We set out at about 10:30 to the Mojave Desert. Luckily it was a very gloomy day in Riverside County which is great for a couple of pale computer guys headed to a place where they certainly aren't normally welcome.
About two and a half hours later we got off Interstate 40 at Ludlow and turned onto world famous Route 66. Not all that much there except for a coffee shop, gas station, mechanic, and motel so we kept cruising on through the desert.
Soon we came upon some interesting features in the desert.
(Apologies for the low-res camera pics)
It seems this dark volcanic material came from the Amboy volcanic crater. Very eerie actually to have this dark terrain suddenly appear in the middle of this sandy desert. Kind of an alien landscape feeling.
Anyway, right after we passed Amboy we saw the mountain that we figured had the trilobites. Not so obvious desert trails were the only way to get to where we needed to go. Needless to say, Reela was eager to introduce his new Tundra to offroading.
We started in our normal geocaching approach to navigation - the most direct route is a straight line. Who needs roads?!?!?
Well, eventually, we did. It was fun at first, then it got kind of hairy, then it looked pretty bleak, then all of a sudden we found the road again and it was fun again!
So by the time we make it to where we figured was the closest we could get to the fossils we were more than ready to get up the hill, or so we thought.
We started up, then continued up, then made basecamp for a while to catch our breath, then continued up some more. This is not the kind of terrain to take lightly. Climbimg up loose boulders with buckets, hammers and packs gets harder with every step.
We were expecting to find more traces of other peoples diggin's. So unfortunatley we headed up a little higher than we needed and had to make our way back down to the greenish-grey layers of slate that turned out to actually contain the trilobites.
Well, after a couple hours of cracking rocks, this is one of the things we found.
It's kind of hard to see, but there is an impression of a trilobite in there. We found some other interesting bits as well. So even though we didn't get any museum quality fossils, we didn't get skunked either.
So we headed back down the mountain working an entirely different muscle group and made our way out of the desert.
On our way back, we were flagged down by stranded British photographer named Ian who had gotten his car stuck in a sandy railroad access road. Poor guy, 90 degrees or so in a foreign country and the only help he could get is a couple of smelly, dirty computer geeks.
We determined that the only way out for his car was a professional tow truck so we got him back to Ludlow's aforementioned gas station. We hope you made it out of there Ian!
After a lengthy driving discussion about the world's problems and our solutions we finally made it back home to our wives waiting with our diet food (Yikes that was rough. I felt like we deserved a nice greasy burger after that mountain). Still though, those Lean Cuisine Panini's are pretty darn good for so few calories.
But all in all a great trip which we are looking forward to making again (especially since we found out from this post that we were actually not parked at the right place and you could pretty much walk up to a richer fossil bed :)
Oooooh, eerie! I didn't see that. Oh crap, and that pic is on the internet. Now the men in black are going to come get me!!!
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