Post by Hard Rock Cafe on Oct 5, 2008 0:16:51 GMT -5
Well, I finally got time to photograph some of the more interesting rocks from my trip to South Dakota.
I took my three kids, ages 8, 10, 12. Here was our schedule, so you'll have some context:
Friday: Road to Weta, and Weta
Saturday: Agate Allotment/Conata Basin, Railroad Buttes, Mt. Rushmore, Tepee Canyon
Sunday: Home from Keystone
Tried to hook up with Step and Roger, but it didn't work out. I'm sorry Deb, Karen, and Earthdog couldn't make it. We'll have to try again!
Some of you parents may relate to this: my 10 year old daughter kept picking up dime size pieces of rock and asking me "Is this an agate?" My usual response was "It might be. If you like it, put it in the bucket."
This is my first experience with South Dakota rock, it may be old hat to some of you. Most of my experience is with Minnesota rocks, so the Prairie and Bubblegum Agates seem kind of strange. There's very little translucence and the banding is "disorganized" for lack of a better term. Back in the day, we probably would have called it "psychedelic". The bands that are visible on the outside do not necessarily carry through to the inside. Instead, they look sort of like a picture jasper. Not at all like Lake Superior Agate, at any rate.
Okay, so here are some photos. I tried not to show you every rock I brought home, but there are a lot of photos. I swear that when I'm rockhounding I feel like a cave man "Ugh, shiny. Me want."
I'd appreciate help with labeling what follows.
First a group of Prairie Agates:
Some of the larger Prairie Agates:
Some of the more interesting smaller Prairie Agates. You can see there's quite a range of colors:
This one was a little more translucent:
Some have interesting "chambers":
Here are a couple of examples where the banding breaks down on the inside:
This is one of my faves. It's a chip from a larger stone, but the colors and pattern are phenomenal. It also really shows the lack of banding:
Here is another favorite. I think this is Prairie Agate, but it's a little hard to tell based on the skin. I really like the split pattern:
i306.photobucket.com/albums/nn270/hardrockcafe_photos/south%20dakota/split.jpg[/img]
Here is a group of Bubblegum Agates. The bottom one looks like a cross between a Prairie Agate and a Bubblegum Agate:
This Bubblegum Agate looks normal on the outside, but has a druzy inside:
Conglomerates:
Another Conglomerate, showing some orange moss agate at the top:
Here is a series of "unusual" agates in that they don't look like Prairie Agates or Bubblegums (to me anyway), mainly because the there is more translucency and the banding is much finer and better organized or orbicular. They don't look like the pictures I've seen of Fairburns, either.
Unusual Agate #1:
Unusual Agate #2:
Unusual Agate #3:
Unusual Agate #4:
Unusual Agate #5, orbicular(?) and fortification:
Unusual Agate #6 with a couple of little eyes around a druzy center:
On the subject of unidentified rocks, here's an interesting botryoidal mass (iron and limonite?):
A piece of quartz with an intrusion of small black crystals:
A piece of fossilized coral:
Fossil imprints of brachiopods and other shellfish in chert:
I found a lot of this stuff which is non-descript on the outside, but has a red center, sometimes banded, which I think is striking:
These things were interesting. They usually appeared in a clustered layer and appeared to be sedimentary. These are just pieces. Any ideas?
I have no idea what this is, but the blue-green color is unlike anything else I found (only found this one piece):
This is a vein agate/chalcedony that I've also found in West Texas. If there is a better name for it, I'd like to know. It tends to look blue before it's tumbled, then it looks clear. I found pieces scattered throughout the collecting areas I visited, but there was a hill of it at the top of Railroad Buttes:
That does it for the Badlands/Railroad Buttes area. We went to Mt. Rushmore, than drove toward Custer State Park and collected this limonite (some of it iridescent), based on the Midwest Fossil etc. Trails book. Not sure what I'm going to do with it. There's a lot of mica in some (you can see some blue and purple flashes) and the rock on the right is flashing gold. The top one has aligned "cells" that have a lot of color when the angle is right (not in this photo):
Finally, we went to Tepee Canyon. I was exhausted by this point and may not have found the exact spot in the book. It was also getting cold. I didn't find any fortification agate in matrix in the walls, but I didn't look terribly hard. I did dig through tailings and find some pretty jasper, some of it with hints of fortification (which you can't see in the photo).
I guess that does it for now. I picked up enough rock to last me a long time. I'm eager to get a saw and cut into some of the larger prairie agates.
