Geode Hunt

The girls didn't have school Thursday and Friday (UEA), so Quentin took those days off work too. We had talked about going on a little trip close by, but then we decided to stay at home and do a few day trips. On Thursday we went to the Dugway Geode Beds. It was a little over 3 hours away, but it was worth it. I think the girls (especially Kiera) take after their Great-Grandpa Johnson and have the rock-hunting bug in them.

So...after driving over 3 hours, we consulted our directions which said to look for recent diggings off of the turnoff. We saw some small holes about 2 feet around and a foot or two deep. We started searching but found nothing. So we drove around the corner and found holes about 6 feet around - but nothing was there either. Feeling quite disappointed (and like we wasted a whole bunch of time and gas), we decided to drive around a bit before heading out. Then we saw it - a "mini gravel pit" that had been dug out by an excavator. We also saw another family (from Bountiful) who showed us all the geodes they had found. As we were walking into the pit, we literally couldn't take a step without stepping on geodes or geode pieces. We were so excited! We all had fun digging and trying to find whole geodes, finding geode pieces, and even smashing geodes on rocks to see what was inside - Kiera even found a geode with pink (rose) crystals inside! After a few hours of digging and "treasure hunting," we lugged home a 5-gallon bucket and a 2-gallon bucket full of geodes. We're excited to cut some with a tile cutter and polish some with our rock polisher!





In the pit with the other family

Close-up of embedded geodes