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The Yellow Cat Flat has a region known as the “Poison Strip”. It is so named due to the massive amounts of selenium and radioactive minerals that are found there. Always on the look out for new stock for RadioactiveMinerals.com, we spent the day exploring the area. These mines were closed in the 60’s, once regualtions changed, and demand for uranium declined.

Most of the mines were gone without a trace, but the one we found was completely closed up, and the minerals in the dumps has long since decompossed, leaving nothing behind but bright yellow powder, and some super freaky selenium filled pools that for some reason people were collecting water from.

However we did find some more agate.

After a rather uneventful day, we decided to drive to Moab to camp for the evening.

Camal Spider

12 miles outside of town, right after the rest area, is the classic roadside attrtaction, “Hole N the Rock”.

Also at the rest area, is a rock that looks like a guinea pig. (from the right angle)

The town of Moab is quite the vaction spot for people who like camping, hiking and outdoors activities. Just north of town is the entrance to Arches National Park.

Although you might have never actually heard of Arches National Park, you have certainly seen pictures of some of the famous geological formations within its boundries.

These famous natural sandstone arches are created be wind and water erosion.

I had always wanted to go there, and since we had the time, we decided that we would go for a couple a hours before we filmed the remaining locations for the “Moab Vdieo”.

Since we do so much hiking every day, we decided to only walk the trails around the windows.

We were finished in the park by about 3pm, so we still had penty of time to film two more locations before calling it a day. The first location of was for agates at DuBinky Well.

The 2nd location was for calcite on Klondike Bluffs Road, outside the back of the National Park, on BLM land.

Then it was off to Green River for a $40 hotel room! Good thing too, I hadn’t had a shower in days.

Justin called Hertz to see about getting another spare tire, but they told him that what we would need to do was take the busted tire to the nearest Firestone to get the tire patched. We were planning on visiting John Cornish in Provo anyway, so we took in the tire to get fixed. They told us that would be about an hour until it would be ready, which gave us enough time to explore historic, downtown Provo, Utah.

On the right hand side of the picture you can see the Firstone.

The community park across the street had a memorial to the the Utah soldiers that fought in fought in the Indian Wars.

Soon enough the tire is fixed, and we are ready to meet our buddy John Cornish for dinner.

Although this gaucamole looks pretty, it really wasn’t that good. Living in Tucson has spoiled us when it comes to Mexican food.

After a short visit with John, it was time for us to head to our camping spot, outside of Price, for the night so as to be able to get a start on filming bright and early. Justin had read about an old fossil location near a some train tracks.

However the only thing that we found were old railroad ties.

But the next two locations proved to be much more fruitful. We drove into the desert to collect fossils in a wash.

On the way we saw two Haliburton trucks, but we couldn’t figure out what they were even doing.

We went to a second location that was supposed to also have agates, but much to our surprise, we found quartz geodes.

They were all over the ground, and before long we have a pretty large pile.

But then we noticed the storm clouds rolling in,

so I quickly wrapped up our finds, and we walked back to the car in the rain.

While waiting for the storm to pass, we drove a short distance away to the San Rafael Swell to yet another agate & jasper location. In about a half an hour the sky cleared up, and we were ready to collect.

And then off to yet another location with the help of our Utah Topo Atlas, and no help at all from the Utah Gem Trails Guide (Justin is going to write a book review exposing the many inacurancies).

Oh.. and incidently, did you see the new Mineralogical Record?

We got a mention in the “What’s new in minerals” section.

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.