Get Your 2010 Gem Hunter's Showcase Calendar

ANNOUNCING:

THE FIRST ANNUAL RHSI ROCKHOUND CALENDAR: THE GEMHUNTER'S SHOWCASE CALENDAR 2010









Featuring a beautiful gem of the month specimen picture from our RHS1 membership and associates. Specimen information - where found and who found it - plus contact information of picture's contributer. Monthly list of Rock Shows including city and building of show and contact information of the Show's organizer. Daily reminder of which states are having shows that particular day. Daily reminders of Holidays, daylight savings time changes, commemorative days.

You will never find another calendar so suited to your favorite obsession - rockhounding. Decorate your walls, or those of your loved ones, with a beautiful monthly picture of the finest specimens of minerals. No need to remember those show details - they are right there where you can find them any time you need them.

YOU CAN GET YOUR OWN 2010 GEM HUNTER'S SHOWCASE CALENDAR - RIGHT HERE

WILL YOUR FAVORITE STONE WIN A PLACE ON THE 2011 GEM HUNTER'S SHOWCASE CALENDAR?

STAY TUNED IN MAY FOR THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE CALENDAR MONTHLY SPECIMEN PICTURE CONTEST AND SHOW SUBMISSION GUIDELINES FOR THE 2011 RHS1 GEM HUNTER'S SHOWCASE CALENDAR.

YOURS NOW FROM Rockhoundstation1.com WHERE WE'VE BEEN ROCKING YOUR WORLD SINCE 2005.

I Can't Believe I Lost That Agate!

This one is mainly for the rockhounds in the crowd but I'm sure others can relate to it.

Last weekend I went hunting for the elusive Ellensburg Blue agates. It was my first time out for them so I was just getting oriented to the area in general. There was still a lot of snow in the upper regions so hunting was a bit more sparce than I had hoped.

Now I have hunted agates in Oregon and Idaho a lot. In fact, I used to live about a half hour drive from Graveyard point. When I think of agate hunting I think of walking around and picking up all sorts of great stones just laying around the countryside. Even if I actually get into digging, it's the same thing - scores of great stones just under the surface. So what did I think when I went after the blues? Heavy sigh.

I wish I had known then what I know now. For one thing, blues are rare. Even if you are in the correct area for them, you can consider ANY find a good one. Had I known that, I'd have stayed in one place longer and might have picked up a bit more treasure despite the snow limitations.

I did find one small one - and the rest of my lesson comes in after I got that little gem home. It was only the size of a penny or so. Nice blue though - very pretty little thing. I thought that maybe I'd send it to a pal back East for a "sample" of what I'm doing out here. Long story short...I ended up losing the stone. What I found out next put me into a futile search for this little thing.

It seems that blues are worth up to $100 per ounce! They are not only very scarce, they are very hard - 7.5 on Moh's scale. Put that beautiful blue on top of that hardness and you have a lapidary's dream stone.

For the life of me I can't figure out what the heck I did with it. After checking the front "rock garden" where I figured I tossed it and turning up no blue, I searched inside the house. I have searched every area of this place I can't think of anywhere else I might have stashed it. It's gone.

Lesson learned. Check out the rarity and value of what you are going after before you go -- and keep your finds until you find out their value when you get em home.

Guess I'll be going back next week.

Real Answers to Question from @LoriSinger and Discussions With @jmkane

Wow - I sure am glad they have this blog for us. It's just impossible to cover some questions in 140 characters. So I've put real discussions of issues here instead.

LoriSinger @HEYSAL What is your take on the galactical alignment of 2012?

Our galaxy is definitely moving into a galactic alignment. What this means is that our arm of the galaxy is moving into a parallel position with the center of the galaxy. The arms of the galaxy wave a bit and we will experience this alignment in 2012. What can we expect?

We will be directly in the path of cosmic wind from the nucleus of our galaxy when we are in alignment with it. The effects are not completely known, but we could experience some pretty intense magnetic upsets at the least. The damage that can actually be done to us, of course, will depend. We aren't protected from the sun's radiation by our magnetic field as some people believe - it's the atmosphere that protects us.

At the N. Pole where we would be most vunerable to radation there is little change from the amount of radiation that hits earth elsewhere. Were it the magnetic field that protects us, that would not be the case. You can liken radiation passing through the atmosphere to particles passing through 10 feet of cement. So the amount of damage a cosmic wind will cause, will be determined by the amount of radiation it contains. Hopefully, we will be able to withstand it. We may find our planet heating up, but our sun has been strangely inactive this sun cycle.

Cosmic wind might bring another problem - clouds of cosmic dust. Ever seen dust hit a flame?
Think of clouds of dust blowing across the sun. Holy cow. Hopefully there is enough disturbance in these clouds to keep them small so we only see flares rather than major combustion.

It was predicted that this sun cycle was going to be the strongest in recorded history -- politicians were hoping for it because it would have reinforced their "warming" propaganda and scared the average human silly. The fact that there is more ice at the N. pole right now than in the last 15 years is down played and even just not mentioned. Instead the areas of both poles that are actually warmer or melting are pointed to in an attempt to continue the idea of warming.
In actuality - those areas that we are hearing about are sitting on mantle plumes (molten lava pockets under the surface), some of which are errupting. Warming? LOL, yeah, molten lava tends to do that.

Lot of smoke and mirrors political con artistry going on to make us accept warming as a fact. The truth is - The number one greenhouse gas is evaporated water. C202 concentrations are result of warming, not the cause and much damage can be done to plants (and result to us) if you cut C202 concentrations during warming. Fatal mistake. And -- ever see what one night of freeze does to a crop field? With our population reaching 7 bil, we better damned well hope our crops don't freeze. We already have one billion people starving to death. Sooner or later people will catch on to the fact that when they already have 4 children starving to death, they really need to stop having kids. A few crop failures and it's not going to be money that stops people from eating.

