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Post by aDave on Dec 16, 2017 23:50:52 GMT -5
Jeremy, that is great looking material. I have family in the Dallas/FW area, and it would be great to hook up with you on a hounding trip if you're up for it. Heck, we could even do camera stuff if that worked out.
Truth be told, I'm not too concerned about the family there (it's a long story). But, I'm more than willing to hit the road and head out there. Just let me know if you're willing to guide a Tx newbie. Best regards.
Dave
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Post by txrockhunter on Dec 17, 2017 0:29:50 GMT -5
MIL coming in January/February, need to figure out some place (warmish) to go for a couple weeks! Way to plan ahead! Hey, if you and jamesp go back to Zapata, maybe you would let me tag along for a couple days?! Not sure how much value I'd add, but I'm pretty low maintenance.
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Post by HankRocks on Dec 17, 2017 8:22:27 GMT -5
He's not low maintenance, I have seen him in action and he fill buckets with agate like a Trackhoe
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Post by txrockhunter on Dec 17, 2017 17:07:30 GMT -5
He's not low maintenance, I have seen him in action and he fill buckets with agate like a Trackhoe Shhhh, don't ruin it for me!
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Fossilman
Cave Dweller
Member since January 2009
Posts: 20,685
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Post by Fossilman on Dec 17, 2017 17:09:37 GMT -5
HOLY MOLLY!!!!!!!
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Post by txrockhunter on Dec 17, 2017 19:01:14 GMT -5
Jeremy, that is great looking material. I have family in the Dallas/FW area, and it would be great to hook up with you on a hounding trip if you're up for it. Heck, we could even do camera stuff if that worked out. Truth be told, I'm not too concerned about the family there (it's a long story). But, I'm more than willing to hit the road and head out there. Just let me know if you're willing to guide a Tx newbie. Best regards. Dave Heck, yah! Henry, Hanksrocks, is close by as well! He's got a lot more experience than I do, so we should be able to hook you up with something worthwhile! The good thing about collecting rocks, is that It's usually in an area that's great for photography! Just let me know what time frame you're thinking about!
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,466
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Post by Sabre52 on Dec 17, 2017 20:48:20 GMT -5
Question for you Jeremy. Last time we went down, we noticed the oil men are caliche covering a lot of the good roads rendering them not so good for collecting as the caliche even gets into the bar ditches covering the good gravel. I don't think we got quite over to the roads you checked out though. Were the roads in that area still the original old gravel and pet wood topped roads or are they getting covered up with the ugly white stuff over there too?.....Mel
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Post by HankRocks on Dec 17, 2017 21:44:21 GMT -5
I was looking at Google Maps, Satellite View, and you can begin to distinguish the White Roads and the Gravel roads. If you zoom in to the ground where the Google vehicle has image captured you can look down some of the roads and distinguish between the surface type a lot easier. They don't travel down all of the minor, but you can look down them where they cross an imaged road. Henry
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,466
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Post by Sabre52 on Dec 17, 2017 23:41:51 GMT -5
Just looked at Google sat maps and man it looks like they've messed up a lot of the roads by resurfacing them. Probably still pretty good right after a heavy rain though. I would kill to get to walk a couple of those private oil field roads which are all gravel. We walked one just a little bit once where there was no sign of posting and man there was wood all over the place. One of my neighbors owns a ranch down there and says it has lots of wood but it's a hunting site and he does not seem to want rock hunters on it....Mel
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Post by HankRocks on Dec 18, 2017 7:47:15 GMT -5
I assume that the gravel for the roads is hauled in for the most part but is it local gravel?. The usual rock-hunters issue in Texas, lots of rocks to be collected, all on private land. Getting permission is an up-hill struggle and a lot of work can be undone by the actions of one knucklehead with no shortage of knuckleheads!
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Post by txrockhunter on Dec 18, 2017 9:36:05 GMT -5
Question for you Jeremy. Last time we went down, we noticed the oil men are caliche covering a lot of the good roads rendering them not so good for collecting as the caliche even gets into the bar ditches covering the good gravel. I don't think we got quite over to the roads you checked out though. Were the roads in that area still the original old gravel and pet wood topped roads or are they getting covered up with the ugly white stuff over there too?.....Mel The 1st road I hunted, CR 441, was chewed up asphalt and gravel. The good collecting was between the bar ditch and the fence. The 2nd road, CR 443, was all caliche. The bar ditches and the areas between them and the fences were still good for collecting. There had been enough erosion to expose some of the bigger pieces. You could see the pet wood showing through the caliche packed roads. There's no reason to spend any time trying to get it out, without power tools! Too bad about your neighbor not wanting any rock hunters! I'd bet you could find some monster pieces, that haven't been beat up by a backhoe! I'll keep looking for a property connection down there. Quick question for you. Can you help with ID of the following pieces? At 1st glance, I thought it was more chert. But, after looking closer, it looks like there is vascular material inside. Wouldn't be the first time I have been fooled by the many forms of chert!
