Amazing Jewels found in the mud of the Great Salt Lake Utah 

Thank you , I tried not to show it in my voice but I was so tired and beat that day , I only probably worked out there for about half an hour before I said "Ok Im done , time to go find the license plate and head to Nevada "

@@huntingrocks Wow! No it didn't show in your voice! Poor thing! Did you ever find your license plate? I hope you got a full day of rest before you had to drive that far!

I actually did find my plate , the road about there is about 20 miles of wash board .. I lost my plate 5 miles after I started shook the bolts right out of it, I have it ziptied now it's not going anywhere

@@huntingrocks Hi! I just watched your video (my first from your channel ) of the Great Salt Lake. I had no idea that crystals like that were out there. I've lived in Salt Lake almost all of my 60 years of life, and now I can take my grandkids out there for fun and adventure! I just hope they can stand that stinky mud. Haha. I really enjoyed you, and the video, love rock hunting, and now you have a new subscriber. Thank you! 👍✌

Thank you so much, just so you know the road out there is a little bumpy, it's flat (well it was when I was there a year ago) but it's bumpy, also make sure they have clothing they don't mind getting dirty. Have fun, be careful, and fill in your holes.

That's what worries me I always tell people "Fill in your holes!" It's not just good for the areas beauty but it's good for nature too.

It is , and during early summer late spring a little stinky but so worth it .. if you ever go make sure you got cloths you don't mind ruining

@@huntingrocks I don’t think I want to dig there but there are other places in Utah l would love to visit. Thanks!. By the way, that hat looks great on you!😃

Awesome!! It's good to hear from you. It's gonna be a few weeks still. I haven't even made it home to start editing yet lol

Quartzite Az, I love I used to live out there, but I did not know of Opal ID, I am going to have check that out for sure, although knowing my luck I will pick up a strange clump of dirt and it will just be a strange clump of dirt LOL. Welcome to the channel, and thank you, I hope you enjoy it most of the year. I am doing St. Louis area stuff because that's where I'm from.

..that's cool..! was just thru there a few weeks ago.., although I usually "go around" St Louis on I-270, being in a tractor-trailer.. (was coming from Joplin, MO on I-44..) It "may" be "Opal, WYOMING", not Idaho..gonna hafta check.. if so, will he near "Jackson Hole", WY, not far from Idaho border.. My (very, very) small collection only has a few "ordinary" specimens.. A polished (did myself) piece of Limestone w)striation, from one of the mines in western Missouri (Carthage) One that I actually can drive my rig "into', now used by food companies as warehousing, with much lower energy costs, as the caves remain a constant 67 degrees year-round.. One of the others is a piece of lava from the "Craters of the Moon" National Monument" in Idaho.. (prolly shouldn't' "have" that..hahaha, but a small 2"piece..

@DiamonDave1361 haha that's all good you secrets safe with me (I can't promise other folks 🤣) I have always wanted to see inside those limestone caves they have for storage, that place is so flippin cool and so much room I had no idea they were big enough to actually pull a rig into, I knew they had fork lifts but that's a far cry size difference.

Yeah they are so water logged that cleaning them to quick causes them to begin to pop , and with a lot of force , I had one pop out of a bucket I had it sitting in ... The opals were a blast and hard work , I didnt find to much but it was crazy fun

Yes, I have found that if I leave them in the mud, they are covered in and left that way for usually 2 weeks ( my trips out west usually go about that long) they have plenty of time to dry out, you can then spray them off with a garden hose then set to dry again. Once they are clean, put them in some place dry and don't get them wet again if you can avoid it. They are fragile, but so long as you are gentle with them, you can pick them up and move them. Also, don't be surprised if you have some pop it does happen from time to time I have had them actually pop out of the bucket they were kept in, but those were ones I cleaned the mud off of to soon and they dried to fast

Sorry long reply

@@huntingrocks Thanks for your response!

@@loookaroundyou You are very welcome. I read every comment and try to reply to all questions.

