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What an adventure! I was on a trip to southern California with my partner. He does not like fossil hunting – yes I know what you are thinking but he is a very nice guy. You can’t have every thing! I wanted to go to the Marble Mountain Trilobite site in the Mohave desert. I did my research and knew exactly where I wanted to go. As I would be by myself I decided to be very clear about where I was going and how long I expected to be there. Off I went on a bright warm sunny day armed with gallons of water, a sunhat, fossil hunting backpack, many snacks, and a brand new Lexus. Yes I know you are thinking dumb dumb dumb! But as it turns out the lexus was an excellent choice, it had lots of power and reasonable clearance. I did high center it on some shrubs (sorry shrubs) and almost lost it in a sand bank. Power does win the day and I managed to get it about 3 miles away from the classic north end site by Chambliss. What I did not account for was that the recent atmospheric rivers had washed out a lot of the tracks and roads. I had a really big walk up to the base of the mountain. From there I struggled through boulders fields and scree slopes to get up to the famous red and green Latham shales. Oh boy what incredible rocks! Fortunately I am fond of lapidary too so I collected some glorious specimens. My aim was to find the blue green algal nodules formed by precipitation of the cyanobacteria. They look like elongated ovals and are found everywhere. I was gob smacked by these fossils. They are 518 million years old. The trilobites are mostly Olenellids and are rare. I struggled to find any of these and found mostly cool trace fossils. As I was completely exhausted getting to the top of this mountain and now had to get down it with a lot of rocks AND walk 3 miles across the desert to get back to the Lexus I made a decision – I would come back another day and find some of those trilobites. By the time I got back to the car my knees were shaking and I had drunk 5 litres of water and eaten everything I brought plus 3 candy bars. It was an amazing trip and the area is totally deserted. I never saw one person or vehicle while I was there. There is another trilobite site that is down towards the ghost town of Cadiz. This is the official BLM site and you are allowed to take small quantities of fossils. Unfortunately the road was completely washed out and unlikely to be repaired soon. Oh well that's for another day