On saturday we went on our first rockhounding adventure. The trip was inspired from the boys fascination in the computer game Minecraft. They have learned so much about minerals, rocks, gems & precious metals from playing this game, that it amazes me. Damek started a rock/gem/mineral collection last year after he started playing the game, and some time later we happened upon the
geology section of our state website which pinpoints areas around the state to go collect your own rocks and minerals. Last week Kyan and I were going over the map and reading about the different rocks and minerals you can collect, some of which he knew solely from playing Minecraft. He also told me how obsidian is made, which he also learned from the game. In Utah you can collect obsidian in the
Black Rock desert, which we promised Kyan we would do sometime this summer. A little far for just a day trip:)
On saturday our first destination was to Vernon Hills to collect Wonderstone.
Wonderstone is a welded-vitric tuff (vitric means glassy) of rhyolitic composition. It is a volcanic rock composed predominantly of volcanic glass particles which have been welded or stuck together by heat and compacted by the weight of overlying material. Alteration of the rock by circulating ground water produced the colorful banding. The maroon and yellow-brown colors are due to the presence of iron oxides.
Vernon Hills is about 6 miles from the town of Vernon, Utah, which is about 60 miles from Salt Lake. One thing I love about Utah, is that you can drive 50 miles in just about any direction and be in the middle of nowhere:)
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| watching a train go by while at the collecting site |
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a hill of wonderstone
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| lichen on rock |
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| digging in a hole |
From the outside, the rocks look mostly ordinary. When broken open, the bands and colors are revealed:)
After collecting our fill of the Wonderstones, we headed to the
Dugway Geode Beds. Getting to the beds required a 50 mile drive on a dirt road.
The road was part of the historic Pony Express trail that went from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California.
This Pony Express station was named after explorer Captain James H. Simpson, a Camp Floyd topographical engineer, who stopped here in 1858 while laying out an overland mail route between Salt Lake City and California. The availability of excellent water made Simpson Springs one of the most prominent stations in the West Desert.
Finding Geodes was a bit trickier and more work than the Wonderstones to be sure. Next time we will follow the advice from
this local site. We did find some after we were pointed to a spot by a fellow rock hounder so all was not lost:)
There is also a mining claim in the area that you can pay to collect geodes from. It is a big area that has already been excavated by backhoes and front loaders.
Here is the information on their collecting expeditions.
Spotted a few antelope from the truck as we were driving. The ones we saw were all loners, and this one was the only one that was close enough to shoot a picture of.
We all had a wonderful day! Damek said that we should go once a week to do more collecting. I'm thinking once a month would definitely be doable:)
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