Post by Bluesky78987 on Jun 17, 2012 3:26:17 GMT -5
Ok, so if you want to come on a virtual rockhounding trip to Lavic, for some brightly colored rocks, climb aboard! Hopefully this will be slightly entertaining, although I expect I'll ramble a bit. If not entertaining just skip to the pictures of rocks! Thanks for tuning in!
As you'll maybe recall, I want to Lavic (east of Barstow, Mojave Desert, BFE, CA) a month or so ago. Went back out again last weekend, since I liked the rocks just so so much. You want color? We got color. Your want bland? (who wants bland?) You want brecciation? Check. You want seam agate? Check. You want biscuits? Check. You want pancake agate? Check. They're all over everywhere. (Hint: you shouldn't want the biscuits or the pancakes at Lavic . . . totally meh. Stick with the seam and the brekker!). The pancakes are good for the geology aspect, but totally boring. I took a picture, to illustrate how they are all over everywhere, but the picture was so boring I deleted it!
Started out by heading out to Barstow Saturday evening. Listened to Lonesome Dove on audiobook, made for a pleasant drive. Ok, part of Lonesome Dove. It's like 60 hours or something. Despite LarryS's good advice to stay in Lenwood (no gangs, nice clean and new), I braved the Motel 6 in Barstow, as it's $39 and the Motel 6 is nice (for a Motel 6). Had an uneventful and short night (checked in at 9, left at 5), and headed out to Lavic in time to watch the sun rise over Hector Road. It was a boring sunrise -- I was glad I was going rockhounding and not standing out there with my camera and tripod waiting for a magnicifent sunrise display!
I was a little nervous about the sandy spot in the road, but it was much better this time. There was a huge field trip of CFMS (California Federation of Mineralogical Societies, or something like that) which went there the prior weekend -- 50 rockhounds in 30 vehicles. They got the sand all nice and spread out. Even Paul's Pilot could make it now!
Parked at a different spot on the road, and after my ritual "must find a keeper rock in the parking area to ensure good luck", walked again. (Forgot to take a picture of said keeper rock. Way too much excitement to remember things like that!)
Found lots of coolio rocks almost right away. Hint: Park ANYWHERE but at the main "parking lot". I only had to walk a third of a mile this time before there were so many good rocks I decided to make my "base camp".
I'm refining the basecamp concept. On the way out, I make little piles of rocks and mark them with my GPS for fetching (or not) on the way back. Then at "base camp" I dump all my junk and search in a star pattern, picking up a 2 gallon bucket of rocks on each leg of the star.
I dump them all on the ground, eat lunch while sitting on them (because I can!) and high grade. Rocks go in fabric grocery bags, then into the backpack (it's real light nylon, I might double bag next time), although no wear visible on it so far.
A rockhound's best friend:
A rockhound's second best friend:
Notice the cool upgrade to my knee pads! Lowes has a huge assortment of knee pads, and the upgrade from the $1.50 pair to the $9.95 pair was worth it even just for this one trip. More easily removable, adjustable, and two straps, so they don't flap around and get caught in things. And more padding. And they look even dorkier! When the rocks are as hot and heavy as they are at Lavic, you need knee pads, because sometimes you just have to kneel down andpray or appreciate nature pick up rocks for like an hour!
Despite the fact that Lavic is at the epicenter of the Middle of Nowhere, Grand Central BFE, Armpit of the Earth, and usually hot as hell, miracle of miracles there was a cold snap the day I was there! It was a lovely dry 93 degrees, and there was even a nice breeze! The only time I started feeling hot was when my dark grey pants started absorbing too much sun once. Note to self: Need lighter color pants for summer rockhounding.
So, here's base camp:
Notice another improvement: upside down water bottles on tree branches. The reason for this is that once you walk 200 or 300 feet away, it's hard to see exactly where base camp is. With the bottles on the branches, much easier to spot, they glint in the sun. And the bottles accumlate as the day wears on - I had like 6 by the time I went back to the car! I suppose the best practice would be to make basecamp at a high point, on a little embankment or something, not in a hole like I did.
Wandered around a lot, searching the sides of the gullys for rocks. Found much bigger and more solid rocks this way - rocks hidden in the hill for eons and eons, hidden from all those greedy rockhounds who took everything in the 70's (I'm looking at you Mel! -- jk), only to be revealed today, for me!
