Post by Tommy on Oct 22, 2013 23:35:34 GMT -5
My sweetie and I took off for a weekend of rock hunting in Nevada again - no camping this time. We started our trip with a side jaunt north of Reno to search for Chrysocolla and/or Malachite.
The book location was disappointingly picked over so we headed off on our own up a 4x4 trail a few miles away from the highway and found what appeared to be a mostly virgin tailings pile. We didn't spend a whole lot of time on it because we were anxious to get on to Fallon - and weren't really equipped to dig (forgot the shovel yet again) so we took a few pieces of float and left.
Most of the material is surface stained but I have found a few nice pieces in the mix so far - only cut a small portion of it so far.
After a nice lunch at the Steak and Shake (haha) we headed out for our original destination - Fallon for some more wonderstone...which was in scarce supply as you can see...
Sitting down on the job again...
Meanwhile my sweetie was hard at work trying to pull @shotgunner 's boulder out of it's birth place...
Too bad it broke :-(
Such a beautiful area
After the obligatory trip to Green Mountain for squat pickings we called it a good day. Sunday found us practicing for the N.Cady's trip in November following a hand-written rockhound map from 1967 out sandy trails in search of an elusive stone that hasn't been seen in the hobby in quite some time. We are 100% sure we found the location but not what we came for - we did however have a blast with some serious 4x4 fun through sand and up extremely rocky and steep trails.
At one location we found some very interesting rhyolite - different from the Fallon stuff - this stuff has almost no banding but is VERY hard - and takes a good polish. This slab and end-cap is all I could chop off of a SOLID20lb 10LB flat rectangular boulder of the stuff I found.
Solid purple rhyolite - again no banding which I'm not sure is good or bad. Extremely hard material.
I'll post cab pictures as we go - I haven't had time to cut into any of the wonderstone yet but I know for sure we collected a milk crate full of very beautiful stuff.
Thanks for looking!
The book location was disappointingly picked over so we headed off on our own up a 4x4 trail a few miles away from the highway and found what appeared to be a mostly virgin tailings pile. We didn't spend a whole lot of time on it because we were anxious to get on to Fallon - and weren't really equipped to dig (forgot the shovel yet again) so we took a few pieces of float and left.
Most of the material is surface stained but I have found a few nice pieces in the mix so far - only cut a small portion of it so far.
After a nice lunch at the Steak and Shake (haha) we headed out for our original destination - Fallon for some more wonderstone...which was in scarce supply as you can see...
Sitting down on the job again...
Meanwhile my sweetie was hard at work trying to pull @shotgunner 's boulder out of it's birth place...
Too bad it broke :-(
Such a beautiful area
After the obligatory trip to Green Mountain for squat pickings we called it a good day. Sunday found us practicing for the N.Cady's trip in November following a hand-written rockhound map from 1967 out sandy trails in search of an elusive stone that hasn't been seen in the hobby in quite some time. We are 100% sure we found the location but not what we came for - we did however have a blast with some serious 4x4 fun through sand and up extremely rocky and steep trails.
At one location we found some very interesting rhyolite - different from the Fallon stuff - this stuff has almost no banding but is VERY hard - and takes a good polish. This slab and end-cap is all I could chop off of a SOLID
Solid purple rhyolite - again no banding which I'm not sure is good or bad. Extremely hard material.
I'll post cab pictures as we go - I haven't had time to cut into any of the wonderstone yet but I know for sure we collected a milk crate full of very beautiful stuff.
Thanks for looking!