Today we took advantage of Matthew and Malia’s last official day of fall break to take a road trip. We have been talking about going to dig trilobites at a quarry that is about three hours from here and decided it would be a great day for that experience. The quarry is about an hour outside of Delta and since that is where my dad grew up, we took time to stop by my grandparents’ graves as well as drive by the farm where my dad grew up. It is a rural area, still all farmland, and very different from the life that my kids know so I’m hoping it was meaningful for them to visit these spots so they can know a bit more about their ancestors. This evening after we returned home, I spent some time on Family Search showing them pictures of my dad’s folks so they would have some idea of who we were talking about. My mom has spent a lot of time uploading pictures, documents, written memories, life sketches, etc. to Family Search since she retired years back and I’m so grateful for the time she has spent as it puts a variety of information at my fingertips and allows my children and me to learn more about our ancestors.
After our stop in Delta, we drove out to the quarry. It is about an hour outside of Delta and is truly in the middle of nowhere. My siblings and I always tease my dad about growing up in the middle of nowhere, but in all reality, there are placed even more in the middle of nowhere and the quarry is smack in the middle of one. It was a great day to be there though. This is the last week the quarry will be open this season. They will close in the winter and reopen in the spring. In the summer months it is unbelievable hot and dry out there. It is the middle of the desert after all. But today it was around 60 degrees with enough cloud cover to keep things nice and cool. We were provided with rock hammers and had a fantastic time splitting the limestone shale to find the trilobites. It was much easier to break the rock apart than I anticipated it would be, and it was oddly satisfying to take a whack at a rock and have it split right down the middle. Even Malia could easily break the rock. Matthew started off in a great spot and found a variety of good specimens right off the bat. Malia found a bunch as well. Between the four of us, we probably ended up hauling about 40 lbs. of rocks out of the quarry, each having a trilobite of some size.
This was one of those days when everything went just exactly the way we had planned. We arrived at each location just when we planned, had all the time we wanted at each spot, and made it home right on schedule. There was no bickering in the car and none of us came away feeling disgruntled with how the day progressed. It turned out to be a day that was just right. Gotta love days like that. It was definitely some high-quality family time. Oh, and since it was a road trip, Matthew and Malia both selected Twizzlers and Corn Nuts as their travel snacks at our first pit stop.😂
After our stop in Delta, we drove out to the quarry. It is about an hour outside of Delta and is truly in the middle of nowhere. My siblings and I always tease my dad about growing up in the middle of nowhere, but in all reality, there are placed even more in the middle of nowhere and the quarry is smack in the middle of one. It was a great day to be there though. This is the last week the quarry will be open this season. They will close in the winter and reopen in the spring. In the summer months it is unbelievable hot and dry out there. It is the middle of the desert after all. But today it was around 60 degrees with enough cloud cover to keep things nice and cool. We were provided with rock hammers and had a fantastic time splitting the limestone shale to find the trilobites. It was much easier to break the rock apart than I anticipated it would be, and it was oddly satisfying to take a whack at a rock and have it split right down the middle. Even Malia could easily break the rock. Matthew started off in a great spot and found a variety of good specimens right off the bat. Malia found a bunch as well. Between the four of us, we probably ended up hauling about 40 lbs. of rocks out of the quarry, each having a trilobite of some size.
This was one of those days when everything went just exactly the way we had planned. We arrived at each location just when we planned, had all the time we wanted at each spot, and made it home right on schedule. There was no bickering in the car and none of us came away feeling disgruntled with how the day progressed. It turned out to be a day that was just right. Gotta love days like that. It was definitely some high-quality family time. Oh, and since it was a road trip, Matthew and Malia both selected Twizzlers and Corn Nuts as their travel snacks at our first pit stop.😂
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