Post by herchenx on Aug 10, 2013 23:37:25 GMT -5
Last weekend I drove about 500 miles and took all day getting my daughter from camp.
My wife was planning on being gone all day today with the girls at a craft show. I had talked about taking the boys fishing, but they were asking for something more adventuresome.
In spite of a really rough day Friday I asked the guys if they would want to go camping overnight and looking for rocks today. They of course said yes and my oldest daughter asked to defect from the craft show and join us.
This is where it starts to get crazy.
My wife was going to be gone all evening until at least 11 with some friends for a birthday. The younger of my 2 daughters didn't want to go camping with us, which meant I had to wait until my wife got home before we left for camping.
SO the kids got ready, I told them just to wear the clothes they would wear for the day, no jammies, no tent, no sleeping bags, just sleep in the truck and go hard all day. The truck was ready by 11, but my wife didn't make it home until after midnight (which is very late for her, she's usually in bed by 9)
At 12:15 (AM) this morning, we hit the road.
We pounded hard and the kids slept most of the way, we ended up back in the spot I was in 2 weeks ago with Brian and John to start the day looking for wood. We clambered back some impossible-to-remember roads and ended up 4-wheeling until 4:15 AM, which is when I turned the engine off and everything was black for a couple hours.
The meteors are heating up and we saw some really nice ones on the drive. I was so tired by the time we stopped I didn't bother to get out and watch the stars, I just crashed.
We were up by 7 and I got out and wandered around before the kids were up. There are wild horses in that part of the state, and they were all around us. Not close at this point, but in every direction you could see them. I didn't bother taking pics of them because they were far enough I doubt they would have shown up.
We set to looking, and an hour or so later my son started yelling for my help.
I go over to find him digging an exposed piece of wood.
After 20 or so minutes, I still couldn't move the wood (even slightly), so I rolled my truck over and looped the 30000LB tow strap around it, and hooked it to the truck
A quick pop and it came right out
It's not fully silicated, which is different, but the part that is has a nice wind-polish (all the wood up there does) and it was pretty heavy, probably around 125#
We loaded it into the truck, and the other kids all gathered up their daily limit of wood. I asked if they wanted to keep looking (we do a lot of swapping-up - trying to find the nicest wood we can while staying within our limits)
Here's what I gathered and left laying there:
They wanted to move on, so by 9:30 we were back on the road.
We grabbed a bite to eat and headed down the highway to Wamsutter. I wanted our oldest to be able to find some Turritella and Stomatolite, and to see the view from Delaney Rim.
I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and we drove around the desert for a couple hours. It was beautiful. There is a total spiderweb of oil roads set up out there, and none of them are numbered or labeled so it is easy to get spun around. Fortunately I had a decent sense of where we needed to be and we found our way back to the edge of the rim. Just before pulling onto the main road, I saw black rock scattered everywhere and we got out and in 10 minutes had [more pounds than is reasonable] tumbling-sized stromatolite. The stromatolite up there is really nice, very hard, nicely patterned, lots of agate pockets and it takes a whale of a shine. I haven't tried tumbling it other than vibe-polishing some cabs.
The ground was covered with this stuff. As we drove closer to the edge of the rim you just saw every inch of ground completely covered with broken up stromatolite.
Here are the kids and the larger bits we saw at first, before it was covering everything.
a nice shot of my finger, showing some of the chunks of the stromatolite.
I got a quick shot of the kids right on the edge of the rim at the point
another couple shots at the point
What was strange, and made it a little tricky to find the point, was they tore down the large antenna and radio station building thing (that is the technical term) that was sitting out there last year when we went out.
What was also strange was that at the point the ground is covered with something different than the swirly stromatolite, but it is in similar formations - large mushroom-shaped agatized domes. The outside is smooth, but instead of swirls there are millions of what appear to be either cells or bubbles within the material. I didn't get a pic and it's dark out now, but I got 20-30# of it to see what it is and if it will take a shine.
We had a large weather system rolling in and the lightning and rain looked pretty serious, so we hoofed it over to the area where we found turritella last year.
On the way, we encountered a badger that darted into a hole. I stopped and we watched for a second and then he popped up then took off running. I don't know if this Google-plus animated gif will show on here, but it made one when I took a couple of photos one right after the other
We arrive at the Turritella spot a couple minutes later and were not disappointed, the ground was still covered with the stuff. My boys headed north and over a hill where the ground was loose. We ended up finding a bunch of death plates, but the shells weren't fossilized. I have some in the rock garden, they crumble very easily but they look cool. I didn't get pics of those though.
I ended up gathering some nice thick chunks of the turritella. I totally forgot my classifier screen and I didn't have a bucket so I didn't get individual snails this time like I did last year (sorry Mel)
Here's what I took (the kids had their own stashes
The weather rolled up and we decided to call it around 2 this afternoon. It took an hour to get back the to the interstate, then we headed back east. Everyone was tired.
There was a really cool thunderhead dumping rain over Cheyenne (or thereabouts)
We grabbed dinner to bring home, and once we arrived we unloaded and power washed everything. I finished putting the rock into its respective locations in the rock garden and cleaned up the driveway by around 9.
So that's it! One day, a little over 600 miles on the odometer, It's 10:30 now and everyone but my oldest daughter and me are asleep. Getting the truck emptied was exhausting but boy did we have a great day!
