Post by catmandewe on Oct 9, 2010 18:49:43 GMT -5
I have been working a job in Montana for the past 2 weeks and we have had such good weather we have not had a day off yet. Well it rained buckets last night and the wind blew this afternoon, so we finally got a day off.
The best thing to do on days off is Rockhounding!
We started off by heading NE into North Dakota, mostly because none of us had ever been to North Dakota. We found some nondescript dirt road off the highway that was not posted closed (Sure is alot of posted property around here) and followed that road up into the hills for a little ways, then we parked and got out and hiked around looking for anything cool.
Not too far from the pickup I started finding little pieces of petrified wood, so I went over a couple of hills to get away from the beaten path and came across these petrified wood stumps. These are yard rocks at best, no where near lapidary grade.
These have to be at least 500 lbs each.
This is the biggest one I found, I am guessing it is over 1000 lbs.
(My working partner Bill posing for size)
closeup
Then we headed south to Savage, MT to see the Montana Agate Museum. There are some fantastic display pieces inside and you should see the pile of Montana's out behind the building! It is also a cafe, so we just looked around a bit then went rockhounding for Montana agates for a bit.
We thought we would see if we could find a road down to the Yellowstone River and hunt the gravel bars, but there are very few roads and any that went that way were either posted or impassable because of the recent rain we had last night. We were headed to some other areas when I noticed a Montana on the side of the road next to a canal which had been recently drained. We started looking around, and lo and behold, the canal was loaded with Montana agates and Montana Field agates. So I jumped down into the canal and started throwing rocks back up onto the road and Bill and Mel started loading them up into the pickup. We made a pretty good haul for just a few hours work.
We stopped back at the Montana agate Museum for dinner on the way back to the trailer.
Back to work tomorrow, hopefully we can finish tomorrow and start the journey home.
Hoping to take a couple of days to get home and do a little rockhounding along the way.
Thanks for looking...............Tony
The best thing to do on days off is Rockhounding!
We started off by heading NE into North Dakota, mostly because none of us had ever been to North Dakota. We found some nondescript dirt road off the highway that was not posted closed (Sure is alot of posted property around here) and followed that road up into the hills for a little ways, then we parked and got out and hiked around looking for anything cool.
Not too far from the pickup I started finding little pieces of petrified wood, so I went over a couple of hills to get away from the beaten path and came across these petrified wood stumps. These are yard rocks at best, no where near lapidary grade.
These have to be at least 500 lbs each.
This is the biggest one I found, I am guessing it is over 1000 lbs.
(My working partner Bill posing for size)
closeup
Then we headed south to Savage, MT to see the Montana Agate Museum. There are some fantastic display pieces inside and you should see the pile of Montana's out behind the building! It is also a cafe, so we just looked around a bit then went rockhounding for Montana agates for a bit.
We thought we would see if we could find a road down to the Yellowstone River and hunt the gravel bars, but there are very few roads and any that went that way were either posted or impassable because of the recent rain we had last night. We were headed to some other areas when I noticed a Montana on the side of the road next to a canal which had been recently drained. We started looking around, and lo and behold, the canal was loaded with Montana agates and Montana Field agates. So I jumped down into the canal and started throwing rocks back up onto the road and Bill and Mel started loading them up into the pickup. We made a pretty good haul for just a few hours work.
We stopped back at the Montana agate Museum for dinner on the way back to the trailer.
Back to work tomorrow, hopefully we can finish tomorrow and start the journey home.
Hoping to take a couple of days to get home and do a little rockhounding along the way.
Thanks for looking...............Tony
