ADVENTURES WITH ROCKS (TM): OF DUST STORMS AND PACK ICE

Greetings to all our loyal followers. I know, I haven’t written in a while. Like my Grandmother used to say when she hadn't heard from me in a while: "What, you died, or something?" My Grandmother was not short on sarcasm- and I'm pretty sure that's where I get mine from.

Well…Sorry. We have been doing what we help all of you do: We have been outside, playing. Alot. And life has just been so incredibly exciting, that there is just too much to report and too little time. But I will try. This planet is an awesome and beautiful place, and it never ceases to amaze me. So I will start where I left off when you last heard from me.

Since we closed up shop in Quartzsite at the end of the winter season, we have been on the road. And it has been one adventure after another. We opened in Beatty, Nevada, for a few weeks, on Highway 95 between Vegas and Reno, and then spent quite a while traveling around the rest of the Silver State. We explored ghost towns and mines, and visited Death Valley for a while. Then it was off to hunt for fossils, meteorites, and lots of other cool rocks and such, before heading north, and then to Alaska, from where we just returned.

We have seen petroglyphs, tufa formations, and caves. We have dug for garnets, panned for gold, hunted for meteorites, and collected beach agates. We have explored mines, climbed glaciers, hiked, paddled, and 4-wheeled. We have been hot and dusty, cold and wet, dirty and muddy, sweaty and smelly…but it sure has been fun. And we have experienced so much of this amazing planet we call home…and so the time has come to share our adventures again, the Adventures of RocksInMyHead. Stay tuned to Adventures With Rocks for the rest of the summer, and we will take you on an incredible journey… So come on! There is so much to explore!!

First stop: Beatty, Nevada.

As of March, we had never even heard of Beatty, NV- but one night in Quartzsite, after I was closed for the evening, two guys pulled up in front of the shop and asked if I was closed- which, obviously, I was. But they were persistent. Al was still open, and they told him they had driven all day to get here and they wanted to buy some Turquoise jewelry for a shop they were opening in Beatty, NV. They convinced him that they were serious, and they flashed the cash just long enough for me to decide to stop cooking dinner and open back up. After a half-hour long transaction through which my entire inventory of turquoise jewelry was now headed for Nevada- they said- hey- do you want to make some money now that the season in Quartzsite is over?

Earlier that day, I had been perusing the show and swap meet lists trying to decide on a route out of Quartzsite- so I was open to suggestions. And there it was- Beatty, NV. Located in the middle of the only route through the vast, open desert between Reno and Vegas. A gateway to Death Valley NP- and 100 miles, at least, in every direction, from anywhere. But, according to these two guys who just paid cash for my entire stock of turquoise jewelry, there was still plenty of business in Beatty.

Later that evening, we googled Beatty, NV and it seemed interesting enough. Ghost towns, rockhounding, meteorites, gold prospecting, and fossils all in one place in the middle of the Nevada desert, plus a swap meet to set up at for a while before heading further north. Sounded like our kind of place. Besides, Pahrump was nearby and so was Death Valley, and I knew both of those places would be good if Beatty didn’t work out. Even if the business wasn't as good as we had been told, there were lots of opportunities to play in the Beatty/Pahrump/Death Valley area...and playing was definately at the top of my list right about then.

And anyway, it didn’t matter, really, as long as we weren’t in Quartzsite anymore. Not that we don’t love Quartzsite, but it was that point in the season where I was over it. It was hot, dry, and we had been battling dust storms since the beginning of March. We were tired and burnt out from a long, busy season. I was cranky. I had been open 7 days a week since the end of October.

It was now the middle of March, and we needed to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. As long as it wasn’t Quartzsite. We needed to close, go somewhere else, and play. I didn’t even care if we opened again before we played, as long as we opened in a different town. I felt a little leap of excitement in my Spirit. In a couple of days, after some phone calls and some research, the decision was made. Beatty it would be.

We closed for the season a few weeks later. We spent several more evenings playing on the dirtbike out in the desert around Quartzsite. We visited petroglyphs at Tyson Wash, some stone cabins, and explored the Dome Rock and Plomosa mountains. Then, after enjoying our last Quartzsite sunset at the ancient Fisherman Intaglio on Plomosa Road, we headed north through the dry, dusty desert toward Beatty. A new adventure had begun.