A Plug for the Dobell Ranch

Holbrook, Arizona...you really gotta want to be there.

But Holbrook is the jumping off point to visit the Petrified National Forest, a wonderland of rainbow-hued fossilized trees that drive people crazy with the desire to take some of that petrified wood home which is a big no-no, yet people still filch bits of this treasure from the national park at an estimated rate of 12 tons a year.

What exactly is driving people to risk vandalism, guilty consciences, and potential ancient curses (not sure about the curses but I’m throwing it in for good measure)?

The petrified wood from southeast Arizona is arguably some of the most beautiful in the world and has earned its moniker “rainbow wood”. The bulk of these petrified trees have been classified as Araucarioxylon arizonicum, an extinct species of conifer that is the state fossil of Arizona. The petrified wood in this part of Arizona was deposited around 225 million years ago during the Late Triassic period in a chain of events that probably began with a volcanic eruption that knocked down and buried the trees, allowing the slow process of mineral replacement to occur.

The worst part about people defacing the national park is that 90% of the petrified wood lies outside of the park boundaries and can be obtained legally and ethically. I checked out a couple of the local gift shops and the prices were exorbitant which is why I recommend a visit to the Dobell Ranch, adjacent to the national park. 

The Dobell Ranch flies under the radar and has no web presence although 4th generation Noah Dobell operates an Instagram page as stixn2stones. The ranch is a visual feast even before you see the rainbow wood. 

There is junk (or art, depending on your frame of mind) EVERYWHERE, as well as piles of petrified wood and a decidedly casual rock shop. 

You can dig through spoil piles for your own fossils at the rate of $28 per 5 gallon bucket or purchase a piece that they’ve polished. 

(trying my hand at digging)

I'm not one to buy fossils, even fabulous ones, as I'd like to find my own but I couldn't resist a fabulous piece that Noah was in the process of polishing. It cost a mere $30, displays bright yellows and reds, and weighs in at 5 lbs.

Noah, hard at work.

My treasure, hot off the polishing table.

It's easy to get distracted.  I had to pose on these big chunks of petrified wood.

And again.  Deal with it.

I was so anxious to clean some of the pieces I had dug up that when we got back to our room, I used my toothbrush to scrub at them.  

The grit probably just helped make my teeth a little shinier that night.

Land of Rock and Honey

Have I mentioned how much I love Arizona?

Where else can a Florida rock hound hop out of the vehicle to pose with a mound of snow

and find an awesome deposit of marine fossils and geodes right across the road?

The spring months mean it’s time for me to head back to the deserts of the American southwest to meet up with my partners in crime, Vickie and Jim, for another fun rockhounding trip.  

It’s “fun” if you don’t mind driving several hours to get to your target area and it’s fun if you like digging for hours at a time. Thankfully, that is our exact definition of fun.

The main destination of this year’s trip was the Mongollon Rim of Arizona (NOT the Mongolian Rim) which is a geologic feature about 200 miles long, starting in Yavapai County and running eastward, ending near the border of New Mexico and forming the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau in Arizona.

 The “rim” is composed of limestone and sandstone deposited during the Carboniferous and Permian periods, as well as extensive lava flows. Our hunting focus was the small stretch near Kohl’s Ranch.

Once we got started, there was no stopping us.

Jim has a method for dealing with our rock obsession: he turns off the truck and falls asleep at the wheel.

Normally this would be a very effective way for him to stave off boredom when he's with us but on this occasion, he opted to park fairly close to the center of the road, mistakenly believing that a gravel road this far off the beaten path would be infrequently traveled.

Wrong!

By the time the 6th concerned motorist stopped to ask him if he was ok, 

he told us to wrap it up.

Fair enough.

We had a good haul of interesting rocks.

There was a lot of this material which I would love to label, in a knee-jerk fashion, as branch coral, but I honestly have no idea. 

There were large shell fossils so I believe I can correctly say it was a marine fossil exposure.

The most interesting part of it was the plethora of small geodes,

some still attached to the matrix,

and nearly all of them filled with little druzy crystals when broken open:

My camera is not good enough to catch the sparkle so you'll have to take my word for it.

I want to cut these open with my slab saw but they are so small, it will be like slicing a plum with a chain saw: it'll work but you won't have much left when you're done.

