Fossils and Fossil Mountain Field Trip

I always thought that no REGULAR person could ever find a fossil. I had gone on "fossil collecting" field trips as a child, but nobody ever found any real fossils. If one DID find a real fossil, I thought, it would never be one of those perfect specimens where you can tell what organism made it, but only one so hard to distinguish it might as well be a regular old rock.

Well…I didn't know about Fossil Mountain before. It is CLEAR out in the West Desert, away from everywhere, but it's one of the best places to find fossils in the country! Here's some more information about it. I was still skeptical before we went, and I kept warning the children that we might not find anything. But we DID. We found so many things! It was so much fun. You are allowed to collect from the ground and the washes and even the mountainsides, but I think you just aren't allowed to chisel anything out. Because we were carrying a baby in a backpack and didn't feel like doing much climbing, we mostly stayed down in the washes, looking for fragments. We found plenty to keep us happy down there!

There are several other fossil collecting sites in this (general) area too, but we didn't have time to try any of them out. There are also a couple places you can pay to collect.

Such a desolate place! But beautiful. I love our high deserts.

We saw a bald eagle with some prey actually in his talons! When we drove by, he dropped it in surprise. I hope it was a little bunny that got away. :)

We gave Teddy a rock to hold and he was SO HAPPY. He called it his "Rah" and he loved it deeply.

Fossil shell!

A lot of the rocks were just COVERED with fossils, like this one. Amazing. And most of these are 500 million years old. Can you even imagine?!

Good example of a mold and a cast. (Here is a very good explanation of types of fossils and which is which, if you tend to get them mixed up. :))

Trilobite!

Another trilobite.

Some of our interesting finds. We don't even know what all of these are. Perhaps some lava bombs?

Fish

Shells/Brachiopods

Ammonites

Trilobites

We did a bunch of dinosaur and fossil activities I'm not listing here, because they're so easy to find online. :) But we did repeat our jello permineralization activity shown here, and since I was teaching the "Digging in the Past" adventure for Cub Scouts, I also made these cute little "dinosaur eggs" for the Cubs one day. We put these dinosaur skeletons inside and they were quite fun.

Calcite Onyx Rockhounding

We have this rockhounding guide to Utah and we LOVE it (make sure you get the latest version, which has color pictures!). Last time we studied rocks, we went hunting for obsidian, topaz, calcite, and wonderstone. This time we wanted to see some new sites, so we went to the back of the Nebo Loop to hunt for calcite onyx. It's not real onyx, but the beautiful stripes and bands make it so beautiful! There are instructions on finding the spot here, but I think the book I linked above gives even better directions.

It was the most beautiful spring day. I thought Fall was the absolute best time to be out rockhounding, but I am starting to consider Spring a strong contender!

If you find the right spot to park off of the Nebo Loop road, it's quite an easy hike up to the calcite deposit. You go up the trail for 15-20 minutes, and suddenly, there's a huge rocky outcropping. Up close you can see the colored veins sparkling in the sun. It's really beautiful!

Daisy brought Rosie along to help collect rocks.

We spent all morning collecting rocks and exploring around in the warm sun. It was so beautiful. Even Teddy enjoyed himself…for a time.

We had our picnic in this green meadow.

After eating, Theodore became enraged for some reason, so after we couldn't stand the screaming anymore, we put him several yards away to scream by himself. Poor little lamb. It made him madder than ever.

THIS little angel, on the other hand, was as happy as a lark to be out in the mountains.

Finally the clouds started rolling in, so we took our buckets and headed back down the mountain. It was a lovely day!