My wife was planning on being gone all day today with the girls at a craft show. I had talked about taking the boys fishing, but they were asking for something more adventuresome.
In spite of a really rough day Friday I asked the guys if they would want to go camping overnight and looking for rocks today. They of course said yes and my oldest daughter asked to defect from the craft show and join us.
This is where it starts to get crazy.
My wife was going to be gone all evening until at least 11 with some friends for a birthday. The younger of my 2 daughters didn't want to go camping with us, which meant I had to wait until my wife got home before we left for camping.
SO the kids got ready, I told them just to wear the clothes they would wear for the day, no jammies, no tent, no sleeping bags, just sleep in the truck and go hard all day. The truck was ready by 11, but my wife didn't make it home until after midnight (which is very late for her, she's usually in bed by 9)
At 12:15 (AM) this morning, we hit the road.
We pounded hard and the kids slept most of the way, we ended up back in the spot I was in 2 weeks ago with Brian and John to start the day looking for wood. We clambered back some impossible-to-remember roads and ended up 4-wheeling until 4:15 AM, which is when I turned the engine off and everything was black for a couple hours.
The meteors are heating up and we saw some really nice ones on the drive. I was so tired by the time we stopped I didn't bother to get out and watch the stars, I just crashed.
We were up by 7 and I got out and wandered around before the kids were up. There are wild horses in that part of the state, and they were all around us. Not close at this point, but in every direction you could see them. I didn't bother taking pics of them because they were far enough I doubt they would have shown up.
We set to looking, and an hour or so later my son started yelling for my help.
I go over to find him digging an exposed piece of wood.
After 20 or so minutes, I still couldn't move the wood (even slightly), so I rolled my truck over and looped the 30000LB tow strap around it, and hooked it to the truck
A quick pop and it came right out
It's not fully silicated, which is different, but the part that is has a nice wind-polish (all the wood up there does) and it was pretty heavy, probably around 125#
We loaded it into the truck, and the other kids all gathered up their daily limit of wood. I asked if they wanted to keep looking (we do a lot of swapping-up - trying to find the nicest wood we can while staying within our limits)
Here's what I gathered and left laying there:
They wanted to move on, so by 9:30 we were back on the road.
We grabbed a bite to eat and headed down the highway to Wamsutter. I wanted our oldest to be able to find some Turritella and Stomatolite, and to see the view from Delaney Rim.
I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and we drove around the desert for a couple hours. It was beautiful. There is a total spiderweb of oil roads set up out there, and none of them are numbered or labeled so it is easy to get spun around. Fortunately I had a decent sense of where we needed to be and we found our way back to the edge of the rim. Just before pulling onto the main road, I saw black rock scattered everywhere and we got out and in 10 minutes had [more pounds than is reasonable] tumbling-sized stromatolite. The stromatolite up there is really nice, very hard, nicely patterned, lots of agate pockets and it takes a whale of a shine. I haven't tried tumbling it other than vibe-polishing some cabs.
The ground was covered with this stuff. As we drove closer to the edge of the rim you just saw every inch of ground completely covered with broken up stromatolite.
Here are the kids and the larger bits we saw at first, before it was covering everything.
a nice shot of my finger, showing some of the chunks of the stromatolite.
I got a quick shot of the kids right on the edge of the rim at the point
another couple shots at the point
What was strange, and made it a little tricky to find the point, was they tore down the large antenna and radio station building thing (that is the technical term) that was sitting out there last year when we went out.
What was also strange was that at the point the ground is covered with something different than the swirly stromatolite, but it is in similar formations - large mushroom-shaped agatized domes. The outside is smooth, but instead of swirls there are millions of what appear to be either cells or bubbles within the material. I didn't get a pic and it's dark out now, but I got 20-30# of it to see what it is and if it will take a shine.
We had a large weather system rolling in and the lightning and rain looked pretty serious, so we hoofed it over to the area where we found turritella last year.
On the way, we encountered a badger that darted into a hole. I stopped and we watched for a second and then he popped up then took off running. I don't know if this Google-plus animated gif will show on here, but it made one when I took a couple of photos one right after the other
We arrive at the Turritella spot a couple minutes later and were not disappointed, the ground was still covered with the stuff. My boys headed north and over a hill where the ground was loose. We ended up finding a bunch of death plates, but the shells weren't fossilized. I have some in the rock garden, they crumble very easily but they look cool. I didn't get pics of those though.
I ended up gathering some nice thick chunks of the turritella. I totally forgot my classifier screen and I didn't have a bucket so I didn't get individual snails this time like I did last year (sorry Mel)
Here's what I took (the kids had their own stashes
The weather rolled up and we decided to call it around 2 this afternoon. It took an hour to get back the to the interstate, then we headed back east. Everyone was tired.
There was a really cool thunderhead dumping rain over Cheyenne (or thereabouts)
We grabbed dinner to bring home, and once we arrived we unloaded and power washed everything. I finished putting the rock into its respective locations in the rock garden and cleaned up the driveway by around 9.
So that's it! One day, a little over 600 miles on the odometer, It's 10:30 now and everyone but my oldest daughter and me are asleep. Getting the truck emptied was exhausting but boy did we have a great day!
