Out with the dirt, in with the wood: Eden Valley and the Blue Forest

After visiting Yellow Cat and the Poison Strip

in Utah, we continued on to the more favorably named

Eden Valley, Wyoming,

in search of Blue Forest petrified wood.

Don't Tom and I look happy in this photo?

We're putting on a brave front because this was after several nights sleeping on an air mattress that simultaneously steamed and abraded us.  Even with a cotton fitted sheet, a sweaty layer of moisture would form between the air mattress and the unlucky half of our body in contact with it, resulting in a chill when we would flip over; and maybe it was something to do with the desert environment but it felt like we were sleeping on 1000 grit sandpaper: not rough enough to cause scarring but it left Tom feeling like he might have to get his tattoo touched up.

Still, it was beautiful,

and since Jim and Vickie bring everything but the kitchen sink (and they would bring that, too, if they could figure out a way to make it work), we camped in relative style.

No, this is not a scene from "Breaking Bad."

It's Jim and Vickie's interesting little trailer that was packed with all manner of foods, drinks, utensils (an entire knife block) and dishes but, strangely, no bowls.  Only an issue when we wanted cereal, and the coffee mugs stood in for that.

So what were we there for?

The wood, baby!

Blue Forest wood is gorgeous: the fossil retains every tiny detail and at times, I had to look twice to convince myself it was a fossil and not a modern branch.  The wood is surrounded with layers of blue-hued chalcedony and golden calcite crystals.

But there's a catch.

You have to dig to find it and...

nearly every piece is encased in layers of hard, fossilized algae.

Finding an algae cast is no guarantee of success.  The cast in the above picture was empty.

Empty!

It ain't right.

The ground is pocked with holes from decades of fossil hunters

 and covered with discarded algae casts.

I pondered the environmental impact of all the digging but the area was dug up long ago and "planted" with oil and gas wells which are visible in every direction.  Fossil hunters are allowed to dig as long as they don't use mechanized equipment. 

Pick a hole, any hole.

I decided to give myself a head start on the digging and jump into a hole that had been started by some other hunter.  Here was my new burrow for the next day and a half.

I hit pay dirt my first try so I just kept digging, uncovering a load of fossil twigs and branches

and even a root ball which I am lovingly cradling in this photo.

I also found a long, unbroken algae cast but I still have no idea what's inside because 

this crap is HARD!  

We're still experimenting with ways to remove it without breaking the fragile fossil inside but the best bet seems to be...

ACID!!!

Muriatic acid to be exact, and in small measured doses.  I'll post results as they come.

Meanwhile, I found some float material that was algae-free

 and Tom polished them in his masterful way:

And here's one he hasn't polished yet to show how gorgeous this stuff is:

But wait!  One more!

This picture isn't the best but Tom found a limestone nodule and when he broke it open, it contained a  piece of fossilized wood so realistic looking you'd be afraid of getting a splinter.

USPS Feud Update

It's just possible that with a mix of Gorilla and packing tape, I have tamed the United States Postal Service delivery beast.  

Stay tuned...

Adventures in Yellow Cat and the Poison Strip

Generally, I avoid radioactive places.

I had read that some areas of Yellow Cat, Utah might harbor mild radiation.

Mild?!

Hopefully nothing more intense than the years I spent standing in front of my parents circa 1980 microwave oven, waiting for my LeMenu's to heat through.

And the "Poison Strip" moniker comes from a preponderance of arsenic in the ground water.

No worries!  I stuck with the bottled kind and...

I quickly learned that even a short walk away from camp required copious amounts of bottled water.

This is the high desert, after all.

But boy, oh boy! If you want cool rocks, this is the place to be!

Down a short slope from our campsite I ran across these super cool rocks, laced through with red ribbons and pockets of crystals.  Still don't know what it is.

It got to be overwhelming.

Rocks are HEAVY, and even with the campsite in view, the return climb up that short slope was a lot harder with 100 lbs of rocks strapped to my back.

Still, I kept going back, until...

Tom identified one of my shut-off switches:

Gin.

Simple as that.

The other switch is darkness; I stop digging when I can't see any more.

And a couple more photos...

Here I am on a slippery slope that doesn't look nearly as intimidating from below as it felt while I was on it.

And here is some local wildlife that was released unharmed.

On to Wyoming!

Sti

Traveling Circuses and Fossil Hunters

I tried to warn him.

I tried to mentally prepare my boyfriend, Tom, for the rigors of travel with Jim and Vickie.

Awwww!  Look at him!  So naive.

I had explained that Jim and Vickie would pick us up at the Salt Lake City Airport in their pickup truck and that they tended to travel with too much gear.  Tom wanted to know where we were going to go and what we were going to look for.  I had only the vaguest answers for him, mumbling about Utah and Wyoming and how it was "up to them."

Still, he went with me.

He is a good man.

