 Hello and welcome to the rugged rockhound. Today I'm here joined with my good friend Tim, rockhounding buddy right here, and we and we are going to be looking for birdseye marble. So birdseye marble really isn't a marble. It is a sedimentary rock that is basically balls of algae, or algae depending on how you like to pronounce it, that formed hundreds of millions of years ago and got deposited in a sedimentary layer. So it's mostly limestone. Now there is a quarry up here and the quarry is claimed, so do not go to the quarry unless you get special permission from the owner. At the very beginning of the road, the dirt road as you turn off from the main road, there is a sign there that if you want to try and dig at the quarry, you go call the guy and maybe schedule with him. But other than that, don't go up there. We instead are over here in this valley. Now the claim is like two mountain ranges over that way, so it's way over that way. We might do it some other time. Maybe I'll call up the guy and see if he's interested, but for now we're just going to explore this area over here and see if we can find anything. So if you ever want to know some good rockhounding places in Utah, I like to get the falcon guide. There's also the gem trails, which is also a great one. So I use this to go look for rocks and this is one of the places in the book. So back in the valley, there's not a whole lot on the ground, which makes sense. So we're coming over here to where there's the hillside, where it's more likely that we will find the stuff we're looking for. All right, so I came across this. It has a very spherical shape to it. It looks like limestone, so I wonder if this is a single algal ball that may be weathered out. I'm going to cut it when I get home and see. All right, just looking around. So the stuff seems to be everywhere. It's just that they tend to be smaller and maybe spread apart. So I guess the goal then is to find bigger ones that are closely clipped together. And the layering in that rock might be layers of the algae. I don't know, it's a new spot. We're just figuring it out. Yeah, this looks like layers of algae right there. So we just need to find big ones of it. Okay, we're finally finding some better ones. Take a look at that. I like this one right here. Yeah, I like that one better than this. Yeah, I'd keep that one. And I found this one that I just kind of pulled up right there. I think I can do better though. So it looks like some of these are what we call algal mats. So instead of being circles, they got lines. Like this is just a whole bunch of lines. So the lines are okay, but it's definitely the circles you're wanting, the actual balls of algae. Tim just, you know, just hurting himself like he usually does. Oh, that's a nice one. I like that one. I'll keep that one. Maybe this one too. Yeah. I think for now I'll keep both of them. All right. Yeah, we're getting a lot more rock right here. This is definitely going to be a better area. Finding better stuff. Yeah, you can see it's a bunch of algal mats. Hey, look at the size of that one. No, that's okay. There's a crack going right through the middle of it too. So it would not survive in any way. It appears that the larger ones are right here in the center. Going that way, they're getting smaller. And going off in that direction, they're getting smaller. So we're going to kind of stick around in this spot for a while. And then we might try and go further to see if we can get some big ones again. Oh, that looks kind of nice right there. Yeah, that's pretty algal mat right there. That's the host rock though. That's really big. I won't be keeping that. Oh, nice. Yeah, keep looking around here. Maybe you've noticed my voice sounds a little airy. I just came out of a week and a half having bronchitis. And I was pretty sick for a while. That's why you haven't seen any videos earlier this week. And fortunately, two weeks ago, I had made several videos and kind of prepared them for two weeks. And that's why you were able to have one last week with chimpanogus, which I actually did like two and a half weeks ago. Anyway, I'm just getting over it right now. I'm not sick anymore, but I got that lingering effect from just having bronchitis so long. Anyway, that's what's been going on. This is a pretty good size when I pulled out right here. Got a big one right here, but pretty big rock and I don't think good enough quality to keep. I'll leave it. Right in this area, I've been finding some interesting ones, some nice little spheres that I'm going to cut open. You can see that one already broken like that. But Tim found one that's got a fantastic shape to it. Tim, what does that look like? So there's this little one. No, come on. That's fantastic. Look at that shape. Look at turds. All right, we've been fighting. A lot of those spherical ones and elongated ones that I think are going to be a lot of fun cutting open. They'll probably all look the same inside, but it's just so neat to have them such a uniform shape. Yep, on the hill, there's the rock hounding mobile over here. Well, found some more. Trying to find a nice piece that I really like. Take that. And then of course, you had to find what? I found the sixth rock. See? Six. Oh, gosh, it's