We're busting out! Idaho road trip 5/31/20
Jun 2, 2020 12:26:42 GMT -5
drocknut, Fossilman, and 19 more like this
Post by Tommy on Jun 2, 2020 12:26:42 GMT -5
California started to relax the lockdown - we enjoyed our first meal in a restaurant over which we discussed things such as both of our employers were starting to talk about when they will give notice of reopening ... and decided if we didn't get at least one road trip in before putting our nose back to the grindstone we would both sorely regret it. So we decided to pack up the essentials (milk crates, cooler, and dogs) and headed up to Idaho to see Tony (catmandewe ) and get in some rockhounding. We left on a Monday and got back on Saturday and luckily missed most of the heat wave as it started in California the day we left and ended up getting pretty hot in Idaho the day before we left.
Rockhounding started at Texas Springs for pink limbcasts. Didn't really find very much to speak of there but we were just getting warmed up.
The next day we met up with Tony at his rock shop where I got to pick through some really nice plume agates, then he took us over to his rock yard where I spent most of my time sitting on this big pile of mostly Prudent Man and Pruhart plume agates (right side of the next picture), vowing to dig straight down to the bottom which I never actually reached.
3000 lbs of Biggs Jasper freshly arrived at Tony's
While we were there I have to admit to being of very little help to Tony while he worked to sort a trailer of California material. I kept grabbing rocks and licking them and saying "you don't want this one in the $1 per lb pile... just sayin."
That afternoon we headed up to see Shoshone Falls and were really glad we did. It takes your breath away and is hard to describe how absolutely beautiful it is. We felt pretty small and lingered for a long while, not wanting to leave.
Shoshone Falls panoramic - photo was too large to upload to Cloudinary
Thursday, Tony gave us and some friends of his (new friends of ours) a guided tour of the Owyhees for picture jasper and more. There is so much there spread over such a wide area with little side roads headed out in very direction that it would take multiple days to see most of it but Tony did a good job taking us to some real highlight areas which for us included the original Gem Owyhee mine which is nothing but giant tailings piles now, and Wild Horse picture jasper.
Rock photos will follow but these are some of the landscapes we encountered along the way - truly breathtaking area we never got tired of.
Original Owyhee jasper mine
Wild Horses and I don't mean picture jasper
Succor Creek
On our last full day Eva and I headed out to Graveyard Point for our first time there. It's such a huge area with so many potential collecting locations we considered it a reconnaissance mission just to learn the lay of the land and get our feet wet on collecting some rocks. I'm sure that most of what we found was pretty junky but over the course of the day my standards got lower and lower and we came back with about half a milk crate of agates to take a closer look at.
Panoramic photo from the GYP ridge - photo too large to upload to Cloudinary
On the way home we had planned to make another night of it and stop at a location I had found previously but we didn't end up doing any additional rock hounding because the weather had turned really foul and the wind was howling and the air was full of dust to where we couldn't see more than a half mile around us in any direction. It was quite the white knuckle adventure to drive in it and it stayed this way all the way from eastern Oregon to Reno.
Without further ado, some rock photos...
Here's the whole haul strewn across my work bench
Materials from Tony's Idaho Rock shop starting off with a killer boulder of Snow Mountain Poppy jasper
Prudent Man plume agate and a few pieces of Pruheart.
Biggensis
Original Owyhee jasper. I have one larger piece but it needs to be cut to see if it will amount to anything
Wild Horse picture jasper
Monarch jasper - might have found an orby one
Spring Mountain
Graveyard Point plume agate
And last but not least we picked up a few things at Caldera Rock shop in McDermitt. Again, the wind was howling so bad that it definitely cut our time short at the rock shop but I did get to spend about an hour with Reggie Kemp and heard lots of good stories of days and diggings past. I could have chatted all day but at that point we had decided to hightail it back to California.
Blue Mountain
Starry Night picture jasper
Brenda Agate end cut
Purple Cow and a little end cut of Gary Green that caught my eye
Thanks fer lookin!
Rockhounding started at Texas Springs for pink limbcasts. Didn't really find very much to speak of there but we were just getting warmed up.
The next day we met up with Tony at his rock shop where I got to pick through some really nice plume agates, then he took us over to his rock yard where I spent most of my time sitting on this big pile of mostly Prudent Man and Pruhart plume agates (right side of the next picture), vowing to dig straight down to the bottom which I never actually reached.
3000 lbs of Biggs Jasper freshly arrived at Tony's
While we were there I have to admit to being of very little help to Tony while he worked to sort a trailer of California material. I kept grabbing rocks and licking them and saying "you don't want this one in the $1 per lb pile... just sayin."
That afternoon we headed up to see Shoshone Falls and were really glad we did. It takes your breath away and is hard to describe how absolutely beautiful it is. We felt pretty small and lingered for a long while, not wanting to leave.
Shoshone Falls panoramic - photo was too large to upload to Cloudinary
Thursday, Tony gave us and some friends of his (new friends of ours) a guided tour of the Owyhees for picture jasper and more. There is so much there spread over such a wide area with little side roads headed out in very direction that it would take multiple days to see most of it but Tony did a good job taking us to some real highlight areas which for us included the original Gem Owyhee mine which is nothing but giant tailings piles now, and Wild Horse picture jasper.
Rock photos will follow but these are some of the landscapes we encountered along the way - truly breathtaking area we never got tired of.
Original Owyhee jasper mine
Wild Horses and I don't mean picture jasper
Succor Creek
On our last full day Eva and I headed out to Graveyard Point for our first time there. It's such a huge area with so many potential collecting locations we considered it a reconnaissance mission just to learn the lay of the land and get our feet wet on collecting some rocks. I'm sure that most of what we found was pretty junky but over the course of the day my standards got lower and lower and we came back with about half a milk crate of agates to take a closer look at.
Panoramic photo from the GYP ridge - photo too large to upload to Cloudinary
On the way home we had planned to make another night of it and stop at a location I had found previously but we didn't end up doing any additional rock hounding because the weather had turned really foul and the wind was howling and the air was full of dust to where we couldn't see more than a half mile around us in any direction. It was quite the white knuckle adventure to drive in it and it stayed this way all the way from eastern Oregon to Reno.
Without further ado, some rock photos...
Here's the whole haul strewn across my work bench
Materials from Tony's Idaho Rock shop starting off with a killer boulder of Snow Mountain Poppy jasper
Prudent Man plume agate and a few pieces of Pruheart.
Biggensis
Original Owyhee jasper. I have one larger piece but it needs to be cut to see if it will amount to anything
Wild Horse picture jasper
Monarch jasper - might have found an orby one
Spring Mountain
Graveyard Point plume agate
And last but not least we picked up a few things at Caldera Rock shop in McDermitt. Again, the wind was howling so bad that it definitely cut our time short at the rock shop but I did get to spend about an hour with Reggie Kemp and heard lots of good stories of days and diggings past. I could have chatted all day but at that point we had decided to hightail it back to California.
Blue Mountain
Starry Night picture jasper
Brenda Agate end cut
Purple Cow and a little end cut of Gary Green that caught my eye
Thanks fer lookin!