I think you guys would love it but may I recomend a stop at a secondhand store for clothing you don't plan wearing again .... and lots of hand lotion. Lots and LOTS that salt will dry you out

Thank you

It may be a year or two, but I will for sure be back.... but not in the summer. I love the salt lake, but it has a ..... shall we say an odor that stings the nostrils in the summer 🤣

@@huntingrocks Awesome! I definitely agree with the yucky fumes from the lake. 😂 Brings tears to your eyes!

It's not a super bright glow but he inclusions do give it a nice radioactive look 🤣 ... Don't get to excited I didn't find any monster opals but man I had a great time

@@huntingrocks The lamest day hunting opals beats the best day sitting in an office cubicle!

Amen to that ... I do not miss working g for the man one iota

Thank you. They are super fun to look for, and incredibly messy lol

I'm not 100% sure I have actually never been to Bonneville but so long as it's not a national park I would say they are probably there .. The great salt lake is all that's left of Lake Bonneville ... so yeah prolly ... just don't dig where they drive that could be bad .... reallllly bad 🤣

@@huntingrocks ok, thanks for replying, but you never said you can't lick em😂 so are they crystal or hardened salt deposits

Hahaha well you can lick anything but some things only once 🤣🤣 They are a form of Gypsum made when salt rich water evaporates ... they taste a little salty but that was found out on accident 🤮

@@huntingrocks ok so it's similar to ulexite, which is a bizarre to feel when holding it, and when cut right, it's called TV stone

Yep I think they are the same family ... but I could be wrong

Awesome thank you very much, I'm actually out digging today and just took a cool down break, looking for Fire Agates in Oatman Az

@@huntingrocks I just drove through Oatman yesterday going to QUARTZSITE. The hotel is in California. There's a fire 🔥 across the freeway- so I'm going the opposite way today!

Oof good luck and stay safe. Mt next stop will be Holbrook for petrified wood

So I am not sure about that. I went to that area because Bryan Major told me about it, but he went there because someone told him about it (vicious rockhounding circle 🤣). I would think that since this selenite is formed by the evaporation of salt water leeching out the gypsum, it may be found all around the eastern side of the lake where gypsum is found in high quantity.

@@huntingrocks thanks if I can make it down there I might try to find some.

If you do good luck and have fun, I try to make it out there once a year. I did, however, skip this year, though, and I'm kind of sad I did

If you find some let me know how you did :) Also I saw your Topaz Mountain post before this one LOL

You are very welcome and if you go have fun

HAHA they are super pretty, but also super fragile

If they did, they were probably used as jewelry items it's a very brittle crystal and wouldn't be great for knife, arrow, or spear heads. They will cut you, but any forceful impact would ( and will from experience.. Oops) break them.

@@huntingrocks Thank you. Now I know. 🙂

I wish I would have felt like digging more I know there are some monster sized ones out there

​@@huntingrocksI wish they mentioned this when we were there for Geology field camp. MN, WI, Iowa, 2 other colleges.

I have a feeling as the lake continues to drop they may get bigger the further out you go, I'm am surprised they didn't mention it though these are really cool .. I did a video where I was playing with my lighter and found out that you can take them apart almost layer by layer

It may, but as with all digging and mining of minerals, nothing is 100% safe

Hahaha Thank you, Utah has some amazing rockhounding treasures

I love this kind , under microscope I have seen fossilized brine shrimp in them and they glow green under UV due to the inclusions of sand

You are correct, I did that in my older video from there it's a super cool look, you can also apply a light flame to them (like a lighter) and actually pop the layers off in super thin strips. I tried it with a broken one I had, I ended up using the strips as swords for my old space marine army I had, very fragile but very cool looking. Don't do it to good pieces, though. That would be a waste of a pretty crystal.

It's been acting weird I don't know what RU-vids deal is some times 😐

I'm looking into them, I film on my phone and have another phone that I am getting a head strap for.

