barclay
has rocks in the head
Lowly Padawan of rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 510
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Post by barclay on Feb 14, 2018 20:36:13 GMT -5
Beautiful! I'll take two
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barclay
has rocks in the head
Lowly Padawan of rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 510
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Post by barclay on Feb 8, 2018 20:55:29 GMT -5
If i had one i would call it my shack. I rock in my man-cave (garage).
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barclay
has rocks in the head
Lowly Padawan of rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 510
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Post by barclay on Jan 31, 2018 23:59:48 GMT -5
I could see it being palm root. Those large circles look like palm roots to me. The local SoCal palm root i am used to seeing is more brown than red so it may be from elsewhere. Pretty stuff though.
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barclay
has rocks in the head
Lowly Padawan of rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 510
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Post by barclay on Jan 26, 2018 23:40:40 GMT -5
Funny story about that, my fiance (now wife) got me interested in rocks, but she has no interest in them. I proposed before going on my first WestPac deployment. My fiance was an Air Force brat and she said the Air Force has a tradition that when you deploy you try and knock out a year's worth of Christmas and birthday shopping for everyone because you are going to all these great places you may never see again. I thought it was a great idea and told here everywhere we though we were going to visit. She said her birth stone is opal and i was going to Australia and that is where the best opals come from so could i get her one. I said sure. The problem is that i grew up in New Mexico and there is only one gemstone around there, turquoise. I know nothing about opal so I go to the library and check out a couple of books so i have at least a bit of a clue. On the liberty boat into Perth, West Australia i happen to be sitting next to a Chief Petty Officer Dental Technician and we start talking about our plans for the beach. He is looking for opal also. He tells me that he does lapidary. I ask what that is and he tells me he changes out the bits on the drill he used on teeth and he cuts and polishes stone with it. He offers to help me get some good opals and I am relieved to find someone who knows about them. When we get to the boat landing there is this drunk guy holding a 1-gallon glass jar sitting under a street light. The Chief does a double take, goes back and talks to the guy for 30 seconds, gives him every dollar in his pocket and heads back to the boat. I ask where he is going and he says back to the boat. I tell him i thought we were going to look at opals together and that if he goes back now he will miss a day of liberty in Perth because we got the last boat to shore, he says he will see me later. Any way I found some decent opals and the wife was very happy with them. I catch up with the Chief about a week later and ask him what happened to him. He says that the drunk was an opal miner from the Outback. He digs in his opal mine until he runs out of food, takes his opal into town, gets hammered out of his mind, sells his opal, buys food for the next month and returns to his mine. The Chief pulls out a polished opal about the size and shape of the last two digits of my pinkie. He says that is the first stone he worked from that gallon of opal and it is worth about $800 and that he bought the gallon of opal for $350. Looks like you can make some money doing this lapidary thing so i study up on faceted stones and make some good purchases on subsequent deployments so the wife is happy with what i got. Most of it is still unset, including the opals from Australia. She tolerates the hobby. The female relatives love getting hand crafted jewelry. I sell some pendants and pocket knives with stone handles to folks I know. My wife jokes that when she can't find me i am either in the garage working on rocks or at the club shop working on rocks or on a field trip getting more rocks. She says it beats me hanging out in bars
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barclay
has rocks in the head
Lowly Padawan of rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 510
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Post by barclay on Jan 22, 2018 23:10:33 GMT -5
The meet and great was a blast! It was nice to meet some of the folks i have been typing at here on RTH. I had not been to Quartzsite for at least 20 years. It such a blast! So many rocks! I went on the field trips for green banded rhyolite, chip board rhyolite and salome marble. All of these trips were the kind where you get out of your vehicle and decide how much rock you wanted to pick up. I found the best deals in Desert Gardens. I picked up lapis, malachite, condor agate, moroccam seam agate and a few other goodies i can't remember at the moment. Pics or it didn't happen! OK, you asked for it Sunset from my hotel in Blythe IMG_20180118_063241008_HDR by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Green rhyolite from my first field trip at the show IMG_20180118_094254924 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr IMG_20180118_094903305 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Chipboard rhyolite area (don't pet the cactus) second field trip IMG_20180119_094212464 