Where to go in Northern Arizona

It's a mecca. I've posted a bunch of my own trip reports as well as others on the board. I had good luck with the area south of Woodruff which is south of Holbrook and also south of Winslow. The Rockhounding Arizona book is a good source. So is this:

www.missourigeologists.org/Min-Loc1-2005.pdf

And I found a lot of other Arizona information with web searches.
I only visited there but we have a number of members from Arizona. If you search around through the posts you'll find them and they can give you a lot of information.

Here are a couple more links that might be helpful:

www.desertusa.com/index.html

www.gemkoi.com/rockhounding.htm

And really, the Rockhounding guidebook for AZ is useful and available from Amazon.com.

I've got a lot of stuff & can send you more links if/when I find them, but there are a lot of AZ people on this board that could probably help you more. I've had a great time there on 3 separate trips & each time had a day or two to go out, but only had one opportunity to go as far north as Winslow and Holbrook on one trip. I loved the area south of Woodruff & everywhere I went was incredibly scenic -- in one day I'd see more beautiful country than most people see in a lifetime, and for the most part, I never saw another person at the destinations. The Perkinsville drive out of Jerome is amazing. I've been to -- just to name a few -- Saddle Mountain area near Tonopah, Perkinsville, Woodruff, Winslow, Maricopa. The guidebook directions were sometimes messed up by the ballooning suburbs around Phoenix and Tucson -- new developments had taken the place of roads and old mines mentioned in the book. There's lots of wilderness area, though -- National Forest land where collecting is allowed. You can get Natl. Forest maps at their headquarters -- I got one for Tonto NF and it was very helpful.
Out there, as everywhere else I've gone out on my own, I got the best results by using several sources to narrow down directions. I like the rockhound guide, the Earth Treasures guide -- which shows a lot of spots nationwide but more of a catalog -- the link I sent you, and any personal communications or online trip reports I could find.

Yeah, the Perkinsville drive out of Jerome was the one that I was talking about. There are a lot of trip reports and guidebook stuff on this location. The drive is one of the top ten in the U.S., someone told me. I took this road from the Jerome end because it was shorter that way on the unpaved part. The drive was an adventure, not to say scary. Which it was, in part because I was driving a rental car. But you simply have never seen anything like this. You start out winding your way through the red rock mountains with cliffs alongside -- on a road that's a one and a half laner -- then you go around a mountain and you are in the green! Then it changes again...and so on. There are places where you feel as if you are driving along the top of the world.

BTW, on the way BACK from the collecting area the roadside rocks were looking interesting and I came across a road cut where the whole bank was loaded with hunks of jasper or agate in shades of pink, lavender, orange, yellow, tan, and white. These were BIG pieces, too. I stopped on the road and started tossing chunks in the back of the car. Since it was already getting dark I couldn't do much searching and I took a bit of a tumble trying to scramble up the side of the cut, which was mud/dirt. Climbing is hard with rocks in your hands.

Yes, your site was helpful -- I guess I forgot to put in your link BAZ -- not intentional, sorry!

Hello All,

My husband, seven kids and me moved to the four-corners area in the summer of 2006. Can't get much more northern Arizona than that! I have always been a rock hound or treasure hunter. I grew up in NE Texas along the Cadoan (sp) Indian Strip. Worked flint, pottery pieces, arrowheads and tools were always in abundance when my mom and dad would take us to Sulphur River on camping trips. Of course, now it is frowned upon to pick up artifacts, so my interest has turned to semi-precious and just downright pretty stones. Well, getting back to the northern AZ part...Red Mesa School is where my hubby coaches and teaches. Quite literally, "the" Red Mesa is in my back yard. In the washed out sand stone beds around this mesa, I have found some of the most beautiful petrifed wood I have ever seen. Also, there is an abundance of Peridot that I discovered quite by accident. I took a bunch of pretty rocks to a gemologist...all the ones I thought were interesting just turned out to be different colorations of quartzite. But then he picked up a small, pitted, light-green stone with darker green flecks and said "Wow-this is the most interesting of your whole collection...funny I thought it was the ugliest! Shows what us beginners know! After I learned what to look for, I discovered that this stuff is everywhere!

I also went to a waterfall in the Sweetwater mountain range behind Teec Nos Pos, AZ and found quite a bit of Turquoise, native silver, rose quartz, agate, snowflake obsidian, you can just about name it. Also, red jasper is everywhere up here.

My husband's assistant coach told me of a place just west of Mexican Water on Hwy 160 in a field on the south side of the road (everything is either a rock or a field!) is an excellent place to find Garnet. I can't wait to check that out.

Sorry this reply was so long winded, but I am greatful to this awesome website my mom hooked me up to and wanted to share what I had discovered in just a few short months. This four-state/four-corner area of Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico has so many good places to explore that I will never have enough time to go everywhere, so you all have to do it for me and tell me all about it...Promise? Talk to you soon. And by the way, Baz (I think) I love your pic of the great Gene Wilder in my favorite classic film "Young Dr. Frankenstein". I have watched that movie all of my 39 years on this earth and am always amazed at how brilliantly written and tirelessly funny it is...One has to have a...let's say...unique way of thinking to appreciate the humor in this particular flick! I sense a kindred spirit!

Looking forward to "talking" with you all and hope this information is helpful! MaBiddle (Micki Biddle)

Woops, just saw you posted about some Garnet, that's what I get for "trying" to speed read!