Thanks for looking,
Chuck
I took my three kids, ages 8, 10, 12. Here was our schedule, so you'll have some context:
Friday: Road to Weta, and Weta
Saturday: Agate Allotment/Conata Basin, Railroad Buttes, Mt. Rushmore, Tepee Canyon
Sunday: Home from Keystone
Tried to hook up with Step and Roger, but it didn't work out. I'm sorry Deb, Karen, and Earthdog couldn't make it. We'll have to try again!
Some of you parents may relate to this: my 10 year old daughter kept picking up dime size pieces of rock and asking me "Is this an agate?" My usual response was "It might be. If you like it, put it in the bucket."
This is my first experience with South Dakota rock, it may be old hat to some of you. Most of my experience is with Minnesota rocks, so the Prairie and Bubblegum Agates seem kind of strange. There's very little translucence and the banding is "disorganized" for lack of a better term. Back in the day, we probably would have called it "psychedelic". The bands that are visible on the outside do not necessarily carry through to the inside. Instead, they look sort of like a picture jasper. Not at all like Lake Superior Agate, at any rate.
Okay, so here are some photos. I tried not to show you every rock I brought home, but there are a lot of photos. I swear that when I'm rockhounding I feel like a cave man "Ugh, shiny. Me want."
I'd appreciate help with labeling what follows.
First a group of Prairie Agates:
Some of the larger Prairie Agates:
Some of the more interesting smaller Prairie Agates. You can see there's quite a range of colors:
This one was a little more translucent:
Some have interesting "chambers":
Here are a couple of examples where the banding breaks down on the inside:
This is one of my faves. It's a chip from a larger stone, but the colors and pattern are phenomenal. It also really shows the lack of banding:
Here is another favorite. I think this is Prairie Agate, but it's a little hard to tell based on the skin. I really like the split pattern:
i306.photobucket.com/albums/nn270/hardrockcafe_photos/south%20dakota/split.jpg[/img]
Here is a group of Bubblegum Agates. The bottom one looks like a cross between a Prairie Agate and a Bubblegum Agate:
This Bubblegum Agate looks normal on the outside, but has a druzy inside:
Conglomerates:
Another Conglomerate, showing some orange moss agate at the top:
Here is a series of "unusual" agates in that they don't look like Prairie Agates or Bubblegums (to me anyway), mainly because the there is more translucency and the banding is much finer and better organized or orbicular. They don't look like the pictures I've seen of Fairburns, either.
Unusual Agate #1:
Unusual Agate #2:
Unusual Agate #3:
Unusual Agate #4:
Unusual Agate #5, orbicular(?) and fortification:
Unusual Agate #6 with a couple of little eyes around a druzy center:
On the subject of unidentified rocks, here's an interesting botryoidal mass (iron and limonite?):
A piece of quartz with an intrusion of small black crystals:
A piece of fossilized coral:
Fossil imprints of brachiopods and other shellfish in chert:
I found a lot of this stuff which is non-descript on the outside, but has a red center, sometimes banded, which I think is striking:
These things were interesting. They usually appeared in a clustered layer and appeared to be sedimentary. These are just pieces. Any ideas?
I have no idea what this is, but the blue-green color is unlike anything else I found (only found this one piece):
This is a vein agate/chalcedony that I've also found in West Texas. If there is a better name for it, I'd like to know. It tends to look blue before it's tumbled, then it looks clear. I found pieces scattered throughout the collecting areas I visited, but there was a hill of it at the top of Railroad Buttes:
That does it for the Badlands/Railroad Buttes area. We went to Mt. Rushmore, than drove toward Custer State Park and collected this limonite (some of it iridescent), based on the Midwest Fossil etc. Trails book. Not sure what I'm going to do with it. There's a lot of mica in some (you can see some blue and purple flashes) and the rock on the right is flashing gold. The top one has aligned "cells" that have a lot of color when the angle is right (not in this photo):
Finally, we went to Tepee Canyon. I was exhausted by this point and may not have found the exact spot in the book. It was also getting cold. I didn't find any fortification agate in matrix in the walls, but I didn't look terribly hard. I did dig through tailings and find some pretty jasper, some of it with hints of fortification (which you can't see in the photo).
I guess that does it for now. I picked up enough rock to last me a long time. I'm eager to get a saw and cut into some of the larger prairie agates.
Thanks for looking,
Chuck