Memorial Day Rockhounds

After finding out about a friend's rockhounding camping trip a few weeks earlier, I planned one for our little group on Memorial Day.  We planned on hunting topaz at Topaz Mountain, then looking for trilobites at a quarry an hour or so away, but during our Topaz Mountain hunt we talked to a couple who recommended we use the second half of our day to look for geodes at the Dugway Geode Beds instead, so we did.  It was a lot of driving, but it was a great adventure!  And listening to Louis Sachar's Holes in the car made it go much faster.

We couldn't find much information online about how to find topaz at Topaz Mountain, but we figured we'd give it a try anyway.  We made the mistake (twice) of trying to find topaz at random spots on different sides of the mountain, but finally gave in and followed the signs to the commercial rockhounding areas, and parking outside of the paid area.  There, we literally saw lots of sparkles in the dirt that were faded topaz. (Fun fact: topaz faded in the sun.)  We each found some that were big enough to be worthwhile, but all but a couple had completely lost their coloration.  Still a cool experience though.*

The landscape was stark, yet beautiful.

I love this miniature bouquet Cat gathered for me.

We had much better luck at the Dugway Geode Beds.  If you look at this picture closely, you might be able to see why.  Many of the ball- or egg-shaped rocks here are geodes, and even the ones that have other shapes have evidence of crystals forming on them.  So cool!  We all found tons of geodes!  Most were small, but a few were medium-sized.  It was really gratifying to smash a rock with a hammer and seeing a sparkling hollow center.*

One of the major highlights of the day was seeing dozens of
wild horses running around during our drive home.

We also saw some sheep, a long snake, and lots of lizards (none of them
resembling the Yellow Spotted Lizards from Holes, thank goodness).
Not pictured: chipmunks/squirrels and pronghorn.

Beautiful sunset on our drive home.

*I realized while putting this post together that I don't have any pictures of the topaz we found or our geodes.  I'll have to add those pictures in later.