it never works out that way.

Extreme financial limits only allow me 1 visit per location.  There's so many places I want to see!

My January trip to Arizona gave me the same feelings, especially to revisit the petrified wood location in the north of the state.

This time it worked out!

I was determined to go back because in January, the Utah trilobite quarry was closed (too cold!) and I really, really wanted to find some trilobites...

and maybe some fossil fish in Wyoming...

So I plotted a geographical triangle 

with Utah, Arizona, and Wyoming at each corner.

I would've gladly done it alone but fossils are more fun with friends so I was happy when Pam agreed to accompany me AND then Jim and Vickie, also from my fossil club, wanted to go, too.

I think the U-Dig fossil bucket says it all:

I'll break this trip up into a couple of posts

so I don't overload you with envy! 

Allow me to start at the beginning.

Jim and Vickie are snowbirds so on their way back to Wisconsin this spring, they dropped by my house and took my tent, sleeping bag, pillow, and rock tools with them.  That way, I didn't have to check any bags on my flights to Salt Lake City in June, where they were kind enough to pick up Pam and me at the airport.  They have a well maintained 4WD truck and enough camping gear that we never wanted for a thing the entire trip.  Jim is an experienced driver, both in 2 and 4WD so we were in good hands for our adventure.

The only catch was unloading all that gear every evening and reloading it every morning.  

The process was very organized in the beginning and a bit of a free-for-all by the end.

First (attempted) stop: Dugway, Utah, for geodes.

When Vickie and Jim said they wanted to stop and hunt geodes on our way from the airport to our first campsite, 2 hours away, I was...reluctant.  I was imagining the little geodes I bought in a Colorado gift store as a child.  Yawn...

We couldn't find the area and eventually gave up, heading southwest to Delta, Utah to set up camp in preparation for an early start digging trilobites the next morning.  Along the way, we stopped at an Ace Hardware to buy some supplies and out back was a cement pad strewn with Dugway geode halves, collected and cut by a local.

I had no idea that these things would be the size of cantaloupes...or larger! 

and packed full of stunning druzy quartz crystals.

And they were $5 each!

Shut the front door!!!  I bought 4! 

Pam and Vickie stocked up, too, so we hadn't even been in the state one day and we'd already added 50 lbs of rocks to the truck.

The U-Dig trilobite quarry is listed as being in Delta, Utah

but it's actually an hour away from Delta, not including the 20 mile unpaved road.

Since the area is BLM land, we decided to camp rough just outside of the quarry entrance.  

I found out on our first night camping that Jim is a Bloody Mary master and a delicious cocktail became our ritual for closing out each successful day.

Second stop: U-Dig Fossils,  near Delta, Utah

This quarry is located in the mid-Cambrian House Range in western Utah and splitting layers of limestone shale can reveal trilobites: 

A trilobite is a form of invertebrate marine life that lived more than 550 million years ago, but is now extinct. These hard-shelled prehistoric critters roamed the sea floor and coral reefs in search of food. Because of their great diversity and often perfect preservation in fine-grained rock, they are one of the most popular fossils among collectors. (from the U-Dig Fossil website)

Vickie found the best of the bunch.

I was happy with my finds, too.

I did become overly possessive of the pry bar...

but I think I had been influenced by a recent episode of "Naked and Afraid"

where the contestants fought about who would get to use the knife.

After 4 solid hours of splitting rocks, we packed all our "bugs" and hit the road for a long haul to our next camp in northern Arizona.

To be continued...