Even on the tightest schedule
there is room for spur-of-the-moment opportunity.
We four participants, on the Great Western Fossil Adventure, were already tired from scrambling around the Arizona desert for hours, dragging 5 gallon buckets of rocks back to the truck, and now we needed to head north several hours, through the Tusher mountain range of south-central Utah, in order to cover some of the 8 hours between us and our next destination in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
Vickie, while perusing her rockhounding guide to Utah, discovered that we were going to pass by an area where we could hunt for septarian nodules.
For free!
For free!
All we had to do was drop by a certain rock shop near Mt. Carmel, Utah and pick up the map.
The rock shop was easy to find and the proprietress was very nice but she made it clear that we needed 4WD and 4WD skills and that if the rain started up again, we needed to come back down immediately as the road was very dangerous.
What she called a "road" I would call a "mud path stuck to the side of a small mountain."
I'm not used to riding around in 4WD situations but Jim is a very skilled driver and he knew what he was doing. We made it to the quarry and started searching.
Septarian nodules aren't fossils but their genesis involves mud sticking to organic matter, be it a small dead animal, leaf, etc., and forming, over millions of years, into an amazing conglomeration of yellow calcite crystals, dark brown lines of aragonite, and a limestone shell. I read that sometimes it is possible to find the original fossil inside. That would be cool!
I felt like the septarian queen.
I couldn't NOT find them.
It used to be possible to find the nodules on the ground but nowadays they must be quarried from 20-30' underground and what we were doing was scouring the spoil piles. Most of what we found was broken open but I also found a couple of solid ones that I can't wait to put on the lapidary saw.
This was an unplanned side trip but the nodules ended up being one of my favorite finds.
I could've hunted for them all day but
#1. I was exhausted!
#2. We had to get back on the road.
#3. The dang truck was filling up!
The rock shop was easy to find and the proprietress was very nice but she made it clear that we needed 4WD and 4WD skills and that if the rain started up again, we needed to come back down immediately as the road was very dangerous.
What she called a "road" I would call a "mud path stuck to the side of a small mountain."
I'm not used to riding around in 4WD situations but Jim is a very skilled driver and he knew what he was doing. We made it to the quarry and started searching.
Septarian nodules aren't fossils but their genesis involves mud sticking to organic matter, be it a small dead animal, leaf, etc., and forming, over millions of years, into an amazing conglomeration of yellow calcite crystals, dark brown lines of aragonite, and a limestone shell. I read that sometimes it is possible to find the original fossil inside. That would be cool!
I felt like the septarian queen.
I couldn't NOT find them.
It used to be possible to find the nodules on the ground but nowadays they must be quarried from 20-30' underground and what we were doing was scouring the spoil piles. Most of what we found was broken open but I also found a couple of solid ones that I can't wait to put on the lapidary saw.
I could've hunted for them all day but
#1. I was exhausted!
#2. We had to get back on the road.
#3. The dang truck was filling up!
The hardest part about leaving was getting Vickie off the rock wall.
I wish I had her energy!
Our final destination was Kemmerer, WY
for fish fossils from the Green River formation.
It was a long drive so we had to stop for some sightseeing.
Our last night camping was COLD
but Jim's mobile Bloody Mary bar kept the chill at bay.
After my gourmet meal of hot dogs and marshmallows, Pam gave me a single hand warmer which I cradled like a tiny baby all night.
It did the trick.
We also prepped some rocks for shipping as we were going straight to the post office after the fossil fish quarry.
That's a lot of bubble wrap but as the post office would later prove...
you can never use too much bubble wrap.
To be continued...
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