Topaz Mountain

We had fall break from school on Thursday and Friday of last week. We were originally planning on going somewhere to do some camping, but for one reason or another we ended up not going. We still wanted to try and do something. There are several places in Utah that we have heard a lot about, but hadn't ever been. One of Marsha's goals was to go somewhere we hadn't been before. The choices were to go to Goblin Valley, Midway, Topaz Mountain and the Deardens. (OK, we've been to the Deardens before, but that's always a good choice of things to do.)

We asked the kids what they wanted to do. There were varying degrees of enthusiasm and responses. When Ryan found out that there was a place where we could find crystals AND try to catch lizards, he wondered why there was even any discussion of going anywhere else. We decided to go on a day trip to Topaz Mountain. 

Sunscreening up at Topaz Mountain. It is actually a mountain as seen in the background.


Since there was rock hounding invloved, we invited the Deardens to go with us, but they had some fall cleaning that kept them from coming. We did manage to round up a book on the best way to find crystals at Topaz Mountain and off we went.

Lauren on Topaz Mountain. Look at all the miles of nothing around.

Topaz Mountain is in the middle of nowhere and I'm not even joking. The closest towns of any size are the thriving metropolises of Eureka and Delta Utah. You drive to about half way between the two and then head west for 40 miles. When we were about halfway out to the mountain, Joseph asked where we were. We had to honestly tell him that we were nowhere.

For those unfamiliar with what topaz looks like, the following picture will give you an idea.


Museum grade golden topaz

It used to be that you could find large rough topaz crystals lying around at Topaz Mountain. You now have to dig for them and even then chances of finding anything are remote. We took hammers with us to break up promising looking rocks. To Joseph, all rocks looked promising.



When you have a hammer, the whole world is a nail.

 We found pleanty of topaz crystals. Unfortunately, they were all around a millimeter in size and imbedded in rock. The biggest one I saw was about 2 mm. It was fun to see the sparkley rocks. The rock formations were pretty interesting too.

Mark in front of a windblown rock formation

Luckily there were hundreds of lizards around to chase. Ryan was in heaven. The lizards were extremely speedy and hard to catch. They could scale rocks like you wouldn't believe.


Ryan in hot pursuit of a lizard

Laruen actually caught a lizard. Ryan was/is so excited that he has talked about little else since then. We have lizard pet material from when Mark had his lizards, so we brought Dexter (the lizard) home with us. He is, miraculously, still alive and eating the crickets we have been feeding him.

Mark also caught a large lizard, but managed to crush it pretty good in the process. Sadly, that lizard didn't make it.

On the way home we decided to go to another place we heard about that has Apache Tears, obsidian drops that could have the appearance of black diamonds. We followed the directions we had to try and find them but couldn't find the place. The map we had showed a back way to get back to the old pony express trail. I knew that the old road lead back to Lehi. We (I) decided to follow the back road. We ended up driving about 110 miles on a dirt road. It took about the same amount of time to get home as it would have to take the highway and our teeth were a little looser for all of the jarring we took on the dirt road.

We made it, though. A fun time was had by all (even though there was weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth by some members of our party before we left on our adventure.)