Trilobite Mania!

To celebrate my birthday, I drove half a day to reach the trilobite quarry near Delta, Utah. When I finally reached the dirt road that would take me there, I couldn't contain my excitement. I didn't know what to expect, but I knew there was the very real possibility I'd end up with a trilobite or two in my collection.

Trilobites are these prehistoric bug-looking things. Each one has a beautiful symmetry to it, making the fossils unique and interesting.

For more on trilobites, visit the American Museum of Natural History Trilobite Page. The author definitely portrays a romanticized and mythic view of these amazing creatures, but you'll come away from the page with more info than you could ever want on the trilobite.

I ticked off the miles. The first sign read 20 miles, then 12, then 8, then 4.

As I got closer, I surveyed the land. For awhile there was dark patches of rock that looked almost like the coal seams from last week, except it was more in patches than liner seams.

Within the last four miles, I saw an area filled with shale rubble. Knowing there's a spot on public land to quarry, I wondered if that was it and whether I should skip the admission fee to the actual quarry and hunt around in my own.

In the end, I was glad I didn't because the young man (Mitch) whose family owns the quarry showed me how to use the pick to break the shale in seams. He also got me started in an area with plenty of trilobites.

After spending a little bit of time digging around and cracking rock, I felt satisfied with my finds.

Mitch polished up one of the rocks for me, producing a nice display pice with several trilobites. The picture below is a rock that hasn't been polished yet. It's very likely that there are other trilobites also in this fragment.

Mitch also gave me a trilobite identification chart to show the different types found at the quarry.

He pointed out that one of the fossils I'd found was the Elrathia Kingi, but that particular specimen cracked when we were cleaning up the fossils.

"Don't worry," Mitch said. "They make rock glue. You can glue the crown part back on."

Rock glue?

I put the broken fragments into my bag of partial and small pieces. I'd have to examine the broken piece and work on it when I get back to Escalante.

In all, the visit to the quarry was well worth the time spent getting there, and I'd highly recommend this trip to other rock hounds.

The bonus is that near the quarry is a fresh spring. Mitch directed me to the water source. "I drink that water all day long," he said. "It's some of the best tasting you'll ever have. Clean, too."

On the way back I also stopped at a place suggested in my rock hounding book: an obsidian collection site. The book promised clear, top-of-the-line specimens. It was well worth the 16-mile detour because I found a few good pieces that are of very good quality: clear and shiny black...like perfectly black glass, but hard as stone.

Later that night...after driving back to St. George and celebrating my birthday with a steak dinner at Texas Roadhouse...I camped at Black Rock Road. I have a story about that place, but that's for another time or for the book. The place can give me the creeps, but I'd rather camp out there where I know the lay of the land than to find and camp somewhere new. So, I drove the eight (or so) miles south of St. George into Arizona and got off at the first exit.

The next morning, I started early. I wanted to see if Denny's still offered free birthday meals. (They do, but only if you sign up online.)

From Denny's, it was errand running time. Since a trip "to town" takes me three hours, I save errands for one of my days off work.

I did manage to squeeze in some time for a 4-wheel drive to Birthing Cave. It sounded like an appropriate thing to do on my actual birthday, but my maps app first send me on reservation land. The road the app instructed me to take was marked "No Trespassing" in big red letters.

I punched the cave back into the app, and it sent me in the most difficult trail I'd ever driven. After stalling the Xterra on a particularly gnarly hill, I rolled it backwards until I found a spot where I could get turned around. I'd been having some weird battery/electrical issues that just started that morning, and I didn't feel like pushing it further since I still had two more miles of this road. Birthing Cave could wait for another day. In addition, I know there's got to be an easier way to get to it. It's a regular tourist thing, so there has to be an easier way in somewhere.

Since I was near Gunlock, I wanted to find the little pond I'd stopped at four years ago. The place felt like a dream, so I wanted to see it again...to make sure it really existed.

I found it, and Buena and I hiked around a little bit before we started the long drive back to Escalante.