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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.