Here's one -- just it's little point was protruding, but it turned out (after a LOT of strenuous excavation from stubborn concretized sand, for which my one rockhound implement, my trowel, came in quite handy).
Here's what it looked like when I got it out:
I've given up on the notion of smashing up rocks in the field to see if there's anything good inside. Smashing up rocks by hand is just way too much work, and as John (Hershenx) can attest to, the potential for injury is high! Which means you have to carry your safety glasses, and get them all scratched up, your Kevlar vest, your rattlesnake proof gaiters (don't want a shard in the shin!), etc. Better to just not smash up any rocks. And since I won't be smashing, I'm leaving the crack hammer and chisel in the car. Rock hammer too. The trowel suffices for digging stuff out in these parts. If hard rock digging is involved, I guess I'll rent a jackhammer or something, or bring Christopher. I hear he likes strenuous digging!
Nature does some interesting things. Here are some slabs I found:
Here is a digging hole. Christopher has obviously been here!!
No, it's actually not a digging hole (free slab to anybody who can identify the saying "diggy hole, diggy diggy hole" without checking google . . . ). I think it's a burrow (large one - badger or coyote or tortoise) that collapsed. The occupant dug it under a river/wash channel, not a good spot. Nobody home when I knocked except lots of spider webs.
Here's a funny rock. I didn't bring it home, so don't tell me it's a priceless fossil of a billion year old stromatolite giving birth or something!
Here are a couple of pics of what the ground looks like there, just because I still can't believe it. I did not wash those orange rocks and stick them there. That's just what they look like! They're clean, because no dirt sticks to jasper, apparently, and there's not really that much dirt at Lavic, it's more gravel/sand. And they are really that color (although my camera IS set to "vivid").
Some rocks:
Can you believe rocks are like this, made in the earth? It still boggles my mind that they're not man made:
I still collect this reddish/greyish/clear agate, because, it's agate! though most don't:
First glimpse of my favorite rock of the day, I somehow had the presence of mind to take a picture:
Note the brilliant camera shadow technique:
Boring Biscuit:
I'm convinced LarryS dumped this one here on his way back from Last Chance Canyon:
This is why wedive walk around in 100 degree heat picking up rocks:
Not sure if this one is fully baked:
I was ruthless this time with the half-bakes. No duds in my bucket today!
A promising-looking one that turned out to be Leaverite:
And lest ye think that every rock at Lavic is perfect, I must emphasize that for every keeperite, there are 8000 leaverites that are Amazing!!! except wait, what about all those vugs, and holes, and fractures, and druzy pockets, and rotten areas, and oh, wait, that one isn't fully "baked" . . . Lavic has a LOT of duds. I finally took a picture of one, so here you go, typical rock:
It looked pretty good at first!
But the backside, not so good:
Trains kept me company the whole time:
At Lavic, if you feel lonely, just climb up on any small rise for a clear view of the interstate and the constant (like one every half hour) train traffic. Trains sound a lot like helicopters approaching, it turns out! I kept hoping for some cool military commando black helicopters with hawt young Seals in them to come drop some bombs on the range just south of Lavic . . . alas, they seem to celebrate "Sunday" in these parts. No intersting aerial vehicles, no hawt marines, no bombs. Dern. Couple of helicopters flying along the intersate, but they were probably just giving out speeding tickets.
Once again saw hardly any critters, although the critter count was slightly higher than last time (it was 8 degrees cooler - maybe why?). Bunch of lizards, a dove (weird), a butterfly that landed on a rock which turned out to be a keeper (always check any rock an animal lands on!) and that's it. Last time there weren't even any lizards (it was 101). Lots and lots of burrows though, so the rodents (and the snakes) must come out in the evening. They aren't out in the early morning, or they didn't want to be seen by me. I still want to see a live tarantula. Only ever seen a dead one. I know they're out there! If anybody knows where/when to look for alive tarantulas, let me know?
My buckets were full of keeperite by about noon, so I ate lunch and headed back to the car. On the way out, I had noticed a road that heads off to the west from Lavic Road, which turns out to be road number 7615. It's an easy road, anybody can make it. It heads southwest for maybe a mile. Mostly it just passes through a bunch of camping areas. Beer bottles and fire rings.
