Dig-Dig #9: Two Campsites Far Apart

Like bookends of glass holding a collection of hot dusty encyclopedias... no, sorry. That's awful.

There were two great campsites, one at each end of a very long, hot day of driving.

Nevada's Cave Lake State Park was full, but you can camp up the river, just outside the park, for free and just pay a day-use fee for the facilities. These include showers and an emerald lake, full of mad trout, and just perfect for a swim.


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The drive across Utah, up Nevada and into Idaho was long.

We were suddenly on the way home, with many, many miles to go, and the scenery, although vast and wonderful, was hard to fully appreciate. Cresting a rise or a pass in one of the ranges, the next valley lies ahead wide-open and stretched like a griddle.

(Click to embiggen.)

For a moment you see the whole thing from the best possible viewpoint; rust and yellow swirls curving away to milky-blue torn horizons, and then you have to spend an hour or more driving across it. And then you crest another ridge, and the next valley is there... Like spoiling an advent calendar by opening every glittering door on December 1st, it is hard to summon up genuine enthusiasm as the days tick slowly by until the 25th.

Snake, Schell Creek, Cherry Creek, East Humboldt, Goshute, Antelope, Toana, Pequor; Aya read the names of the mountain ranges out as they swung out of the haze ahead and then drifted behind us.

It might sound as though we didn't like it. That is not true at all.

The other campsite/glass book-end was Bruneau Dunes State Park in Idaho; home to a warm wind, cool lakes, an observatory pointed into the massive night sky, and, apparently, North America's tallest sand dune.

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No, we didn't.

Dig-Dig #8: U-Dig Fossils, Utah

Delta has a big green park in the middle of town. A picnic table was the perfect spot for a quick breakfast. Not so quick that we couldn't enjoy our espresso, of course. We were looking forward to a day of fossil digging, out in the Utah desert.



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We followed the clear instructions to U-Dig Fossils, about an hour west of Delta. The dark "C" shape to the right of the dirt road is the quarry.

A smattering of wind and rain-damp shale made a refreshingly cool start to the morning, but the sky cleared quickly. By the end of the day we could feel the heat radiating from the black rock.

Aya got right to work, splitting slabs of soft shale with the chisel end of a rock hammer.

What's inside?

Trilobites! Extinct sea-bugs!

The rock splits at all kinds of unpredictable places, quite unlike the fish fossil site in Wyoming. Hearts were also broken many times as one hit too many resulted in unrepairable smithereens.

But there were many sweet victories!

This little sea bug was lost for millions and millions of years until... now. Each time a layer peeled back to reveal a treasure, it was like a sudden connection with an extinct era; a time capsule, opened at last to reveal a ghostly memento mori.

Yet still lively! This, our biggest find, popped out of its carbonite and disappeared into the rubble around us, leaving us with only the negative impression. That could mean two things, but it only means one.



Here's one that came out of its hiding place with a gentle poke from our new shale-splitter (old paint-scraper).

Aya came prepared with a carrying-case, which she managed to fill with trilobites and other small fossils. Bevan, the very friendly and educating host of U-Dig Fossils, helped make the day even better with his gentle guidance and advice.


Some of the ones that managed to make it home. We are going to take our Dremel tool to them and polish them up a little, as demonstrated by Bevan.

Dig-Dig #7: Utah Hotspring

The Utah desert in a hot, dry wind and smelling of ozone; sharp curls of lightning and rolling booms without source.



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It took over an hour of driving on empty dirt roads in the Utah outback, under crackling clouds and intermittent washes of dusty rain, to track down Baker Hot Springs. With only a pencil-drawn map copied from the internet, we looped far off course. Chasing one last road until it dissolved into ruts we dared not follow, we gave up and turned back towards our nasty little motel, frustrated at having come so close to our goal and yet to be denied.

Then the landscape revealed subtle changes and a colouration, a stain, could be glimpsed beyond the rise of blackened roadside scrub: the red dirt beside the road, so dramatic in the map above, was roughly obscured at ground level.

A short walk revealed pools, with no tell-tale scent of sulfur.

They were warm but large and shallow, coated with slime and as uninviting as the crunching salt-crusted dirt around them.

And then we found this one. Bathtub-shaped and bath-water warm, with a dock from which to slip in. An unexpected paradise.

If the town of Delta can be said to be an oasis in the desert, then our dirty little motel was a desert within that oasis; to be endured rather than enjoyed. The rain poured down, which was nobody's fault, and the people were largely charming.

A pot of hearty meatballs with tomato sauce and a pack of tasty Shock Top beer, with its bright orange and coriander notes, capped the evening pleasantly.


Up next: sea bugs!