Shamalama Summer Vacation Day 1

[Shamalama]

Hi Folks... I'm back from my two week vacation to Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and had a great trip! I brought back less poundage than last year but that just saved me money is all. I'll be posting my Travelogue as I get them and the pics prepped.

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Day one August 3oth

I'd flown into Denver to stay with my Grandmother for a couple of days before I headed out on my collecting trip. She lives in Boulder which is a nice small (hah!) college town, home of the University of Colorado Buffaloes. I did spend one day looking around locally for some minerals and took a hike up to Devils Lookout in Pike National Forest which is southwest of Denver near the town of Salina. A couple of days later I started out from my grandmother’s house bound for the Eden Valley area of Wyoming. After a six hour drive I arrived in Rock Springs and headed north towards Farson. My first stop was at the famous Farson fish beds. Sadly you can’t collect here anymore since it’s on BLM land and thus illegal to collect vertebrate material. My whole reason for coming to this location was to at least see where the fish had been found and what it took to get them. I was expecting a hillside with small quarries in it but what I found was a flat sage brush filled prairie.

The area that all these fish had come from was maybe an acre in area and small mounds of discarded shale marked the locations of where people had dug. I’d like to have met the first guy who thought “Gee, let me look for fish under this flat landscape”. Not surprisingly there are very few traces of any fish that had been sought after. I found a few fragments of shale with partial fish heads or tails on them but nothing else. I did find a few pieces that showed some plant traces and those I kept since they are not part of the BLM collecting ban.

After I was done at Farson I wound my way over to another part of the Eden Valley to look for some Petrified wood. I know that whole logs and branches used to be found on the surface (and still are in some areas) but all I found were fragments of opalized wood. I wasn’t disappointed with my finds, but I sure would have liked to find part of a log just poking out of the dirt. I spent about a hour looking through the brush and decided that I ought to get going as thunderstorms were starting to form in the area.

My last stop of the day was at the Blue Forest petrified wood site near Fontenelle Reservoir, north of Green River, WY. This is another site where you can find chips of Opalized wood on the surface but is better known for digging to find the branches and logs beneath the surface. Just as at Farson, shallow pits mark the surface all around the parking area.

To find the best stuff one has to dig down into the brittle white shale to try and find some Stromatolite. The wood from this location was water logged before burial and coated with algae that built up colonies on the surface of the wood. So to find the wood you need to located the stromatolites that surround it first and then dig through the 3-6” of fossilized algae to get to the wood. The fossilized algae are very hard because it’s been silicified just like the wood it surrounds. In fact it’s often hard to remove the wood without bringing some algae with it.

An example of a typical fragment with wood at the bottom and 3-4" of hard Stromatolite surrounding it.

All around the pits are the shards of shale and discarded algae and you can occasionally find some fragments of wood that someone broke while trying to dig it up. So your saying to yourself: “Why would you go to all that trouble for some Petrified wood?” Well, the wood from the here is often surrounded with light blue agate and chalcedony as well as common opal (which has also replaced the wood), thus the name of Blue Forest for the locality. The wood is often preserved exquisitely with superb grain detail and will be near black when first broken or cut. To see the grain one has to either let the black color fade in the sun over time or give it a quick 10 minute bath in bleach. This will lighten the wood at the surface just enough for you to see the grain. If you get it too light then just repolish the surface and you will see the black come back. But I digress, when I got there thunderstorms were in the area and I was worried as they moved around my location. I got a little spritzing of rain but no thunder near me as I looked around the area. My plan was to find a pit that someone had started and expand it in search of more wood. The weather conspired against me as there were high winds that would blow the dust back into my face each time I tried to dig. I gave up after a short time and contented myself with picking up some shards off the surface. While doing so I found a number of wind polished cobbles composed of Quartz/agate and kept a few of them as well as they looked neat.

To really find any good wood I suggest that you have lots of time and a couple of people so that you can share the digging duties and not kill yourself trying to find anything. As I was just there for an hour or two I wasn’t going to find anything great unless I got lucky. As another thunderstorm headed my way I decided that I should retreat to my hotel room in Green River and prepare for the fish hunt in Kemmerer tomorrow.

[lordpiney]

very cool so far dave...im looking forward to reading the rest of your adventures.

[Gatorman]

nice trip.

[RomanK]

I have never found the f. fish even a tale. Good trip and fine finds.

[MikeD]

I like the wood.

[Phoenixflood]

Awesome trip report!

[Traviscounty]

Cool trip report! A fossil vacation is a good vacation.

[Terry Dactyll]

Nice colours on the tail... very crisp....

[old dead things]

Guess I won't see Day 2 for a couple of weeks, I'm heading back to the fish quarry today for another week or two. It was nice to meet and visit with you.

[Auspex]

You go, Shama!

Wish I was there

[Kentuckiana Mike]

Those areas look like quiet places to study the geology and collect.

Good field trip report, I look forward to reading more about the other locations you visited.

It is nice you caught the glimmer of a rainbow in the last photo.

[Shamalama]

Thanks, guys! I hope you have as much fun reading about my trip as I did while taking it!

Jim - Thanks again for the pointers about the quarry layers and the bag of dino bones too! I was a pleasure too sit down and chat with you for even a brief time.

[2ynpigo]

I've collected at the Blue Forest twice. When I get to feeling better, I'll posts some pictures of some of the pieces my son and I have collected from there, and a polished piece I bought years ago at the Denver Show.

The Blue Forest still yields good stuff. BTW - the largest full round I got last year I collected from the road!

Speaking of thunderstorms, we camped one night at the site and was treated to (terrified by?) a lightning storm to the north of incredible intensity. But I don't recommend tent camping at the "Forest" -- it's too dusty. Instead, camp at the campground along the Green River where there are trees and green grass and amazing wildlife.

[2ynpigo]

Here's the first piece of wood we dug at the Blue Forest. Collected by my son when he was 15. Note the limb to the right of the quarter, about 1 inch in diameter, with about 7 inches of its length exposed, is encased in part by the algae (stromatolite). A smaller limb branches off the main limb.

Edited September 14, 2009 by 2ynpigo

[2ynpigo]

Here's a polished piece I bought. This piece shows the classic blue chalcedony coating the outside surface of and filling cracks within the silicified log. This characteristic blue chalcedony is what gives the Blue Forest its name. Some wood specimens also contain bright yellow calcite that adds to the beauty of the pieces.

The Blue Forest is a classic locality for petrified wood. There are several good petrified wood books available today and they all mention the Blue Forest.

Edited September 14, 2009 by 2ynpigo

[MikeD]

oooh! That's a nice one.

[2ynpigo]

Shamalama,

Thanks for posting the pics of the fossil fish from the Farson fish beds. I've heard of the locality, but never seen anything from there. Too bad collecting is not allowed.

[Shamalama]

2ynpigo,

Great Blue forest wood! You really do have to get lucky or know what your doing to find anything decent out there and it looks like you have both skills.

Keep an eye on E-bay, you sometimes see Farson fish go up for sale, although they often command high prices due to the rarity and collecting ban.