More Arizona to come...

Quiet Please!!!

The Peace River is my "happy place,"

but when high waters keep me from digging in the Peace, 

I go to a different river known as my "OK place."

There's not a lot to find there, but it satisfies the craving to move a ton of gravel
 with a garden shovel.

(some of the curious rocks to be found)

After 4 years of indulging in this hobby,

I am, unfortunately, even less patient

with the weekend canoe enthusiasts who want to know, 

"What are you looking for?"

It would be ok if they chose a spokesperson for their flotilla who would then disseminate the information to the rest of the crew, but that's not how it works.

Someone in each and every canoe

asks the question, and sometimes, BOTH people in the canoe ask.

On the particular Saturday in question (which is why I always try to avoid digging on weekends) 

I kept my spirits up the first 20 times I answered the question, providing tidbits of fossil info to willing listeners, but by the 40th time I answered the question, my replies were terse and mumbled.

"Fossils, dammit. What does it look like I'm doing?" 

So I'm working on a new strategy.

I don't think many people would grasp the Buddhist concept of practicing silence

but a clearly lettered sign, staked in the river about 50 yards upstream of me that says,

"Shhh!  Paleontologist at work"

with a QR code directing them to my blog (so they can see that I'm not finding much at all!)

and perhaps an Anne-Geddes-style portrait of me asleep in a pumpkin shell,

would do the trick.

I'll post when I get it all sorted out.

Still, all my digging wasn't in vain, or maybe I'm just easily entertained.

Shell casings are common finds in the rivers but this was my first in this area and I was really hoping to find a beat up old gun to go with my Bear Grylls survival knife.  

No such luck...yet.

 
A really cool fossilized oyster shell that, when cut on the slab saw,

revealed an interesting agatized interior.

And then there was this little nut.

I briefly entertained the idea that it was a fossilized pecan but that didn't really seem feasible.

And then, the following week in a river far, far away, I found this:

Eerily similar in appearance and definitely coral so I concluded

 that my "pecan" is probably the same thing.

Nuts!

Friends with Talents

It's so good to have friends with talents.

I can't brag enough on Roger Hostetler,

my favorite knapper.

He makes such pretty things out of the coral I find.

But his talents are not limited to knapping.

Remember the Bear Grylls WalMart survival knife found in the river?

I felt certain that Roger could breath new life into it.

Check it out now!

Your eyes do not deceive you:  that is the same knife with a...wait for it...

ELK ANTLER HANDLE!

In exchange, he requested a little of my time with my lapidary saw.

Glad to do it!

Now, what kind of scabbard do I want...?

Another good kind of friend to have on your side

is a friend who lives in heaven or almost heaven.

I went to visit my friend in West Virginia and hunt for weapons of an older sort in her fields.

Lots  of interesting rocks to be found,

as well as a fossil or two.

West Virginia isn't that far from Florida but the difficulties with flights in and out of her rural area might make you think you were traveling to Papua New Guinea.  On the way there, the airline tried to land us in the fog then turned around, went back, and drove us there on a bus instead.  On the way out of there, the airline had all 4 passengers (FOUR) racing to the plane to beat a lightening storm.

My next trip will be back to Salt Lake City and I'm thinking the journey will be a 4 hour, non-stop, fog-less pleasure.

There I'll meet up with another great friend to have:

A friend with 4 wheel drive.

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...

Unexpected fossils

A rolling stone gathers no moss,

so when I can't hunt the rivers, 

I find other ways to occupy my time.

I just took a weekend trip to Savanah, Georgia and lo and behold...

I spied an unexpected fossil built into one of the walls in the old part of the city.

A piece of fossil coral; one of my favorite things.

But wait, there's more!

I'm not exactly sure what this rock is,

but I know a fossiliferous rock when I see one.

Pam and I managed one visit to the Peace River

in between downpours.

I would give this batch of finds a sad emoji face but there were a couple of interesting mammal scutes and a piece of jaw with a couple of teeth, something I always like to find. I'm thinking it's raccoon or opossum.

And yet another modern human fossil:

I'd almost rather lose my glasses or Rambo-style survival knife instead of my coffee mug!

I must bid the river adieu for the month of April.

I'll be trying my rockhounding luck in Arizona and West Virginia in the coming few weeks.