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr chipboard rhyolite IMG_20180119_094856666 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr IMG_20180119_095002681 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr A hill of Salome marble ( I never would have thought) third field trip IMG_20180120_103037849 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr nice spot of pink marble IMG_20180120_103905282 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr My piece of the rock IMG_20180120_105652380 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr More cactus (I think this is a desert) IMG_20180120_112200961 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Ocatillo flower IMG_20180120_112331921 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr My first glimpse of Quartzsite IMG_20180117_145217033 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr I think someone said that Tony's BBQ was to the left of a water tower. I did not take any pictures of the actual BBQ IMG_20180120_145747807 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Now for the goodies i got at Quartzsite Condor agate (expensive but beautiful) IMG_20180118_132320426_HDR by Paul Clifford, on Flickr IMG_20180118_132336002 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Morocco seam agate IMG_20180118_132450062 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr IMG_20180118_132540345_HDR by Paul Clifford, on Flickr IMG_20180118_132603319_HDR by Paul Clifford, on Flickr
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barclay
has rocks in the head
Lowly Padawan of rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 510
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Post by barclay on Jan 21, 2018 21:39:02 GMT -5
The meet and great was a blast! It was nice to meet some of the folks i have been typing at here on RTH. I had not been to Quartzsite for at least 20 years. It such a blast! So many rocks! I went on the field trips for green banded rhyolite, chip board rhyolite and salome marble. All of these trips were the kind where you get out of your vehicle and decide how much rock you wanted to pick up. I found the best deals in Desert Gardens. I picked up lapis, malachite, condor agate, moroccam seam agate and a few other goodies i can't remember at the moment.
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barclay
has rocks in the head
Lowly Padawan of rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 510
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Post by barclay on Jan 16, 2018 13:33:40 GMT -5
The difference between a hero and a fool is frequently the outcome. (Me)
The sign of a great ship handler is to never get in situations where great ship handling is necessary. Adm Ernest King
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barclay
has rocks in the head
Lowly Padawan of rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 510
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Post by barclay on Jan 15, 2018 21:44:04 GMT -5
I'm not even going and I am getting excited. Can't wait to see the pictures. I don't know about that Tela, some of us are pretty scary looking
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barclay
has rocks in the head
Lowly Padawan of rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 510
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Post by barclay on Jan 4, 2018 21:26:45 GMT -5
It has been a few years since i visited DoBell Ranch. They were hard to find unless you are looking for them. The town of Holbrook has some neat petrified wood stores to look at, but don't buy unless you have a spare Lexus or two in the driveway. They way over charge. DoBell Ranch has a kind of mini-museum that shows the family's history at that location. The folks were also very nice to deal with. I highly recommend them. Thanks for the deep recall Jean
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barclay
has rocks in the head
Lowly Padawan of rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 510
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Post by barclay on Jan 3, 2018 20:20:24 GMT -5
Fair winds and following seas my fellow vet.
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barclay
has rocks in the head
Lowly Padawan of rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 510
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Post by barclay on Jan 3, 2018 20:17:53 GMT -5
Beautiful work as always! We are not worthy! *bows*
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barclay
has rocks in the head
Lowly Padawan of rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 510
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Post by barclay on Dec 18, 2017 11:39:23 GMT -5
As more of a temporary fix i have used my daughter's hair ties.
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barclay
has rocks in the head
Lowly Padawan of rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 510
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Post by barclay on Dec 17, 2017 23:37:20 GMT -5
Those children's yours? Thanks for the pics. I don't get down that way much. They are a new member's kids, very enthusiastic.
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barclay
has rocks in the head
Lowly Padawan of rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 510
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Post by barclay on Dec 17, 2017 23:30:28 GMT -5
Looks like a fun trip Paul thanks for taking us along. At the river where you on the California or the Arizona side? Arizona side.
