ADVENTURES WITH ROCKS (TM): THE GIANT PLAYGROUND CALLED DESERT

We are back in Beatty this week- picking up where we left off. Our last post was actually an article written for Quartzsite's Newspaper, the Desert Messenger, where we have a Column called, ironically, "Adventures With Rocks". But now we will continue with our Blog posts about Beatty- because, there really is alot to share about Beatty. Amazing. It's such a small place in the middle of a huge desert. But, it's really the desert that is the interesting part about Beatty. The rock formations, the mountains, the animals, the plants. The rocks and the fossils. The mines and the ghost towns. It's one giant playground.

We only had a few days left before pulling out and heading up Hwy 95 toward Tonopah, and then further north. So we were going to cram as much into each day as possible. There were still so many places to go and see- we knew we had to pick and choose- so we did. And so now we were driving through the desert on a wide flat stretch of dirt road- on our way to a place called Swiss Cheese- a weird rock outcropping that the lady at the visitor center said was super-cool. "What are we looking for?" Al said. "I dunno. Some hunk of rock that looks like Swiss Cheese sticking up out of the desert?" I answered. "I guess we'll know when we see it, huh?" The desert is neat like that. Sometimes you don't really know what you are looking for until you see it. Names are descriptive, to a degree, but there is much left to the imagination most of the time. Sometimes I wonder if the old miners wandering around the desert and naming the places they saw were half-crazed with heat exhaustion, dehydration, and hallucinations. But then you see it too, and you have an AH-HAH moment- and for a second you wonder if you are as crazy as they were.

And so, we were about to have an "AH-HAH" moment. We came up over the crest of a hill, and the desert spread out like a panorama before us. There were several strange, out of place looking white outcroppings of rock sticking up out of the desert floor up ahead in the distance. "What's that?" I said, pointing. And then as we got closer, Al laughed. "It's Swiss Cheese! Look, it looks like chunks of swiss cheese laying in the desert!". Yup. That definately was an Ah-Hah moment. We pulled up in front of the first outcrop and jumped out of the Samurai. I could see the Swiss Cheese theme here, but to me it looked more like the Badlands of Nebraska and South Dakota- except without the grasslands, of course.

"Wow- how cool is this!" We both went running toward a wall of rock that looked like swiss cheese. There were holes and caves and windows and steps...a huge rock playground. "We could play here all day!" I said. Al was already off exploring some crevices he had seen. I was excited about the wildflowers that grew in the sheltered areas- most of the wildflowers were gone already by this time, but here they were protected somewhat from the heat and the wind and were still blooming. What a beautiful place. Swiss cheese and flowers, I thought. It sounded like an appetizer at a dinner party. "Hey, come see!" Al called. I went over to where he was standing. There was a window in the rock, and we could see the mountains through it. We took some pictures and then went to play some more. After an hour or so playing here, we headed off into the desert again.

Fossilized coral outcrop.

There was still lots to see here, and tomorrow we were going to Rhyolite- a ghost town not far from Beatty. It was surprising, actually, that there weren't more ghost towns around here, considering how many old mines there were. There was one by the Carrera mine that was the remains of huge concrete buildings that looked like mills or processing plants of some sort, but not the kind that we had seen before for gold and silver. The Carrera mine was Dolomite, Limestone and Marble, so we wondered what type of processing was needed for those minerals. Of course there was no way to tell, because all that was left of the buildings was cinder block shells. But Rhyolite had been a gold mining town- and one of the largest and wealthiest in this area in its day. We had seen some pictures of it already, and we were excited. But...there was still so much more to see here first.

A cool outcrop of fossilized coral.

So we were off to explore some more of the desert- some more mines and some cool outcrops in the distance. The desert held so many interesting finds- an outcropping we found earlier was actually a mound of fossilized coral sticking up. If we had been near Mud Mound, that would not have seemed so odd, but we were many miles away from it. There the hills were red- not the dusty tan color they were everywhere else- and it reminded me of Utah.

"Let's go!" Al said, and we jumped into the Samurai. We were perched
precariously on a really narrow jeep trail at the top of a peak. The view was amazing. The steep climb up had been challenging even for 4-wheel drive. Al had managed to turn the Samurai around at the top of this peak in a space barely wide enough to change our minds, and now we sat there looking down at the road below- far below. Going down seemed lots more intimidating than going up, but there wasn't much choice. It was getting late and we still had lots of ground to cover before going to Rhyolite and Death Valley tommorrow. The desert sure was just one giant playground.

"Ready?" Al asked, as he turned the key in the ignition, and then he added "Have the camera ready in case we flip- so whoever finds our bodies knows what happened!" We laughed, kind of half-heartedly. I have a t-shirt from white-water rafting in North Carolina that says "Life Without Danger isn't Worth the Oxygen". I should have worn that shirt today. "Ready!" I said, as I grabbed the bar at the top of the door. "Hang on!" Al said. He put the Samurai in gear and we inched toward the edge of that long, steep way back down to the road.