Sorry It’s taken me awhile to finish this blog, but life happens!  ;)

Day 3 – July 28th 2010:

Flying on the front of an ATV!!!

After spending the night in West Wendover, NV,  we headed out to Ely, NV to get some supplies and gas on our way back to the dry lake bed.  I can’t stress enough how good the sandwiches are at Ridley’s supermarket!!!  We arrived at the dry lake bed about 11 am and unloaded the quad.  From our experiences on day 1, we had had already mapped out areas of the dry lake bed we wanted to explore.  As we only brought one ATV, we all loaded on to it: me on the front, Rick driving, Jason on the back.  Riding on the front was one of the highlights of the trip for me….it was like flying!  We arrived at our spot and put on our Camel Back Packs and headed out in different directions.

My first find of the day!

My first find of the day was a nice 36 gram meteorite!  The color of the dry lake meteorites a is a beautiful reddish-purple and once we knew what they looked like, they were easy to spot.  I would hold a meteorite in my left hand while searching so that I could match the color to meteorites on the ground.  It seems that most of the meteorites I found were in pockets, groups of fragments scattered in a 20 x 20 area.

Another find!

Jason also did very well on this day.  He found a pocket of 70+ fragments.  I heard him yell “Got one!” so I decided to head over in his direction to see what he found.  That’s when I found this beauty.  When I finally made it over to Jason, he was picking up meteorites left and right with his meteorite magnet pole.  I decided to help him out!  ;)  This was a nice pocket and kept us busy for over an hour.  We were so busy, I didn’t get any pictures….sorry Jason.

Another find: Insitu

Rick also made some very nice finds.  Maybe I can get him to post a few pictures of his finds.  Here is another picture of a Nevada dry lake bed meteorite as it was found.  All of us were getting good at spotting these meteorites, and I would recommend to anyone who is going to hunt at this dry lake to purchase a specimen before you go.  Having one will help you spot others because of the unique color.

Jason's turn to drive.

Another tip if you go to this dry lake bed, don’t get stuck!!!  Most of the areas of this dry lake bed are soft soil.  A heavy truck will sink if you’re not careful.  Even our ATV bogged down in some spots.  We parked our truck about 2 miles from the spot where we found meteorites.  Also, Jason and I have Verizon cell phones and did get a weak signal in some spots.  We were able to call and send text messages.  Ricks AT&T cell phone didn’t get any signal.

Find A Meteorite.......dot com of course.

All in all, day 3 was an outstanding day!!!  All of us had pockets full of meteorites, the weather was perfect, and we all had loads of fun.  Evening was fast approaching, we were all tired, and it was time to head back to Ely for dinner and rest.

Day 4 – July 29th 2010:

FAST MOVING THUNDERSTORM!!!!!!!

We decided to get an early start on this day, but we woke up to see that it was raining outside our Hotel Nevada room window.  As we were still on a “meteorite high” from the day before, and this was our last day, we weren’t going to let a little rain detour us from finding more meteorites!  After stopping at Ridley’s supermarket for more sandwiches, we headed once more to the dry lake bed.  It was sprinkling with dark clouds all around when we arrived.  We quickly unloaded the ATV and with no plan, headed out to find a “good” spot.  After wondering around for about an hour with out much luck, this thunderstorm moved down quickly from the western mountains and.  It started to rain very hard and we were getting soaked!!!  Rick came speeding over to pick us up on the ATV, and we speeded back to the truck.  All this seemed to happen very fast and we didn’t have time to put on our rain ponchos.  By the time we reached the truck, all of us were soppin wet!

57 grams!!!!!!!!!!

We decided this was a good opportunity to have lunch while we waited out the storm.  Man…those Ridley’s sandwiches hit the spot!  Within a 1/2 hour, the storm had passed and the sun was shining bright.  We decided to give it another go, knowing we would have to leave for home in a few hours.  Good thing we gave it another go, because I found this beautiful 57 gram meteorite!  This beauty was the exception to the pocket rule, it was sitting all by itself.  After examining it closely, it has many fractures in it and most likely after another year of freezing and thawing it would have split into many smaller fragments.  ;)

The group portrait - Rick, Dale, and Jason.

Alas, all good things must come to an end.  It was 2:30 pm and time to make the 6.5 hour drive back to Las Vegas.  We had actually planned to shoot some video earlier in the day, but got side tracked by the rain.  We used the video camera tripod to take this portrait.  The smiles on our faces is worth a thousand words!!!  This trip was very memorable and we will treasure the memories for the rest of our lives!!!  :)

**A special Thank You to John Harrison!!!**

Findameteorite.com Skull.

P.S. – Jason found this cow skull while hunting meteorites.  We decided to put it on a fence post and write our names on it. After seeing a repeat of the Meteorite Men – Dry Lake episode, I believe it is the same cow skull that they found on their show!  ;)