Petrified Wood Trip Report and Hope For A Sick Dog.

Hi everyone. Sorry I've been out of it lately.
My nearly 12 year old Rottie decided to have congestive heart failure. The day I took him to the vet I thought for sure that I'd be putting him to sleep - he was hopelessly sick, or so I thought.
Once the diagnosis was confirmed the Vet put my little old guy on Vetmedin - which is a new drug that is new here since 2006.
I have to say, I am flabergasted at the change in Munchie. It's like he's 6 years old again, spunky, strong, and wanting to go rock hunting EVERY DAY! I've been watching carefully and we do a bit more each time out and so far he's had NO adverse reaction to exercise - and yesterday was extreme.

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I have to say - I know he only has so long, drugs or no drugs, because he's already a Rottie Methuselah but at least we are getting some extra quality summer time for his final days. If he didn't have any quality time left I might forgo the price of the meds and let him go because he wouldn't be happy if he didn't get his adventures, but the quality of life this stuff has given him
is worth every dime - and it's costing a lot of them, trust me on that one. Vetmedin isn't cheap - but if you have a fuzzy friend whose illness is right for this treatment, you can give your pal a fine finish to a good life with this stuff. (for those of you who buy my eguide to natural skin care - the money goes to keeping my best friend alive and feeling good so your money is going to two worthy causes - yourself and a great furry personality).

So...........about our trip yesterday. We (Munchie and I) went to Saddle mountains after I did some study in some older books to find out where the hot locals for petrified wood is. I wasn't equiped for digging - just wanted to poke around and see if I could find some on the surface and maybe come back and dig another day.

Well, you know how new locations are. I found a nice little cache of stuff where someone else had cordially dug and left some nice specimens behind. With my backpack loaded to uncomfortably heavy for the mile and a half hike back to our car, we made a slow exit from the area. I looked back and studied the area after we got back to the car and found that I walked a heck of a long way when all I would have had to do is climb a couple hundred feet down a hill. Go figure. Of course, I went back and got another pack full after finding that out.

After that we drove around the mountain for awhile and talked to a few of the other hounds that had the same idea for the day as I had. They were not being as fortunate as I was. It seems from what I have read, and after talking to these folk that not too many people who visit Saddle Mountains ever really find anything there. Of course, I have a guess about why this is.

Saddle mountains are quite steep and arduous to walk around on. It's not a stroll through the park at any stage of the game, not if you are going rock hunting anyhow. I'm assuming that many people that go there just plain don't get far enough off the road to find anything. The place is highly visited and to think that you can get out of the car and just stroll the easy areas to find anything is a bit optomistic at best. Even the stuff I got "close to the road" was one meanly steep treck, but a welcome one after a mile and a half walk out to the car on the first visit.

There are other areas of Washington that involve much less vigorous energy and strength, so if you are a light weight at climbing up and down sometimes very steep treks, you might want to consider someplace beside Saddle Mts. to rockhound at.

That said....there is a big variety of wood types in that area. I got everything from green opalized to black, white, and brown opalized, to agatized browns - all in one location. I've never seen such variety in one spot before. I didn't find any rounds, but it would stand to reason after the years of popularity of this location that any rounds left in the area would be won only by digging - and then only the first digger in any location. I also think that in the particular spots I was looking only one seemed as if it may have contained any rounds in the first place. But nice wood is nice wood - even the smaller pieces. You can fashion a lot of nice articles from small pieces of wood with the right lapidary treatment so a nice find, to me, is a nice find, even if you can't saw it down and build cabins out of it.

That's it for this trip report. Stay tuned for info on more trips - mixed with some miscellaneous other info and rants, of course.

Rockhounding Quincy Lakes, WA

I'm going to pass up all the political ranting this time around - just want to talk to the rockhounds in the group as promised when I planned my excursion to the Quincy Lakes Area of central Washington.

Sorry I didn't come back sooner - but my best friend and rockhound buddy, Munchie, got pretty sick. I thought I was going to lose him, which is not a surprise because Rottweilers aren't supposed to live 11 1/2 years as he has. His diagnosis is congestive heart failure, but he's been put on diuretics and they are making him feel much better again. Tomorrow he will get his x-rays to make the diagnosis official, and then will get some meds that will prolong his life with quality. I am hoping we have the summer to explore and really make wonderful before he checks out of this berg.

Our day in the Quincy lakes area was quite eventful. I hadn't realized there was so much fabulous opal down there. It seems to mostly be derived from wood replacement from what I can tell. I actually got a few pieces that were very obviously wood - one round and a few pieces that look like petrified bog.

At the lakes themselves there are many trails. If you plan to go there, do note that if you want to park in the rec area to take off on your hikes, you have to have a permit so get one before you go. We wasted some energy walking in that could have been used better later in the day.