This one looks kind of like rhyolite. It's solid, but not sure if it will take much of a polish. I found a few pieces like it, but it didn't seem to fit the rest of the geology.
Thanks again, Mel!
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,466
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Post by Sabre52 on Dec 18, 2017 15:10:33 GMT -5
Yeah, the second one probably is rhyolite but could be a limestone material being partly converted to chert by added silica. The first one is something I've seen before. I'm thinking it's palm or fern that has pretty much been decomposed before it was infused with silica, sort of a limb cast. We found quite a lot of wood casts in the area. Many you'd never guess had been wood except for the exterior. Outside, like wood. Inside, all agate with plumy stuff, moss, tubes, little globules or orbs, even fortifications. Part of the fun of the hunt there is man, you never know what you will find. The frustrating part is, no one has done a book on wood identifications from down there and all those wild type woods are a booger to ID. Me being a real label guy, that just abut drives me nuts. Wish I was close to the Ginko Petrified Forest museum. They have the finest collection of identified and polished wood specimens I've ever seen. Would love to compare some of my Texas stuff to what they have on hand.....Mel
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Post by txrockhunter on Dec 18, 2017 17:00:22 GMT -5
Yeah, the second one probably is rhyolite but could be a limestone material being partly converted to chert by added silica. The first one is something I've seen before. I'm thinking it's palm or fern that has pretty much been decomposed before it was infused with silica, sort of a limb cast. We found quite a lot of wood casts in the area. Many you'd never guess had been wood except for the exterior. Outside, like wood. Inside, all agate with plumy stuff, moss, tubes, little globules or orbs, even fortifications. Part of the fun of the hunt there is man, you never know what you will find. The frustrating part is, no one has done a book on wood identifications from down there and all those wild type woods are a booger to ID. Me being a real label guy, that just abut drives me nuts. Wish I was close to the Ginko Petrified Forest museum. They have the finest collection of identified and polished wood specimens I've ever seen. Would love to compare some of my Texas stuff to what they have on hand.....Mel Thanks for the ID help. It's funny that you mentioned Ginko Petrified Forest. I was trying to do some research and it popped up in just about every query I ran. I've never heard of it, before today. I think Matt Dillon has the most extensive library of LOC specimens. But like you said, there isn't any definitive ID's for any of them, mostly marketing type descriptions. I'm heading back down tomorrow and I'll try to take some photos of the roads. Any suggestions on other starting points?
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,466
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Post by Sabre52 on Dec 18, 2017 17:42:43 GMT -5
Yeah, I actually have a wonderful specimen I got off Matt Dillon where neither of us could figure the type of wood. Wild stuff! The wife and I were just discussing where to go next time we go hunt wood for fun. Don't know exactly where to go as the whole area has changed so much. Probably just head for George West and head NW from there exploring until we hit a good spot. So many folks hunting there now that we came across groups even on weekdays and all were complaining about how badly it had been hunted just previously. Many of the roads had plainly just been explored as dug and chipped stuff was all over. Sure a big change over the first time we went. We had a five gallon bucket full of good stuff on the first half mile stretch of road we worked and the road itself was actually topped with big hunks of wood. Wife found a bunch of good hunks right by where we parked while I was out walking....Mel
PS: If you are ever in Washington state, you've gotta go see the museum at Ginko PF. It is outstanding for pet wood.