The actual crisis we are facing is due to population numbers - we have gone beyond carrying capacity in many areas - not warming, but human damage destroying us.

Now as far as the Mayan "world end in 2012" aspect of the alignment -
Both the Mayan philosophies of religion and daily life were based on energy. Each day had a different energy quotent. Their normal calander which covered, I believe, 56 years (or close to it) wasn't long enough for them to figure out certain aspects of their actions so they built the longer calendar - the one purported to predict the end of the world in 2012. I have seen that they did predict a major transformation for 2012 - but see no evidence for the "end of the world".
IF they were still here today, I believe they would be working on the next calendar - that's what we do when calendars end.

What the new cycle will be is hard to say. Are we going to "ascend"? It is thought that the vibration of the earth is increasing - enough of an increase would change the material nature of the planet. No religion necessary - if everything is vibrating faster, everything will go and we aren't going to notice much change around us. The problem comes if we are not increasing our vibration as the planet is. Is this a possibilty? Who the hell knows.

Being over carrying capacity has done one thing for this planet - we are poisoning almost every inch of it. Our poisons and garbage actually change the nature of subtle earth energies. There is a grid of energy called Curlew lines. These lines are not visible to us but our animals sense them.
A dog or cat will not sleep on a Curlew line - I will never sleep anywhere my dog won't. Curlew lines are not the healthiest of energies for mammals, although some insects do very well around them. Furthering the equation is that our poisons change the resonance of these lines, which could very well effect our own resonance.

Back to the Mayans. It appears, from the fact that they disappeared without trace and, considering that homes with dinners half eaten on the tables were found, they did so rapidly as well. Did they "ascend"? Who knows. They might have found a means to create a group ethos that allowed them to resonate at a high enough frequency that they just litterally disappeared. It seems that is what they were working on - but I'm sure there would have been no way for them to know before the fact just how close they were to acheiving lift off. The complete details of their predicted transformation are not completely clear to me. A lot of speculation - I'm looking through as many validly translated documents as I can find - finding many writings that speculate far to wildly and not many REAL document translations online.

So what can we expect in 2012? Anything....including nothing. But it will be interesting to find out.


@jmkane - continued discussion about gold and crystals

Your Sergent's gold could have come from many states. You can find gold in 33 states - while a few states contain only traces, many states have large concentrations: California, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, South Dakota, Georgia, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada for just a few...........
Crystals - Yes, Arkansas has an area (actually called Crystal Mt., I believe) which produces some very large excellent quality quartz crystals. Fine crystals can be found throughout a stretch of about 150 miles in that area of the Mts all the way to parts of Oklahoma. Most of the areas are privately owned now but there are some fee digs down there that are extremely popular and there are a few public lands remaining which a hunter can have some luck with.

Arkansas also is the home of Daimond Crater State Park - the only public diamond mine in the world. Many people are pulling some very valuable diamonds out of that place - many are fancy diamonds (diamonds that are colored rather than white/clear).

Washington has several areas for fine crystals also - and I will be going camping for a few days to find some within the next week. Very possibly tomorrow or the next day. Getting my gear together now, as a matter of fact.
For others reading this, I am reposting the link I tweeted you - it is to my August 2006 newsletter. I was able to interview the photographer that was enlisted to photograph the largest crystals found in the world. The photos he sent me are just phenomenal.
http://www.rockhoundstation1.com/newsletter016.html

I myself have hunted for crystals, gemstones, gold and fossils in about 10 states and am hoping to add 2 states to that list very shortly: Arkansas and Utah. Economic collapse not fun here so I might have to put those on hold for a bit.

Business and Play

First the business -
If you look at the post below this one, you will see I got my site www.salssecretsrevealed.com back up, but had a little snafu. Uh...gee....I wonder why nobody contacted me to tell me my contact button doesn't work.............(yes, I'm kidding - other than the part it doesn't work). I will be fixing it today so if you have wanted to ask questions, you will be able to. Thanks to my pal who knows my email to my rockhound site for notifying me.

Now the Play -
For anyone planning on going to the Vantage, WA area:
If you are planning on 4 wheeling the Whiskey Dick area, you will need a really high test rig or will need to walk in. The road is a mess and the ruts are extremely deep. I have a Vitara and after risking the first 100 feet of the ruts found that those up ahead were impassable for me. Looks like it was washed out this winter and who knows if the Wildlife or Parks dept or whoever is "in charge" over there will fix them.

I checked out three listed areas for petrified wood in that area and not one of them was open to the public any longer. Of course, the park isn't - but several other locations are now listed "Do not Trespass and I was not in the area long enough to research whether those are valid signs or just decoys.

RANT TIME -
It makes me furious that our government takes control of public land - tells us when we can go there and when we can't - but doesn't fix roads. If they want to be in charge of what isn't theirs to be in charge of - then they should damned well get off their asses and take charge of it.
Washington is full of roads that they have decided they have control of but let become so bad they are impassable.

When I was shown "Plan 21" - the plan the government has for herding us into small territories and keeping us off of public land, I laughed and said "yeah, alright, whatever". I'm not laughing now. I've been coast to coast over this country the last few years and everywhere I go we are no longer "permitted". While I realize that there are people who are just irresponsible and do some damage - why not just prohibit those and leave the rest of us the hell alone. Sometimes they choose to preserve paths - and those we now pay 32 bucks a year in WA for the privilege of parking nearby.

Is there anywhere left we can go - anything left we can do without the Federal Vacuum cleaner emptying our pockets for? When did public land become land that the Federal Government gets to do anything they please with?

This is beginning to feel like life in Germany circa 1940.

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.

Publish Post

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.