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barclay
has rocks in the head
Lowly Padawan of rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 510
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Post by barclay on Dec 10, 2017 21:02:50 GMT -5
Thanks for all the positive comments. Trip reports are a wonderful recruiting tool for your rock club. My club, El Cajon Valley Gem & Mineral Society, posts them on our club website www.eccvgms.org. I print them out and take them to our show. It is a quick and easy way to demonstrate that you actually find stuff on your trips.
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barclay
has rocks in the head
Lowly Padawan of rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 510
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Post by barclay on Dec 8, 2017 17:59:14 GMT -5
For the second year in a row the club voted to spend Thanksgiving at the Hauser Geode Beds just to the waste of Blythe, CA. There are two phrases I can think of that describe the trip. The first that came to me is, “We are experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by”. The second one Frank Steensnaes came up with, “Improvise, Adapt and Overcome”. Both really applied to the trip. At the end of the day we all came home with the target rocks we were looking for, so the trip was a success. Our first challenge came on 11/23, the travel day. Dave Rosendahl, the trip guide, had car trouble and had to bet towed back to San Diego. Being Thanksgiving day there was no way he could get fixed that day so he gave me directions to the first location, psilamoline off Wiley’s Wells Road. I met up with Steve Burns out there and we walked around a little while and found a few small pieces. The canyon we explored IMG_20171123_153618625_HDR by Paul Clifford, on Flickr A twisted tree IMG_20171123_153454610_HDR by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Psilamoline with matrix IMG_20171123_153213938 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Nice solid piece of botroydal psilamoline IMG_20171123_154139787 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr On the way back to town I saw a fellow traveler crossing the road so I stopped to take a picture. Why did the tarantula cross the road? I don’t know, it did not say much. I scooted it off the road IMG_20171123_162728478 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr First day sunset IMG_20171123_164426590_HDR by Paul Clifford, on Flickr The second day dawned with my battery dying. Thankfully there was an auto parts store close to my hotel so we only lost and hour of time. When I got through to Dave he said he was not going to make it out so I would have to lead the trip to the Hauser Straw Beds, a place I had not been before. Cell phone coverage is sketchy out there, but I crossed my fingers and plugged the GPS coordinates in to my phone. The roads were just on the border of requiring a 4 wheel drive, but after a long trip we made it there. Straw Beds IMG_20171124_114255470 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr When I saw the layers of green volcanic ash with holes dug through it I knew we were in the right place. It took maybe 5 minutes before we started finding broken and whole geodes. The geodes in this region are round and have a “warty” exterior. A number of different minerals crystalize inside geodes here and in seams in the volcanic ash including agate, jasper, opal and calcite. Sometimes you can dig the seam materials out of the host rock, sometimes it is too fractured. Geode IMG_20171124_120243394 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Seam Opal IMG_20171124_120413470 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Fractured seam agate IMG_20171124_120638563 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Heidi and Olaf find some druzy IMG_20171124_120827254 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Olaf with a geode IMG_20171124_120833226 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Frank finds a good one IMG_20171124_124215138 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr After we had lunch at the Straw Beds we went off in search of a hill with pink opal in it we found last year. We did not find the hill but we found some nice chalcedony desert roses. Desert rose IMG_20171124_153750394 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Second day sunset IMG_20171124_165024511 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr The third day dawned with our guide still being without an operational vehicle. No worries there are signs pointing the way to the main Hauser Goede Beds. After driving around for a while we discovered that some of the signs had been removed. We ran into a couple with a map and after following them around for a while we discovered that that trail markers were also missing. To add to the confusion there were a lot more trails that on the maps. We drove closer to the highway and I was able to get enough cell phone signal to use my phone GPS again. The GPS only recognized the official roads, not trails. We ended up taking the long way around, but we did get to the main Hauser Beds. This was where I really wanted to go. Last year while looking for a tree to water in the arroyos just below the geode beds I found some pieces of very colorful jasper. Unfortunately, the sun was going down and this was our travel day back home so I could not explore much. This year I picked up a few geodes quickly and hit the arroyos. I was not disappointed. Everyone got good stuff here. View from Hauser Beds IMG_20171125_115319395 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Main Hauser Beds IMG_20171125_130041924 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Olaf digging for geodes IMG_20171125_125448256_HDR