Arizona Geode Tour 2016

It's springtime and the scent of fossils is in the air.

Time to head back to Arizona and meet up with Jim and Vickie

for more wacky rockhounding adventures.

I spent about 8 hours in transit getting to Phoenix where they picked me up in their trusty old 4WD Chevy truck for a 4 hour drive to the New Mexico border. 

The things we do for rocks...

The trusty Chevy blew a wheel bearing about 2 hours into the drive but luckily it happened in Globe, AZ and miraculously we were 2 miles from a tire shop that was not only open, but said they could get us back on the road in about 30 minutes.  Factor in a 15 minute argument with Jim wanting to plot out the variables before we surrendered to the tender mercies of the repairmen and Vickie and I yelling at him to, "JUST GO!!!!"

It all worked out in the end.

As you can see in the above photo, there was a hillside of rocks behind the tire shop and before Vickie and I knew it, Jim was blowing the horn to get us back in the truck and back on the road.

Time's a-wastin'!

It's all well and good to look up a rock hunting area in a book but finding the location in real time can be a crap shoot and when you're running out of daylight, the pressure is on!  

Finding the Round Mountain sign was surprisingly straight forward considering it is pretty much in the middle of nowhere but immediately after the sign, there is an unmarked fork in the gravel road.  We went to the right which was wrong but before we had gone too far, we passed a vehicle and they set us straight.

Our goal was fire agate but one of the rock guides said we could find "geodes" also.  It didn't specify what kind of geodes and we didn't have time to split hairs so we set off to scour the ground.

Vickie's a good sport and a successful rock hound so she didn't mind when I razzed her about her collection bucket.  She thought it was very inventive to rig a 5 gallon bucket to a lightweight luggage roller and then put water in the bucket so that while she was on the move, her rocks were automatically being washed.  I understood the concept but as I watched her struggle up a rocky slope I had to point out that the water was sure to eventually skew her overall power to weight ratio.

In other words, lose the water!

She went back to a fast-and-light canvas bag.  Rock washing would have to wait.

We all found good selections of chalcedony and crystals by the time we had to pack it in.

My favorite find was this big chalcedony geode.

Just look at it!

Now look at it some more!

Fabulous!  I found several of these in various sizes but this was the biggest.  I cut one on the slab saw and it had nice crystals inside but I don't think I'll cut this big one.

I also collected several chunks of quartz crystals on lava matrix.  They look much better in person and I'm experimenting with ways to clean them up.

The sun set on a successful first day in Arizona but I had to suck it up when I learned that the condo where we would be staying was still 4 more hours drive away.

I fondly refer to those hours as my "zombie hours" when I was able to say, "I've now been up for more than 24 hours." 

You'd think I'd sleep late the next morning.

WRONG!

More rocks to hunt...