Last week we went up to Payson for the day. I had a lot of plans and some fell apart but overall it was a good trip. Our first plan was to go to the Mogollon Rim. So we drove around the rim but when we got to the road to go to the lookout it was closed. The visitor's center was also closed, I think until May 1st. So our first stop was across the street from the visitor's center. We parked in the lot and let the kids play in the snow. We only stayed about 45 minutes because we weren't dressed for snow. I knew it would be cold but wasn't expecting snow and Natalie didn't bring a heavy jacket with Zach which is why he's in his sister's sweater in the pictures.
After the rim we went geode hunting. I found directions online to get to this place but they weren't the best. It would have been much better if they just provided GPS coordinates. So we got to the road that I thought was the right one but it was dirt so I figured it had to be wrong. So we turned around and went headed north. A mile down that road and I decided we had to have been on the correct road the first time. So we went back, past the spot, and pulled over to have lunch. While eating lunch I was looking around for rocks and a family of four pulled up in a van. They were looking for the same spot as us and got directions from the same website. So I told them I think we needed to park a mile back down the road. We parked a mile down the road with them and went geode hunting with them. Adri found the first geode, already broken open about 200 yards from the parking lot. After that we headed up the hill and found hundreds more. There were piles of them that looked like dinosaur egg nest.
After about an hour we had all the geodes we could take so we decided to head to our next spot. So we followed these people over to diamond point to look for crystals. This was a ten mile drive down a dirt road through some really thick forest. About two miles before the lookout that we never made it too we saw a big sign that said crystal collection site. This was not as easy as geode hunting. We did a lot of digging and only found a few crystals. Of course we really didn't have the right tools for this. I have made a sifter for our next trip and will be bringing a shovel and some buckets.
So now that we kinda now the area and where everything is we are planning on going back next week. I found some cabins online so we're going to spent a 3 day weekend out there.
Mogollon Rim
5 comments:
Can you give me the directions to the geodes? Or the site where you found the directions. I would love to take my kids.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Payson,+AZ+85541/@34.3813191,-111.2748267,542m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x872c10dd6a3e1a7d:0x8de0f8fc583ada2f!8m2!3d34.2308684!4d-111.3251355
Thank you so much for posting the gps coordinates to the geode spot. We’ve tried a couple of other people’s directions in the past but were never able to find them. We were thrilled to easily arrive at geode heaven today thanks to you. The fossils were an added bonus.
Hi joe.
I tried using this link you posted above in google maps and it is isn’t working. Can you please give the exact gps coordinates. We are rock hobbyist and we would love to take our 6 year old searching for geodes. Thank you.
That link will pull up the area. I haven't been in a while so I don't have exact coordinates. I can get them next time I'm out there.
Take the nf-64 forest road east past the Verde Glen Campground (nf-199 splits there). Go about a mile and pull over on nf-64. Geodes all over the place. I've heard there are some bigger ones around the houses there but haven't confirmed that yet.
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