East of Enoch

[Admin]

Back in 2007 I was driving along and glanced out the window.

Lying there right beside the road was a huge chunk of UTAH!

I got out of the car and took a photo of MY exit sign . . . when I noticed a survey marker, and photoed that too.




That was when I noticed a curious black rock. It had THREE THUNDEREGGS in it! Where did it come from?







Did it roll down the mountain? Was it hauled in with the road base and dug out when they placed the sign and marker?







I still don't know.

[Admin]

Sometimes it is hard to find the "suture lines" on the outside of Thundereggs because of all the smaller eggs and spheroids that attached. This is a gift the Geode Kid gave me.
Think about how it formed.

The original spheroid formed and grew deep in the magma chamber, then was forced toward the surface while lessening pressure allowed trapped water to slowly turned to steam, creating the internal cavity. Perhaps it was elongated by stretching as the rhyolite flowed.
The flow stopped and cooled, allowing more expansion bu the steam.
Time passed, then more time.
It rained up above and water trickled down into the opening. More rain, and stalactites began to grow.

"Remember someone with ants in their pants. When the mites go up the tights go down,"

There was an earthquake in the area. Shock waves broke silica bonds and silica interacted with water to form silica gel. Flowing with the groundwater the gel morphed into opal, opal tridymite and opal cristobalite.

That mixture filled the void and began attaching to the walls and stalactites as chalcedony and morganite, then as quartz crystals.

The kid called them "angel Wings.