Unexpected camping trip quartz find!
Jul 21, 2013 18:15:14 GMT -5
rockpickerforever, panamark, and 2 more like this
Post by herchenx on Jul 21, 2013 18:15:14 GMT -5
Well this weekend we went on a camping trip with a few families from our church. I wasn't expecting to do any rock hounding because of where we were, but once we arrived I asked the family whose property we were on if they ever found any crystals or anything like that when they were out walking around.
To my surprise, they immediately said "yes, there is an abandoned quarry on the hill over there" and told me I could collect whatever I wanted.
It turned out to not be crystals (as in clear points) but rather the largest quartz vein I've ever seen. The area up there is all decomposed granite, and the rock formations are all large stacked boulders between the trees, but one mound that has particularly soft granite exposes this large quartz vein.
I didn't do a very good job getting photos of the area, but me and the kids all had fun looking through the tailings and we collected some large specimens for the yard.
This is my oldest daughter standing on a solid quartz boulder, there are several others nearby and the quartz vein is above her head in the hill and extends up for probably 15 feet above the top of the photo.
Here are 3 large quartz pieces I took home for the yard, probably around 90-120 pounds each
Toward the front of the bed there are some nice pieces of feldspar. Some of the large boulders had cool feldspar within the quartz, but the boulders were each over a ton and I had no way to load them into the bed.
Now to unload and power wash the lichen off...
UPDATE I guess I could throw in some other pics from the trip.
Here is "Bullwinkle" the resident bull moose
This is my oldest shooting one of my sporting rifles
and my youngest (and me) - he's 5
My other son
My younger daughter didn't want anything to do with the loud guns, so she shot the airsoft pistol
We hiked around and found an old (abandoned!) mountain lion cave:
Dinner around the camp fire
more fire hangout time
As it turned out, most of the next day it rained. the large boulder by the camp fire gave us a nice point to suspend the large tarp over the eating area
of course my youngest took advantage of the rain to get soaked
We had a great sunset the first night
To my surprise, they immediately said "yes, there is an abandoned quarry on the hill over there" and told me I could collect whatever I wanted.
It turned out to not be crystals (as in clear points) but rather the largest quartz vein I've ever seen. The area up there is all decomposed granite, and the rock formations are all large stacked boulders between the trees, but one mound that has particularly soft granite exposes this large quartz vein.
I didn't do a very good job getting photos of the area, but me and the kids all had fun looking through the tailings and we collected some large specimens for the yard.
This is my oldest daughter standing on a solid quartz boulder, there are several others nearby and the quartz vein is above her head in the hill and extends up for probably 15 feet above the top of the photo.
Here are 3 large quartz pieces I took home for the yard, probably around 90-120 pounds each
Toward the front of the bed there are some nice pieces of feldspar. Some of the large boulders had cool feldspar within the quartz, but the boulders were each over a ton and I had no way to load them into the bed.
Now to unload and power wash the lichen off...
UPDATE I guess I could throw in some other pics from the trip.
Here is "Bullwinkle" the resident bull moose
This is my oldest shooting one of my sporting rifles
and my youngest (and me) - he's 5
My other son
My younger daughter didn't want anything to do with the loud guns, so she shot the airsoft pistol
We hiked around and found an old (abandoned!) mountain lion cave:
Dinner around the camp fire
more fire hangout time
As it turned out, most of the next day it rained. the large boulder by the camp fire gave us a nice point to suspend the large tarp over the eating area
of course my youngest took advantage of the rain to get soaked
We had a great sunset the first night