a perfect looking sixth stromatolite or an algae ball basically. Makes a perfect six. I found the sixth rock. Oh, cool. Or I guess you could say it's a nine. Six or nine. Which one do you want to go with? That is really cool. Weathering has definitely taken its toll on this thing. It's just crumbling. I don't know if there's anything salvageable in that. I like the shape and pattern on that one. I'll keep that one kind of raised up. Stuff is literally everywhere. It just becomes a task of finding the ones that look the best. All right, we've hunted this area pretty good. We've got plenty of stuff. I think we're going to go ahead and head back down now. And we are going to head to the next area. We're doing two areas today. So first is the bird's eye marble. Next place, we're going to look for calcite onyx. Onyx meaning that it has banded layers of calcite. It's not really onyx, just like this isn't really marble. Just the names they were given. So we're going to go ahead and head over to the next area. Let's see what we can find there. On the way down, I finally found my cool ones. It's the letter G. Not quite a six, not like his. His actually connected. He had a perfect six. I have two letter G's. Here we are at the second area. We are driving up the Nebel loop. It's the road right there. And we're just off the side here. It's a little park spot. And you can see across the way, that's the old road that used to go up to the old mine that they used to dig it out decades ago. Hike up and see what we can find. All right, we made it here. It's a banded calcite. You can see the banding there. Let's come out of here. See the little layers in it. A bunch of it here. There may be more further up. So we'll check that too. But we'll look around here for a little bit. Looks like most of the good stuff is still in the wall. People come up, I guess, and hammer it out. A lot of the good stuff is in this section over this. Beautiful banding. Unfortunately, I'm woefully unprepared. And this is all I brought with me. I didn't know what to bring with me. And I didn't want to carry too much. I'm still recovering from the bronchitis. I can feel it. But maybe there's some things I can chip out. And maybe if we do some serious looking around, we might find some really nice pieces loose. Well, came up the hill a little distance. And this is the stuff. And definitely more on the surface here. Well, we might be able to find some nice stuff that we want to keep looking. I might keep that one. All right, what'd you find here? Little mountains. Two little peaks. That could be a really cool piece for like a little landscape. And then you got the front right here that looks like it's actually- It's part of the- Yeah, that's all calcite. Yeah. And then you found this nice looking piece right here. That'll probably look really, really nice. Well, I'm going to start busting into some of these pieces and see what they look like inside. Calcite. Well, after exploring up there aways, as the layer goes up, the quality gets less. And so it seems like the best quality is in this area and down toward the old road. So we're going to spend a little bit more time right in this area. But probably not too much longer. We're going to head back just because this stuff's okay. But it's not really exciting either of us. So we'll just grab a few of the better pieces and then head back. Just broke open a nice one here. Good color in it. So that area we probably won't go back to just because it was not that great for us. But on the way back, we decided we're going to go ahead and just hit the river here in the canyon and just see what we can find since it's still pretty early. And we kind of want to do a little bit more rock counting before we head back. So let's see what we can find. Got a little shell fossil here. I'm going to get a wet. There, that's wet. Yep, just a little shell fossil. Looks like we've got some more fossils in this one. Is it wet? Yeah, that's a crinoid at the top. It can only make out a few things. Something though. Keep looking. Okay, we sat down for a spell and we're just sitting here and I started throwing rocks in the water and when they splashed up, all of a sudden you could see everything. So we've been missing things because you just can't see it without being wet. So he's got this one he found. It's got covered in shell fossils and a few crinoids. And then I've got this one with a bunch of crinoids through it. This is a nice one that I think will cut open. Probably look pretty cool. Tim said he found a good one. Oh, look at those. Look at those. Ah, that's beautiful the way they're exposed too. Anything else on this? Oh, a little bit right there. It's mostly right at tip. So if we can break the bottom half off, that'd be good. Yeah, nice. All right, we're back at the vehicle. We just finished searching the river. We're going to call it good for today. So we're going to head back and we're going to cut some things open. Now, I may include this at the end of this video or I may do that in another video for Tuesday. So you'll see either this will be the end of the video or we'll show you some cutting. And if this is the end, we'll see you next time. Look nice. Oh, that stuff is pretty. Wait a second.