Yeah my older video of it I mentioned it but if you haven't seen that one. Then Google " Spiral jetty Utah " the digging spot is about half a mile East of it (Give or take) you can't miss the holes in the mud flats that people have not filled in.

@@huntingrocks Top notch advice! We went out this morning and fumbled around for a bit and dug one hole that was just in the wrong place. However, we dug 2 others no bigger than 12" that yielded all manner of crystals. Thanks so much for being willing to share. It also irks me how many people don't seem to be willing to fill in their holes. The park service could come along and prohibit all digging because of people like that. At least the holes grow salt crystals as the water dehydrates. Happy Hunting!

@billtreadway6407 that makes me so happy I always worry people won't find anything I am glad you found some good stuff and thank you for filling in your holes. I would hate to have the area shut down.

For pretty rocks and minerals I will go just about anywhere 😆

@@huntingrocks Not me

It's a great way to find any paper cuts you may have digging out there

Yeah, they are all over the place in Utah. The bigger ones are mined higher up the hills where the great salt lake used to be thousands of years ago. It's an old video. I still do a little by hand, but I now use a mount and tripod for a lot of my videos. It's been a slow growing process, but I'm getting there, slowly but surely. Thanks for watching. Besides the mediocre camera work, I hope you enjoyed it.

@@huntingrocks My film and photography background, will sometime go into critique mode. Yours was not even close to some I've had to critique. It was better they just didn't post it. These must be very soft crystals, given the composition. Still, backlight would open up a lot of character of the crystal.

@@dennisk5818 No worries I am still learning I like helpful critique, some one commented using a head strap , I shoot off of a phone and I may look into that to see if I can even find one. and then shoot some videos to see how it looks. Honestly I am surprised this video took off like it did . The RU-vid algorithm giveth and taketh LOL Thank you for watching and for real thank you for the critique.

Over by Rozelle point ( I think that's right ? ) near the Spiral Jetty but to the east of it by probably 500 to 600 yards I am actually out that way now but not digging there this year.

@@huntingrocks Damn I had no clue East North there was this place now when I get the gems are they like salt , calcite like how do you store them and what are they hard like agates?

@@TIMMIELUND No selenite is super fragile its only a 2 on the Mohs hardness scale. When you first dig it up let it stay in its mud till it the mud is nice and dry, then spray it all off with a water hose then let them dry again, after that keep them dry, you can store them on a shelf in a rock collection or how ever you want to. Just remember to fill in your holes you dig if you go 😀

Hey that's funny you say fill in the holes cuz that could be pretty dangerous out there and people four-wheelers

@@TIMMIELUND Not just bad for the four-wheelers but it makes the place look better, although they get a little to far out there on the four wheelers you can dig where they sunk in to the mud at , which may make less work for finding crystals lol

That's interesting I will have to check it out. It does seem interesting being as how the Great Salt Lake is a remnant of Lake Bonneville, a prehistoric freshwater lake that existed from about 30,000 to 13,000 years ago. At its peak, Lake Bonneville covered about 20,000 square miles of western Utah, parts of eastern Nevada, and southern Idaho. You would have thought the whole area would have been toxic long before now.

That's NOT true!

100% true. Trying to keep it wet and / or an unbroken crust. Holding arcenic and other toxic chemicals in the dust. Look it up!

What I have read is that there is concern about breathing in dust from the bed of the Great Salt Lake. He was working in mud. Probably more than one good reason to wear gloves.

@@JennyRose1776I hear this take occasionally and I'm curious where you're getting this info from? The lake bed certainly does contain significant amounts of toxic minerals and compounds, arsenic being one of the more abundant. The concern with lake drying is that toxic arsenic will be picked up by the wind and blown along the Wasatch front. This is a true concern. Where did you hear that is not true? Plus, if you want to get really technical, toxic minerals are basically everywhere you can imagine. All of these crystals are made of toxic minerals....

Haha It's now .. I'll allow it 🤣🤣

I agree, but it's hard to find a good phone holder for it. I shoot all my videos on my phone, now I have a the tripod for my other phone for long shots and digging shots