I parked at the end of the road and went for a little walk. Checked my GPS, and I was only about a quarter mile west of where I made "base camp" last time! So, makes more sense to park here, and head east, if going to that spot. There weren't much for interesting rocks right around there, but this seems to be a beer-drinking, clay pidgeon-shooting type of place, not a rockhounding place, as the rocks started appearing again after maybe 50 yards. Got a couple nice ones.
The more interesting thing though is the lava rock. Sciorria (). The kind with a whole bunch of holes in it, can't find the correct name now. I *think* it is formed when a volcano erupts and sends little or big cannonballs of lava poofing out into the air, and they land as these aerated lumps, scattered fairly uniformly. Not lava from a flow. This stuff is black, with beautiful air bubbles. I decided to take some home, so I filled up my SMALL two gallon bucket with a couple of pretty big pieces. Note to self: Just because if is mostly air does not mean it is light!
Haven't decided what to do with it yet, but it's cool. Will it break the saw if I try to slab it? (Actual question, please answer if you know! Didn't see the answer from my search.) The holes in the ones I want to slab are about 1/8" in diameter, and it is mostly holes, with just webbing between them.
The wierd thing about the lava is how it looks from a distance. Go back and look at the train picture again. Notice the hills in the background, how the clouds are making shadows on them? Now look at the clouds - oh wait, no clouds. It's a strange optical phenomenon - the lava rock areas look like cloud shadows, they DO NOT look like black rocks. It's hard to explain exactly how, but hey just don't look like black rocks, they look like a shadow. I think it might have to do with the sciorria (?) rocks having lower reflectivity than normal black rocks, so the visual signature is different. Or something. No matter how hard I tried, I could not convince my eyes that those were black rocks rather than cloud shadows. Strange. Check it out next time you drive by on the 40, which I'm sure you do all the time.
And that was my day. Tried to go check out "Jasper Hill" (North on Hector Road), but a train was stopped at the crossing so I couldn't cross, and it didn't budge for 10 minutes so I gave up and went and got a McIceCream ;-) It looked like he was camped out waiting for some other train. Oh well, next time!
Easy drive home on the 138 and 18 and 14, more Lonesome Dove. What a great day!
As you'll maybe recall, I want to Lavic (east of Barstow, Mojave Desert, BFE, CA) a month or so ago. Went back out again last weekend, since I liked the rocks just so so much. You want color? We got color. Your want bland? (who wants bland?) You want brecciation? Check. You want seam agate? Check. You want biscuits? Check. You want pancake agate? Check. They're all over everywhere. (Hint: you shouldn't want the biscuits or the pancakes at Lavic . . . totally meh. Stick with the seam and the brekker!). The pancakes are good for the geology aspect, but totally boring. I took a picture, to illustrate how they are all over everywhere, but the picture was so boring I deleted it!
Started out by heading out to Barstow Saturday evening. Listened to Lonesome Dove on audiobook, made for a pleasant drive. Ok, part of Lonesome Dove. It's like 60 hours or something. Despite LarryS's good advice to stay in Lenwood (no gangs, nice clean and new), I braved the Motel 6 in Barstow, as it's $39 and the Motel 6 is nice (for a Motel 6). Had an uneventful and short night (checked in at 9, left at 5), and headed out to Lavic in time to watch the sun rise over Hector Road. It was a boring sunrise -- I was glad I was going rockhounding and not standing out there with my camera and tripod waiting for a magnicifent sunrise display!
I was a little nervous about the sandy spot in the road, but it was much better this time. There was a huge field trip of CFMS (California Federation of Mineralogical Societies, or something like that) which went there the prior weekend -- 50 rockhounds in 30 vehicles. They got the sand all nice and spread out. Even Paul's Pilot could make it now!
Parked at a different spot on the road, and after my ritual "must find a keeper rock in the parking area to ensure good luck", walked again. (Forgot to take a picture of said keeper rock. Way too much excitement to remember things like that!)
Found lots of coolio rocks almost right away. Hint: Park ANYWHERE but at the main "parking lot". I only had to walk a third of a mile this time before there were so many good rocks I decided to make my "base camp".