What he didn't expect to see was a pickup truck with a camper top, packed to the gills with crates, bags, and suitcases, AND a trailer packed full with more of the same.  

Too late to back out!  Away we went!

Our goal the first evening

was to set up camp in the Yellow Cat area of eastern Utah, about 240 miles from SLC,

but first!

along the way Vickie wanted to try and locate a septarian nodule site.

The directions in rock hounding books and on the internet can be sketchy and difficult to translate to real time.  We found our way to a gravel road in search of "a ditch on the left-hand side."

Believe it or not, we found said ditch!

Initial digging attempts were frustratingly disappointing.  The ground was covered with broken nodules so I knew they had to be there.  Tom found some beautiful fragments of septarians and chert nodules which inflamed my out-of-control competitive side (I swear, I'm working on that!).  

I finally hit pay dirt!

The only bad part of it was that I didn't find the pocket of nodules until it was time to leave.

Talk about working at a fever pitch!

It's probably for the best because we needed to eat some canned goods and burn some firewood before we would have enough room in the truck for rocks.

These septarian nodules are much more fragile than the ones I collected last year in Mt. Carmel, Utah, so I'll have to be exploring means of stabilization.  

I soaked some of my AZ rainbow wood from April in a heady concoction of acetone and epoxy as a means of stabilizing its crumbly texture.

Any day now I hope to have time to actually slab it and see it if worked.

Looking for a camp site...

this was our view.

I may tease Jim and Vickie sometimes, but they make these vistas possible.

Yup,

this camp site looks about right.

I will admit, there are times that all the extra food and water adds 

a sense of mental security.

To be continued...

Summer...again...

One of my fossil buddies sent me a post 

from The Fossil Forum

which detailed a fossil hunter's trip in mid-June to a central Florida river where he proceeded to find 4 juvenile mammoth teeth, among other things.
I guess I'm going to have to get more adventurous. 

I had a few, lightweight, late-season finds in the usual places that are in keeping with my middle name:
Aimee "the finder of small things" Hankel.

A very small tooth.

It was suggested that it might be a pre-equus horse tooth which would be very exciting but when I looked at comparisons on the internet,  

my very small tooth seemed to be whispering,  "Deer."

The official word is in from Dr. Hulbert at UF and my tooth is a lower premolar from a bison, probably in the 10-30,000 year age range.

Not the glamor tooth I was hoping for but vaguely more interesting than a deer.

These teeth, however,

are screaming, "Modern horse!"

How about these whale ear bones?

I don't think you could find them much more worn out.

I call them "shabby cetacean chic." 

A respectable chunk of mammoth tooth,

that I jacked up with my shovel before I knew of its existence.

The end results of one entire day's dig:

Now THAT'S determination!

You know times are lean when you bring home dugong ribs,

and sad Peace River coral,

and the hollow shell of a disappointing "geode",

and...glass...

Always so much glass...

As always, dreaming of dry weather.

More Arizona Geode Tour 2016!

Get excited!!!

You're about to see some more of the Arizona Geode Tour of 2016!

Truth be told, we spent all that time in the truck, bouncing around off-road, in the hopes of finding fossils but in lieu of fossils...

I will accept any cool rock!

I was wandering up a steep slope, looking for any rock of interest, 

when I came across a deep depression that someone had dug into the red soil.  There was a pile of rocks in the hole, obviously placed so as to camouflage something.  Since I detected no foul odors, I hopped right into this apparent shallow grave to see what was what.

Someone unknown had found what I fondly think of as a "meteorite of golden selenite".

I know it's not really a meteorite and maybe it's calcite or some other mineral, but to my dazzled eyes, it appeared to have dropped from heaven and landed at my feet. 

All I wanted was a few small samples.

Son-a-ma-bitch fought back!  Like a champion!

I finally got some beautiful pieces to take home; well worth the carpal tunnel flareup.

The actual geodes didn't put up much of a fight.

Here I am, in a lovely, shady locale, plucking Payson geodes from just under a thin layer of soil and pine needles. 

Lots of geodes...

Boxes of geodes...

Buckets of geodes...

I couldn't resist.

The only downside is that I think I broke the only one that had a big vug and that was the one that motivated me to bring home all the others.  

I still have many to slice on the rock saw so...fingers crossed.

The US Postal Service and I

continue our playful back-and-forth game 

where I challenge them to ship something to me undamaged and they surprise me with the results.

These are flat rate priority boxes, designed to hold up to 70 lbs.  

My packages have never topped 40 lbs.

But even an envelope can be a victim. I had Roger make me some deer bone hairpins and the first 2 he sent me were broken in half even though they were secured to a stiff backing.  He pondered how hard the letter carrier had to stomp on the envelope to break them.

So he tried again...

The post office held this letter hostage because I owed .21 in postage.  To their credit, they didn't actually demand the .21 when I arrived and saw the state of the envelope.