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Post by aDave on Dec 20, 2017 20:17:35 GMT -5
Heck, yah! Henry, Hanksrocks, is close by as well! He's got a lot more experience than I do, so we should be able to hook you up with something worthwhile! The good thing about collecting rocks, is that It's usually in an area that's great for photography! Just let me know what time frame you're thinking about! Jeremy, I will let you know. There has been alot going on at home (none of it negative) which has been a distraction from getting here on the site. That said, the wife is retiring at the end of this month, and she wanted to see Quartzite. We have another trip in-between, so we'll be dealing with both of those. At the end of the day, our goal is to get into areas of the US that we've never seen before. If our trips will encompass rocks, we'll end up doing that. I'll let you know if and when we start heading to Tx. I've never been there...wife has moving family to the Dallas/FW area. I'll be sure to let you know when we start getting to your neck of the woods. Dave
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inbtb
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Member since May 2016
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Post by inbtb on Dec 20, 2017 22:24:39 GMT -5
So let me get this straight. You picked this stuff on county roads? Wife and I are talking about maybe going to Tucson for a couple of days and this looks like good side trip on the way home. Thanks for posting pics.
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
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Post by Sabre52 on Dec 21, 2017 9:37:08 GMT -5
Just a reality check here guys. Before you all get too excited, just remember that there are a lot of wood collecting experts working this area regularly, including Matt Dillon. We've gone there multiple times and each time we've found places that were good before were, on the next trip, hunted out or covered over. When this happens, you may have to drive half a day on these roads to find a fresh unhunted spot and it is a big area. If you hit a good spot you can score some great wood fast but it may take a lot of driving to find that spot. As I said in a previous post, on our last trip down, every road we had previously done well on was either no good or had obvious evidence of just being hunted quite thoroughly. We encountered several truckloads of hunters midweek that had all been pretty much skunked and were still hunting a good spot. We too would have been skunked except we hit a couple of small spur roads that dead ended and still had the original surface. Those were great spots but we had driven several hours to find them. Right after a heavy rain is when you want to go if you can work it that way. They have real gully washers down that way.
So if you go, don't expect to hit a bonanza on your first road. Watch for roads not yet covered by white crushed rock or bar ditches that show indications of erosion and larger gravel as much of that will be wood. Sample a lot of roads and don't waste time on those showing little gravel. I have my wife drive so I can hang my head out the window and survey the ditch banks. Using this method we usually manage to fill maybe a five gallon bucket of tumbling stuff and another of bigger hunks. Be selective though, as much is just earth toned wood. A little judicious chipping can really help find the good stuff and bring a squirt bottle. And during spring, summer or fall, you will want a gem scoop as the area is full of big rattlers. Better to reach into the bushes to pull out that big hunk of wood with something other than your bare hand. Last spring trip we took, we found a skeleton of a car hit rattler that had a rib cage about seven inches wide and it's a good drive to a hospital from this area. Another note too. If you have allergy problems, don't go here on a wet spring. We went one time and the flowers and bushes were spectacular but the pollen was so bad I actually got sick from it, similar to Texas's famous "ceder fever". No fun at all. Never had that problem in fall and more ground is exposed due to lack of greenery. Worse time to collect is when there is a lot of grass and foliage....Mel
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Post by txrockhunter on Dec 21, 2017 13:04:12 GMT -5
Excellent points, Mel! I went back on Tuesday and probably drove / walked 10-15 miles of CR's, filling 3, 5 gallon buckets. I ended up culling out 2-3 gallons, that looked better with mud on them (that's why Mel recommends chipping and spraying with water). I was very lucky, because a hard rain, Monday night, helped expose some new material, even on the same road I hunted last week (another great point, if you can make it work out. Just make sure you have the right vehicle to get through the mud). I did take some pictures, that give a better idea of what Mel is talking about. Finding sloped roads with bar ditches was a big plus after the rain.
This was one of the better roads I found and did very well on it.
Roads like this, with little or no ditch and a lot of vegetation are the ones to keep driving away from.
Example of what I was looking for and should be a good one. it's about 4" long and should have some good color inside (should have put something down to scale it by).
Another one about the same size. Notice the Chert right below it? It looks a lot like a nice agate that I would pick up in other areas, but it's not! One of Nature's little jokes!
This is some of the earth toned wood that Mel mentioned (notice the thorns on top of it).
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2017 13:36:56 GMT -5
Texas rockhounding 101. Live this thread. Keep the lessons coming.
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grizman
freely admits to licking rocks
Member since July 2011
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Post by grizman on Dec 21, 2017 22:01:13 GMT -5
I really like pet-wood. I just drool over the colors and forms that you found in the George West area. Being from Montana, it is a pretty good jaunt for me, but I'd love to see what I could do with a batch of tumber/vibe sized wood from that area. Thanks so much for sharing the photos. They are wonderful!
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