Post by 150FromFundy on Apr 24, 2011 19:51:09 GMT -5
I went out for a morning rock hounding on Good Friday. This was my first trip this year to McKay Head near Parrsboro, Nova Scotia. It was a near perfect day for a two mile hike at low tide. The only humans along the way were some locals harvesting mussels and some early tourists visiting from Connetticut.
This is the basalt rubble pile of the North Mountain formation forming the headland of McKay Head. It is resilient amygdaloidal basalt, but is annually tortured by winter storms, pounding tides, and many freeze-thaw cycles. You can see evidence of recent rock slides in the photo.
This is one of the many contact zones along the beach. You can see one distinct bedrock on the left and another on the right with some altered material between the two. That black spruce will soon be on the beach.
So what was hiding in that basalt rubble. This is my find of the day. It`s essentially zeolite (stilbite or heulandite) in a botroidal formation that has been covered in a quartz druze with a slight amethyst blush. This is a display shelf find.
This is a geode-like piece of similar material. The vug is blue chalcedony with the zeolite shoring a few crystal points.
This is another vug filled with blue chalcedony and zeolite.
This is my second find of the day. Simply, a nice solid chunk of blue chalcedony. It’s a treat to find a piece this large and this solid. There’s a lot of slices for cabs, or it may simply sit on a display shelf. At the moment, Laura has me out voted 1 to 1 for it to sit on the display shelf.
Enjoy the pics.
Darryl.
This is the basalt rubble pile of the North Mountain formation forming the headland of McKay Head. It is resilient amygdaloidal basalt, but is annually tortured by winter storms, pounding tides, and many freeze-thaw cycles. You can see evidence of recent rock slides in the photo.
This is one of the many contact zones along the beach. You can see one distinct bedrock on the left and another on the right with some altered material between the two. That black spruce will soon be on the beach.
So what was hiding in that basalt rubble. This is my find of the day. It`s essentially zeolite (stilbite or heulandite) in a botroidal formation that has been covered in a quartz druze with a slight amethyst blush. This is a display shelf find.
This is a geode-like piece of similar material. The vug is blue chalcedony with the zeolite shoring a few crystal points.
This is another vug filled with blue chalcedony and zeolite.
This is my second find of the day. Simply, a nice solid chunk of blue chalcedony. It’s a treat to find a piece this large and this solid. There’s a lot of slices for cabs, or it may simply sit on a display shelf. At the moment, Laura has me out voted 1 to 1 for it to sit on the display shelf.
Enjoy the pics.
Darryl.
