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After a another night of camping out, we woke up, ready to finish filming the rest of the Topaz Mountain/Delta, Utah region.

Before acutally heading out to our first location of the day, we decidced to visit the Great Stone Face, and the nearby Petroglyphs. The face sits on the top of a mountain, and is supposed to bare a striking resemblence to Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints (Mormons).

The petroglyphs, on the other hand, were right beside the road in, with a small fence around them.

They were kind of worn, and hard to see, but we could still make them out.

But soon it was time to get back to work. The first location that Justin wanted to film was a mahogany & snowflake obsidian flat.

Even though we have already been to several other locations, in various other states, this location is probably our favorite one for obsidian yet. What makes this spot so different, is the way that the obsidian here forms. Rather than jagged chunks scattered about or falling out of a cliff face, the obsidian here forms in large, smooth nuggets, like oversized apache tears (and you know how much I LOVE apache tears).

Mahogany Obsidian

Snowflake Obsidian

This is a rare quartz-polymorph, cristobalite, found inside obsidian.

We stayed here and collected until our bags were completely full, and then headed off, further out into the desert to collect golden labradorite chips that were so small it barely seemed worth it, so after a short while, we knew it was time to get back on the road toward Blind Valley to collect fossils.

The Blind Valley location is actually a series of several locations that have varying amounts and types and fossils at each spot. Stopping first at a loctation on the way into the valley, we found a few nice pieces scattered amongest the weeds on the desert floor.

But it wasn’t untill we actually made it into Blind Valley proper,

that we really started to find the heady fossil plates amoung the shale piles…

…and in the washes.

It seemed that we were really hitting the jackpot, but soon enough our luck would take a turn. The next location was at Painters Spring, a fertile valley, hidden from the view of the road. We parked and walked back the trail to the spring,

however about halfway there,

it became apparent,

that while very pretty,

it ceratianly wasn’t worth the hike for the feldspar & quartz stuff that was to be found.

But we still walked the whole way back to see the actual Painters Spring.

After that it was on to Amasa Valley to collect epidote, garnet & scheelite up in a skarn .

where the story was much the same, pretty but kind of fruitless.

Our final location for the day was to be the Wheeler Amphitheater to collect trilobites. Right before the the turn off to go down to the shale pits, there was a random spring bubbling up at the side of the road, so we pulled off to look at it before going down to the collecting location.

The trilobites are found in the shale pit.

But we had other things to worry about. Once we got out of the car we noticed that we had once again gotten a flat tire. It appeared that when we stopped to look at the spring, a sharp shale shard (say that 3 times fast) must have punctured the tire.

So Justin had to change it, and I spilt shale slabs in search of some fossils.

I didn’t manage to find any, but Justin found one.

Next time we are going to U-DIG.

Thursday we drove into Utah after spending the night at Justin’s brother’s house in Lake Havasu (AZ). The first region that we are filming in the “Beehive State” is the Topaz Montain/Delta region. This area has countless locations that are all within a short distance of one another.

Pretty much anyone that is into rocks and minerals comes to Topaz Mountain to collect at some point or another.

After a week and half in Los Angeles, the blue skys of Utah were a welcome change.

So we drove around to do a little recon, and then got our bags ready to find some rocks.

Of course, as luck would have it, our first location of the day was an agate/jasper/calcedoney collecting spot. Although at first, I wasn’t too keen on collecting more crypto-silicon quartz, I was actually quite pleased with the color and quality of the material that we found

Next it was on to a purple fluorite location.

Though not the highest quality, it was plentiful and brightly colored.

As we were driving down the road between locations, we spotted a herd of antelope drinking from a puddle in the middle of the road. They darted out into the scrub, to far away for my camera to get a good shot, so Justin took a few with his camera.

The old Pony Express Route ran right through these mountains back in the day. Justin suggested that we take a moment to stop and look at the monument. Too bad vandals had defaced it.

But it was still nice enough for a lizard to sun itself on.

Lizards and other wildlife were certainly not in short supply.

This little guy was right beside the truck, so I picked him up and put him out further in the scrub so that he wouldn’t get squashed.

We also found another skeleton, this time of an antelope.

After collecting apache tears, we decided to finish up the day by heading out to the Dugway Geode Beds.

On the way there, passed some old mine stuff…

…and a rattesnake just laying on a rock pile on the side of the road. After taking a photo (from the safety of the car), we quickly headed on our way.

This was the first time that either Justin or I had ever seen a rattlesnake in the wild.

When we got there, we saw lot’s holes already dug.

So we investigated those first.

However soon Justin was ready to start his own hole.

As the sun sank behind the mountains, we headed to our camp site in Topaz Cove.

Before driving back to Pasadena, we had to film a couple more locations on the Inyo County Video. So on the loop back around we had 3 more collecting sights planned out; Saturday, collecting quartz crystal and apahce tears outside of Big Pine, and Sunday, collecting Coyote Range Garnets with Cal Graeber.

Now I don’t know about you guys, but Justin is a MOTIVATED COLLECTOR when it’s for quartz points, especially ones that are double terminated or odd shaped floaters. Both of which are plentiful at this location.

We quickly filmed what we needed for the video, and then settled down to collect some quartz crystals.

After collecting quartz crystals we decided to take a side detour and visit the Ancient Bristlecone Pine forest in Inyo National Forest. The trees in this forest are some of the oldest living things in the entire world. Many of the trees are 4,000 years old. They only grow between 10,00 and 11,00 foot elevation. So we had to drive up some steep windy roads to get to the forest.

Once we got there, the trees were crazy, twisty, tall. They are very freaky, gnarled trees. I like to refer to desert trees like this as “Halloween Trees”.

Being that this place is a National Park, there was information about Ancient Bristlecone Pines.

It turns out that some of the PINE NEEDLES on a single tree can be up to 40 years old. This conserves energy, letting the tree live to be thousands of years old. The oldest living organism on the planet is a tree called “Methuselah”, that back in an unpublicized section of the park.

But I am all about the bristlecones, themselves.


They have pointy bristles on the end of each segment.

The animals in national parks are allways so tame.

On the way out we decided to stop and have lunch at one of the roadside picnic areas we had seen on the way into the park.

As evening fell we drove out toward the apache tear location. It was great… so great that we decided to just camp there for the evening.

The best thing about this location was that we had 4 bars of internet. I stayed up late and finished some website work, and Justin got up early to do his.

At 9 o’ clock in the morning we got a call from Cal about meeting us in Bishop to collect garnets, and we were ready to go.
We got in the truck, only to find out that it wouldn’t start. Turns out the battery was drained. Apparently this morning when Justin was checking his email, he forgot to turn the car on… draining the battery. We waited, and waited all day to see if the battery would revive, but it didn’t.

At least we had apache tears to collect. We got seven bags of them.

Eventually we called out for a service truck in Bishop to give us a jump. We walked 2 miles through the open range…

Down to the canal the to show them the way back to where we were.

We decided to stay the night in Bishop and meet up with Cal in the morning. So basically, we went to sleep. It had been a long day.