I'm refining the basecamp concept. On the way out, I make little piles of rocks and mark them with my GPS for fetching (or not) on the way back. Then at "base camp" I dump all my junk and search in a star pattern, picking up a 2 gallon bucket of rocks on each leg of the star.
I dump them all on the ground, eat lunch while sitting on them (because I can!) and high grade. Rocks go in fabric grocery bags, then into the backpack (it's real light nylon, I might double bag next time), although no wear visible on it so far.
A rockhound's best friend:
A rockhound's second best friend:
Notice the cool upgrade to my knee pads! Lowes has a huge assortment of knee pads, and the upgrade from the $1.50 pair to the $9.95 pair was worth it even just for this one trip. More easily removable, adjustable, and two straps, so they don't flap around and get caught in things. And more padding. And they look even dorkier! When the rocks are as hot and heavy as they are at Lavic, you need knee pads, because sometimes you just have to kneel down and
Despite the fact that Lavic is at the epicenter of the Middle of Nowhere, Grand Central BFE, Armpit of the Earth, and usually hot as hell, miracle of miracles there was a cold snap the day I was there! It was a lovely dry 93 degrees, and there was even a nice breeze! The only time I started feeling hot was when my dark grey pants started absorbing too much sun once. Note to self: Need lighter color pants for summer rockhounding.
So, here's base camp:
Notice another improvement: upside down water bottles on tree branches. The reason for this is that once you walk 200 or 300 feet away, it's hard to see exactly where base camp is. With the bottles on the branches, much easier to spot, they glint in the sun. And the bottles accumlate as the day wears on - I had like 6 by the time I went back to the car! I suppose the best practice would be to make basecamp at a high point, on a little embankment or something, not in a hole like I did.
Wandered around a lot, searching the sides of the gullys for rocks. Found much bigger and more solid rocks this way - rocks hidden in the hill for eons and eons, hidden from all those greedy rockhounds who took everything in the 70's (I'm looking at you Mel! -- jk), only to be revealed today, for me!
Here's one -- just it's little point was protruding, but it turned out (after a LOT of strenuous excavation from stubborn concretized sand, for which my one rockhound implement, my trowel, came in quite handy).
Here's what it looked like when I got it out:
I've given up on the notion of smashing up rocks in the field to see if there's anything good inside. Smashing up rocks by hand is just way too much work, and as John (Hershenx) can attest to, the potential for injury is high! Which means you have to carry your safety glasses, and get them all scratched up, your Kevlar vest, your rattlesnake proof gaiters (don't want a shard in the shin!), etc. Better to just not smash up any rocks. And since I won't be smashing, I'm leaving the crack hammer and chisel in the car. Rock hammer too. The trowel suffices for digging stuff out in these parts. If hard rock digging is involved, I guess I'll rent a jackhammer or something, or bring Christopher. I hear he likes strenuous digging!
Nature does some interesting things. Here are some slabs I found:
Here is a digging hole. Christopher has obviously been here!!
No, it's actually not a digging hole (free slab to anybody who can identify the saying "diggy hole, diggy diggy hole" without checking google . . . ). I think it's a burrow (large one - badger or coyote or tortoise) that collapsed. The occupant dug it under a river/wash channel, not a good spot. Nobody home when I knocked except lots of spider webs.
Here's a funny rock. I didn't bring it home, so don't tell me it's a priceless fossil of a billion year old stromatolite giving birth or something!
Here are a couple of pics of what the ground looks like there, just because I still can't believe it. I did not wash those orange rocks and stick them there. That's just what they look like! They're clean, because no dirt sticks to jasper, apparently, and there's not really that much dirt at Lavic, it's more gravel/sand. And they are really that color (although my camera IS set to "vivid").
Some rocks:
Can you believe rocks are like this, made in the earth? It still boggles my mind that they're not man made:
I still collect this reddish/greyish/clear agate, because, it's agate! though most don't:
First glimpse of my favorite rock of the day, I somehow had the presence of mind to take a picture:
Note the brilliant camera shadow technique:
Boring Biscuit:
I'm convinced LarryS dumped this one here on his way back from Last Chance Canyon:
This is why we
Not sure if this one is fully baked:
I was ruthless this time with the half-bakes. No duds in my bucket today!