by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Frank strikes it rich IMG_20171125_125456053 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Good sized geode IMG_20171125_131218016 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Siamese twin Waterline and regular geode together IMG_20171125_131400636 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Typically geodes form in a single way. Waterline geodes are thought to be created by the level of mineral bearing water raising and falling multiple times where the more solid crystal geodes have a more consistent process. In this geode we have both types side by side. Kind of neat. People sometimes ask me how I found cool rocks out in the desert. Sometimes it is as simple as looking down. This is my favorite rock of the trip. I call if the Eye of Sauron from The Hobbit movie. It was not hard to find. I plan to grind him flat and polish the face. Eye of Sauron IMG_20171125_135012941 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Eye of Sauron IMG_20171125_141749145 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr My second favorite find of the trip is this one. We have bands of red jasper on the bottom, streamers of agate, patches of quartz, orange rhyolite and green rhyolite. Very colorful. I was also surprised to find a flower or two in the arroyo. There are usually not many flowers in the desert in the fall. Second favorite rock IMG_20171125_134300433 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Pretty flower IMG_20171125_140516395 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Heidi finds more druzy IMG_20171125_142915697 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Jean shows off the family haul IMG_20171125_143857072_HDR by Paul Clifford, on Flickr The kids had a blast and they also found some really cool stuff! Olaf and his quartz crystal specimen IMG_20171125_144109043 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Olaf’s quartz point IMG_20171125_151051740 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr The last day was supposed to be looking for cobbles on the banks and arroyos of the Colorado River. The rest of the group decided not to go, but I figured I was there so why not. I followed Dave’s directions and saw some cool things. Looking back at the bridge it did not have much in the way of guard rails. I was a bit concerned that it would be too flimsy to hold my truck, but I made it. sketchy bridge IMG_20171126_095553331 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Houses on the Colorado River IMG_20171126_095547586 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Dirt road was fine and I saw a number of folks camping and boating along the banks. IMG_20171126_095858425 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr IMG_20171126_101007608 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr When I found a promising sandy wash I would park and walk up it a bit. Sandy wash IMG_20171126_104618332 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Agatized sea shell IMG_20171126_102608749 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr More flowers IMG_20171126_103118263 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Nicely bladed epidote IMG_20171126_103734689 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Rhyolite and quartz IMG_20171126_105515025 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr Knowing I had a 4 hour trip back home I did not look around much, but I did find a sandy area that reached out into the Colorado River which was beautiful. IMG_20171126_110831108 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr IMG_20171126_111109703 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr IMG_20171126_110958402 by Paul Clifford, on Flickr The End
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barclay
has rocks in the head
Lowly Padawan of rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 510
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Post by barclay on Dec 2, 2017 21:00:55 GMT -5
Welcome from San Diego. If you could tell us where abouts you are we can recommend a rock club to join. Most do field trips to places known to have cool rocks and have shops where you can slice and polish them up.
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barclay
has rocks in the head
Lowly Padawan of rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 510
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Post by barclay on Nov 20, 2017 22:11:36 GMT -5
WHat glue do you use to glue the stone and metal together ? I use JB Weld 5 minute epoxy. It gives me enough time to position the stone, but does not keep me waiting forever for the epoxy to cure. Rubbing alcohol on a Q-Tip cleans up the epoxy that squeezes out. I also use tarp clamps to keep the stone in the knife while it cures.
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barclay
has rocks in the head
Lowly Padawan of rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 510
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Post by barclay on Nov 14, 2017 23:17:01 GMT -5
Rockpickerforever told me about this site back in the day. Mr. and Mrs. Rockpicker were some of my first rockhounding friends. That has to be about 11 years ago now
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barclay
has rocks in the head
Lowly Padawan of rocks
Member since November 2011
Posts: 510
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Post by barclay on Nov 12, 2017 20:31:38 GMT -5
I already have my hotel reservations and will be coming in from San Diego, not all that far. I have not been to Quartzite in over 15 years so it should be a blast. Now I just have to sweet talk the wife in to letting me have a good chunk of spending money
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