A day of target shooting and rock hunting with my girls!

Someone gave me a cloth bag of really cool rocks from around the world this last week. I had baried my love for rock collecting around the age of 12. I use to have these piles of rocks that I thought were so cool that were really just gravel. Hattie and the twins have found the same hobbies. The funny thing is....We have a deal that if I have to go clean the bedrooms, I get to throw away whatever I want too. I always throw out the rocks sitting on the dressers and the big grocery bags full of rocks. It was not until this last week that I felt a little guilty about that, because I had forgotten how much I loved my ugly rocks a as a kid. So I put all these pretty rocks that this person gave me on my piano and for the last few days my kids have been trying their darnedest to find some rock that measures up to those so they could include them with the piano rocks. Me feeling a spark of my love for rocks. Knowing that my kids have a love for rocks and thinking I don't want rocks from my drive way sitting on my piano. I decided on a rock hunt adventure.
It turned out that it was just Hattie, Belle and Me. I got on line and found a possible cool spot over by the shooting range on the west side of Utah lake. We packed up a few things and last minute I grabbed a box of 22 shells, my Rugger 22 and some paper targets...just in case the rock thing didn't work out.
So we drove to the first spot...Total disappointment. Then started around the lake. This did not start off in our favor either as I got pulled over and got my first speeding ticket in like 9 years...Great way to start off our day! We tried the cove I read about but there was way to many target shooters and rocks are not worth any of our lives. So we decided to drive down the road a little further. We found a dirt road turn off. We parked a couple of time and walked around with no rocks worthy of the piano. Onward ...we finally decided just to set up the target and shoot ...Seeing how the day started out and was still going with luck probley not the best idea. I taught Hattie how to load, unload, line up her targets and shoot a 22 riffle. She was way off the first couple shots but got the hang of it and was at least hitting the paper. Then it was Belles turn. She was smaller than the gun and could not hold it on her own. I gave her about 4 shots before the kick was to much for her shoulder....Funny because I remember that kick when I was tiny. I think shooting it now "how the heck did that ever knock my shoulder at all?" We could have drove home and been perfectly happy at that point but decided to pull off the road and hike up to a ridge of rocks.
We walked up this mountainside that had all these ridges in it. I kept saying "this must have been an old dumping sight"... but "How the heck did they get all these huge slabs up here?" Turns out that it is shelving from 100k years ago that was created from water. Pretty cool! We ended up making it all the way to the top of this ridge. We found a big blast spot or something that was all white granite hidden underneath what looked like grass and dirt. It was amazing. We also found this old rusted out bus. From the looks of the tail lights it was really, really old. It looked as though someone had lived in it. There was 2 sets of iron bunk beds in the back, an old wooded shelf about to fall from the wall and a rusted out old wood cook stove.

All in all, Speeding ticket aside...We had a great day! We came home with some really neat rocks. We saw some awesome fossils of old reef. We also found 3 white almost completely clear crystals that are piano worthy. Let me just throw in how heavy the back pack was! We hiked about a half mile up to this ridge. We had a hammer, water and a few other things in it. We were putting rocks in as we hiked up. Before we hiked back down I told the girls they had to leave some rocks behind. They would not all fit in this big back pack. Belle says as we are leaving "I will carry it for awhile for you" She could not even lift it off the ground it was so heavy. Needless to say the rocks that fit stayed and I got a workout of a life time! And I only fell down the hill once. Swollen ankle, bruised shin, nicks and tiny cuts in both arms and hands, but we have rocks : ) O...and Hattie says she is more than likely the only girl in her class that knows how to shoot a riffle all by herself, and better yet her mom is the one who taught her. She wants her own now...in pink!