On the north end of the lake chain there are a few old opal digs. Most of it is common opal and not very revealing of any petrification of anything - but it showed the possibilities of the area.
We headed south from the lakes to Silica road....because, well - the name of the road was just plain intriguing coupled with opal digs. On the portions of Silica road just north of highway 28
there are a few mines. Judging from the white powder soil, I am presuming the mines are talc rather than opal, but then again, from the amount of opal, they may actually be opal mines.

While the mine areas themselves are off limits (might be able to get permission, haven't checked yet) there is a lot of land very close to them that is not posted, so we stuck to those areas. I found a few white mounds and dug in for some pretty sweet results. The petrified round I got isn't the best wood I've ever seen but still has some of the rings and it's solid. Much of what was in the area was pretty flaky - the layers would not take a cut. The surprise of the day was digging up a few chunks with a pretty bright flash of colors. It is layered so is the type used for doublets and triplets rather than whole cabs, but I sure didn't expect to see it.

Most of this opal is green and brown, but I did get one piece with orange bands - almost red enough to qualify as fire opal, but not quite there. Again - enough to get my nose open.

All in all it was a good day. While I probably won't go back to the lakes themselves, I expect to go back to the Silica Road area again - and probably to the areas across the river close to the petrified forest park there.

If you are a rockhound who is reading this - the forums, photo gallery, etc on my site are down for repairs right now but will be back up soon and most of my trip reports will be listed there. I will drop a line here, though, and let everyone know when that is back up. There are portions of the site which are still online and you can find those at:
www.rockhoundstation1.com

Rockhounding Season....Finally!

It seems like years since it's been spring. As an avid rockhound, winter can be excrutiating. Here I am in a new area, so I was able to do much hiking in the lower lands near town, but am finding that there isn't much to hunt right here. I have to take it on the road, even though I don't have to go far - I have to go where winter hits harder, which means I had to wait for spring.

After a nice winter storm warning for Western WA yesterday, we've finally gotten an all clear for this weekend. The storm seems to have stayed in the mt's so I am off to Quincy lakes as planned this weekend to hunt. Rumor has it that there is petrified wood and varied crystals (sounds like quartz from description) to be found. Judging from its location from the petrified forest and the terrain that I passed by on the way south of the area once, I'm sure that the reports I've heard aren't too far from truth. But, if you are a gem hunter, you are probably quite familiar with those who want to be helpful and give information, but have not one clue of what they are saying.

Quincy lakes area is one I had already picked out as a good day trip on my own, so if the reports of wood and agate aren't correct, I won't be overly disappointed. Not as much as if I had actually planned the trip around someone's advice to go there, anyway.

Yeah - I'll put this in rant mode for just a bit here.
Why the hell do people insist on giving you nice little hand drawn maps and pinpointing locations as terrific areas to hunt if they don't know firsthand that there is something there? I've taken some real wild goosechases - some that took quite some time and gas to drive to, just to find that the person giving me the "tip" had never been there firsthand - or just plain lied about the area. Do people actually think that you aren't going to notice that they are way off once you get somewhere?

After loads of really bad leads, I've finally learned how to weed out the bad ones from the good ones. It's not always the novices that give the bad leads - the experienced hounds can be the worst of the lot. Not sure whether they just want to appear more knowledgeable than they are and feel you won't ever really go there or whether they think it's funny to tool you around, but when I talk to an experienced rockhound and they give me a tip, I take it with a huge grain of salt unless we are planning to go together to the area. If they are willing to go, I can be sure of what they are telling me. If they won't go, too, I usually put the trip in with one that I've already planned that takes me close enough to check the area out a bit but don't make it an only destination. I learned not to make tips a sole destination a long time ago.

Anyway - if you haven't ever been somewhere and picked up good specimens with your very own hands, don't draw maps and send people off to a dead zone. Some people have a hard time getting free time to go and it's really mean to make them waste it "snipe hunting". If someone sends me on a wild goosechase, I will post online all about how lame they are so nobody else gets caught in their idiocy.

End of rant.

Well, as I said - I picked this trip out on my own. It's not under snow and it's in a good locality so no one can do me any damage if they tell me they found something there and it turns out not to be the case. It's spring so I will enjoy a nice hike in the sun with some warm weather, but as any rockhound knows, I'm out for the find. I'll be back to tell everyone what I find out about the place -- and maybe before that. Never know what politicians are going to do to rant about in the meantime.

If anyone out there has hunted Quincy lakes and are okay with sharing info, drop me a line about what you found and which of the lakes offer the best hunting grounds. It's a big territory, so I'd like to narrow the field down as much as possible to start out.