A promising-looking one that turned out to be Leaverite:
And lest ye think that every rock at Lavic is perfect, I must emphasize that for every keeperite, there are 8000 leaverites that are Amazing!!! except wait, what about all those vugs, and holes, and fractures, and druzy pockets, and rotten areas, and oh, wait, that one isn't fully "baked" . . . Lavic has a LOT of duds. I finally took a picture of one, so here you go, typical rock:
It looked pretty good at first!
But the backside, not so good:
Trains kept me company the whole time:
At Lavic, if you feel lonely, just climb up on any small rise for a clear view of the interstate and the constant (like one every half hour) train traffic. Trains sound a lot like helicopters approaching, it turns out! I kept hoping for some cool military commando black helicopters with hawt young Seals in them to come drop some bombs on the range just south of Lavic . . . alas, they seem to celebrate "Sunday" in these parts. No intersting aerial vehicles, no hawt marines, no bombs. Dern. Couple of helicopters flying along the intersate, but they were probably just giving out speeding tickets.
Once again saw hardly any critters, although the critter count was slightly higher than last time (it was 8 degrees cooler - maybe why?). Bunch of lizards, a dove (weird), a butterfly that landed on a rock which turned out to be a keeper (always check any rock an animal lands on!) and that's it. Last time there weren't even any lizards (it was 101). Lots and lots of burrows though, so the rodents (and the snakes) must come out in the evening. They aren't out in the early morning, or they didn't want to be seen by me. I still want to see a live tarantula. Only ever seen a dead one. I know they're out there! If anybody knows where/when to look for alive tarantulas, let me know?
My buckets were full of keeperite by about noon, so I ate lunch and headed back to the car. On the way out, I had noticed a road that heads off to the west from Lavic Road, which turns out to be road number 7615. It's an easy road, anybody can make it. It heads southwest for maybe a mile. Mostly it just passes through a bunch of camping areas. Beer bottles and fire rings.
I parked at the end of the road and went for a little walk. Checked my GPS, and I was only about a quarter mile west of where I made "base camp" last time! So, makes more sense to park here, and head east, if going to that spot. There weren't much for interesting rocks right around there, but this seems to be a beer-drinking, clay pidgeon-shooting type of place, not a rockhounding place, as the rocks started appearing again after maybe 50 yards. Got a couple nice ones.
The more interesting thing though is the lava rock. Sciorria (). The kind with a whole bunch of holes in it, can't find the correct name now. I *think* it is formed when a volcano erupts and sends little or big cannonballs of lava poofing out into the air, and they land as these aerated lumps, scattered fairly uniformly. Not lava from a flow. This stuff is black, with beautiful air bubbles. I decided to take some home, so I filled up my SMALL two gallon bucket with a couple of pretty big pieces. Note to self: Just because if is mostly air does not mean it is light!
Haven't decided what to do with it yet, but it's cool. Will it break the saw if I try to slab it? (Actual question, please answer if you know! Didn't see the answer from my search.) The holes in the ones I want to slab are about 1/8" in diameter, and it is mostly holes, with just webbing between them.
The wierd thing about the lava is how it looks from a distance. Go back and look at the train picture again. Notice the hills in the background, how the clouds are making shadows on them? Now look at the clouds - oh wait, no clouds. It's a strange optical phenomenon - the lava rock areas look like cloud shadows, they DO NOT look like black rocks. It's hard to explain exactly how, but hey just don't look like black rocks, they look like a shadow. I think it might have to do with the sciorria (?) rocks having lower reflectivity than normal black rocks, so the visual signature is different. Or something. No matter how hard I tried, I could not convince my eyes that those were black rocks rather than cloud shadows. Strange. Check it out next time you drive by on the 40, which I'm sure you do all the time.
And that was my day. Tried to go check out "Jasper Hill" (North on Hector Road), but a train was stopped at the crossing so I couldn't cross, and it didn't budge for 10 minutes so I gave up and went and got a McIceCream ;-) It looked like he was camped out waiting for some other train. Oh well, next time!
Easy drive home on the 138 and 18 and 14, more Lonesome Dove. What a great day!