 Hello and welcome back to the rugged rockhound today. I'm glad it's kind of a cooler day because we are out in the west desert of Utah Looking for geodes. This is the Dugway geodes. These are the old pits That were dug years ago by the guy who owned the claim out here and unfortunately lost it when he didn't pay and Well, the BLM didn't let him have it back So this is now BLM and we are welcome to come out and dig in these old pits And there are literally geodes everywhere. You can see them in the ground We've got Some friends out here some fellow Rockhounds What'd you find here? Look at that. We got a nice geode already Although it's kind of flat so it probably isn't hollow But it would look probably look nice when you cut it if it gets cut Or you can just break it with a hammer Too much So we're gonna just look around and see what we can find. Yes, geodes everywhere That's a pretty piece that came out of one. It's very small. Maybe I'll keep it You'll get little geodes all over the place and these are fun to give to kids these little ones So I was walking along and I saw something here that's got kind of a bubble shape So a good way to find larger ones on the surface and not in the pits It's still better in the pits. You'll find bigger ones But if you can see anything bubbly that's just barely poking out then you have a chance that maybe it's an unbroken one We'll just see and hey look at that an unbroken geode So Put it in the Sun So this will be a nice one to cut or break open depending on What you choose to do with it here show everybody what you found got the right idea there look She's got a nice big one. This one is a little heavier. So heavy. It's probably fairly solid But it should look really nice if it gets cut It probably wouldn't look too great if you broke it So probably should get that one. Hang on to this I just went ahead and came back to the vehicle and grabbed my tools I'm gonna go in the pit and start digging on the way. I saw a potential See how it's got that nice rounded edge to it barely exposed could be a whole one see and Unfortunately not that good here. We are in the first pit This pit is the old pit. I remember from now as a boy. This pit is when they were digging it. So this is very old It's been heavily dug into the sides But you can still find stuff. So the walls are mostly covered here with tailings of people digging and kind of throwing the dirt back into the pit But if you can find a spot where it looks like you got some wall exposure going on Then maybe you can find something in there Kind of want to steer away from the obsidian areas You don't tend to find much in those. You're looking for the pinkish color or the more white So we're gonna dig into here and see if we can find anything All right, Sandy's showing us her treasures. Look at that one She's got a nice big one. I'm just right up there She's got a nice big broken one right here Yeah, those are nice. Look at that Nice big broken piece very nice the first pit is Passed that that one right there. That's the second pit I'm over here in the third pit right now. I Decided to come over here because I remembered tomorrow For Easter. I was gonna get a whole bunch of small ones for the kids so I decided to come over here because For me the third pit is usually where I find usually smaller ones, but they're more plentiful and I remembered Oh, let's get some for the kids Anyway, I got a larger one here. Just Pop that thing out There we go Decent sized one That should look really nice inside Also see something else right here I'm sure how big this is Not bad Got a baseball sized one Nice Decided to bring you guys in because look at that It's got some nice layering in it. It's got a mixture of The white and the colorless the white could be opal You can get some opal news Otherwise, it's just a white quartz You know colorless kind of translucent Very nice though Good for a broken piece. So I've been digging right here and I pulled this out of there. It's broken already But it's actually quite nice See if I can show you it's sparkled inside Very nice so I pulled one out here and It broke on me, but look at that Look at that thing. That's beautiful. I'm glad it broke pretty much in half because that's what I would have done cutting it And it broke very well. So I'm happy with it Here I am back at the vehicle That's kind of what I decided to keep It's mostly smaller ones, but there's some good ones in there and some larger ones. I thought I'd just quickly tell a little bit about Some of the geology right here. So these are old lava flows That had air bubbles in them and the air bubbles Over time had some hot water coming through the ground bringing Silicone with them and then they deposited quartz into the geodes and that's how they form over time and What happened is this was part of Lake Bonneville near the shoreline and The weather the the wave activity and stuff helped to break some of these loose and turn it into clay So a lot of times when you're digging into here, you're digging into clay And that makes it a little easier Than digging into hard rock But yeah, there's a lot of neat stuff around and let's come take a look and see how these How these people are doing hey look at that nice Beautiful She did oh cool got a bunch of little ones right here to go through and a bunch of bigger ones, too It's like you two are doing great. Yeah, we are Decided to grab one of the ones that I had in the bucket and just break it and And out quite nice Just just so you guys could see just to show you Here we are. I'm back home and we've got a whole bunch of geodes There were a bunch of little ones I got but that was for the kids over Easter So you're not gonna really get to see those that were those were the kids and that's kind of the main reason I went out there was for that But I also wanted to help the others that I took out there with me So that they could have a good time so I didn't come back with a whole lot But I still got some really nice stuff. So let's take a closer look at these nice pieces. I found I'm gonna go ahead and use the macro lens for this one because the geodes that I kept were mostly smaller ones I do have a couple of larger ones that I do need to cut But like I've said previously, I don't currently have one big enough for cutting the larger pieces So I'm just holding on to those till I have a bigger one. Here's the first one. This one broke open on me So it's kind of a nice Nice we got some nice agate banding along the side here Hopefully you guys can see that even a little bit of red right at the bottom. It's kind of nice The surface is covered with tiny crystals tiny crystals of quartz today's cloudy But on a sunny day that would glitter a whole bunch And this is the other side of it. Maybe I'll hold it like that. That's a little better I really liked the layering in this one. It's got some nice bands of agate going up through it I liked how this one had these little flowers on the bottom of it Yeah, pretty often actually out there you can get these little flowers in the geodes. They're a lot of fun This one had a stacked flower made it look kind of like a tree or a bush Pretty cool This one had a nice pocket in it with a nice little crystal flower in the back there This one I liked it had a little bit of that Banding at the bottom and then it had this nice flower and it was just a nice big pocket through it And this was my pride and joy Look at those crystals in there Beautiful There's the other side of it Normally dugway geodes don't get quartz crystals this large usually they're very small So I was pretty excited when I found this one It's just beautiful Well at this time that's all I've got to show you like I said I've got a couple larger ones I'll cut those in the future down the road. Hopefully they're amazing. I don't know We'll see I have done much better out there. I have found rocks much large. I've found geodes Much larger than my head out there. So it has them It's just the pits have been worked a lot now since he stopped mining back in 2000. I think was 18 17 somewhere around there he lost the claim and because of that people have dug and dug and dug those pits to the point Where now it's getting very hard to get back into the original walls But it's worth going for and you still can it's just a matter of digging if you've got the time and the energy dig down into those Those pits and pull out some nice big ones because they're there. I promise you I've pulled them out So get out there when you can and remember there's treasure everywhere