The real highlight of the week, though, was going out rockhounding with my family. They used to collect rocks before I was born and when I was a tiny kid, but I really missed out on most of it. Yet I'm the one who actually became a pseudo-geologist. However, I don't generally like rocks just because they're pretty, but I like to know where they came from or the story behind them. So I'm not the sort of person who would just buy a rock. (However, I do think it's cool that we have a rock from a rock shop that literally looks like a painting, even though it's just a rock.)
In many ways, this trip was reminiscent of August and September of 2013, in time of year, locale, and nature of the expedition. For those who don't know, I minored in geology in college. In August 2013, I had a two-week field studies class where we went out identifying rock formations and seeing various places. Three credit hours smashed into two weeks and camping. I was the only major from the college of humanities in the entire class. I wouldn't say it was my favorite class, but it's definitely the most unique one I took. I miss it. In fall 2013, I took a groundwater class. That probably sounds really boring to you, and it was somewhat, but I didn't expect it to be. Anyway, on September 27 and 28, 2013, we had a field trip to Great Basin National Park, Nevada, and Snake Valley, Utah. On this trip we went to the same Subway in Delta we went to on that field trip (twice, in fact, on that field trip).
My parents and niece and I headed out on Friday afternoon. Our first stop was at a place between Tooele and Delta, where we found these wonderstones, which are a beautiful form of rhyolitic tuff. I brought along my books Roadside Geology of Utah (Williams et al. 2014) and Geologic History of Utah (Hintze and Kowallis 2009) to help me identify. Now, I'm not a real geologist, but using these books, I'm guessing these rocks are part of the Salt Lake Group, which is Miocene in age. The Miocene Epoch was 5 to 23 million years ago.
(Since I'm being science-y, I used the APA citation style, even though I hate it and use Chicago for a living. Why does the American Psychological Association get to decide a style for all the sciences? I mean, the psychology major was the butt of all the jokes of one of my geology professors!)
That night we spent the night at the home of my uncle and aunt, who live in Delta. It's probably been twenty years since I was last at their house. The next morning, my dad showed us some cars that belonged to him, since you can keep old cars when you live outside of Delta. I'm not a car person, but I'm a very nostalgic person, so I liked seeing this Jeep, which we owned when I was between the ages of 7 and 14. My dad also showed us his first car from the 1960s.
We drove south from Delta and came across Fort Deseret, which was a fort that was made of adobe in 1865 during the Blackhawk War (an event I should know more about than I do). It was originally ten feet high. It's definitely not that tall anymore, but I'm still impressed at how much is still there after 150 years.
We made a stop at Great Stone Face, which also had some petroglyphs.
Then we headed down to our primary destination, the ghost town of Frisco in Beaver County. Frisco was a mining community in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but it was abandoned after the mine collapsed.
The only place you can get to by car is the Frisco Cemetery. A few things surprised me. It's a ghost town cemetery, and yet there are still fake flowers and toys placed at the graves. I don't think anyone is alive today who would have known these people. There was a pinwheel and some other things that still looked very fresh and new.
You couldn't drive to the ruins, but you could walk up to them. Only one building still had a roof, and that was just barely--I was standing inside it when a big gust of wind came up, and I was paranoid it would collapse on me, so I got out. It was fun to see all the old places and wonder what it was like a hundred years ago. But I didn't see any ghosts. Sadly.
My best (educated) guess for the geology of this area is that it's the Horn Silver Andesite, 34 million years old from the Oligocene Epoch. Andesite is a volcanic rock that has more iron than rhyolite but less iron than basalt (the black rock that dominates west-central Utah). I was surprised it was that old.
Then we headed to the desert between Milford and Kanosh, Utah, to find obsidian. Small pieces of it were everywhere. I like it because it's smooth without being polished. Obsidian, of course, forms when lava cools really fast, too fast for any crystals to form. There were lots of cool, glassy rocks in the area. I brought home an interesting brown specimen that had so many shiny parts it looked wet, even though it wasn't. I don't know how old these rocks were, I'm guessing between 700,000 and 1.5 million years, but they could be older or younger.
We made a brief stop at a cousin's house in Fillmore, and she had not one but two cats sleeping in plants. I love cats, because they don't even have to do anything and they're hilarious.
On our way home, we had a flat tire. But it was actually a propitious occurrence! In twelve years of driving, I've never learned how to change a tire, so it was a perfect opportunity to learn. I still don't know if I'll know what to do if I get a flat, but at least I'll be less clueless.
It was a great way to kick off September. And speaking of "kick off," how 'bout that game, amirite?
Actually, I don't know. I don't watch football.
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