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.

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.