Post by Sabre52 on Jun 26, 2014 14:06:40 GMT -5
OK where I left off I was still in search for the fancy poppy I'd seen at the Mariposa rockshop. Since the area where our ranch was is huge, remote, often private property, and always difficult to hike cause it's very steep country, I figured I needed advice from local prospectors. I asked around and found out one of my neighbors' family had prospected the region for several generations but there was a catch, the fellow had a pretty bad reputation for being a little standoffish, gun happy and maybe a little dangerous.
I thought, well heck, lot of folks say that same sort of thing about me only they include "big ugly booger" too *L*. So I walk over to the fellows home and introduce myself and find out, not only is he a pretty nice fellow ( again like me) but he's also a die hard rockhound, former gold miner, and to top it off, his pop made one of the original poppy jasper discoveries and had sold more than four thousand pounds from his dig at 50 cents per pound back in the 60's. He also told me the California Division of Mines folks actually had him guide them to his pops old dig site to try to collect poppy jasper for the museum. Well, if that didn't sound interesting, I don't know what does.
So, I noticed the guy was chipping rocks with an old carpenter's hammer and gifted him with an Estwing rock hammer and the suggestion we go look for some poppy jasper. He agreed and off we went to the backside of the beyond and after several miles of four wheel drive road we found ourselves way up in the Mount Williams range of mountains up behind Hunters Valley. We went to his pops old pit and dug for a couple of hours with little success and finally decided it was either so deep it would require heavy equipment or played out. I was vastly disappointed till my new friend happened to mention that he remembered piling a bunch of poppy jasper from the site on a stone wall by his house. So off we went to his yard and began excavating the stone wall by his shop. As you can see by the cement on the rock in this pic, we may have had to bust up his stone wall a bit to get out some of the jasper *L*.
I God, that was a treasure hunt and we even managed to avoid the ever present rattlesnakes. We wound up with a good pile and after my eyes finished bugging out at the pretty poppies, I made him an offer and bought all he had that was cuttable. This is the stuff from the old Flora Claim. As you can see, the stuff varies from cut to cut, even in the same rock. the three slabs in the second pic came from the same piece in succession.
And guess what? After all this, this was still not the "right" poppy and different from that in the shop *L*. And so the search continued...Mel
I thought, well heck, lot of folks say that same sort of thing about me only they include "big ugly booger" too *L*. So I walk over to the fellows home and introduce myself and find out, not only is he a pretty nice fellow ( again like me) but he's also a die hard rockhound, former gold miner, and to top it off, his pop made one of the original poppy jasper discoveries and had sold more than four thousand pounds from his dig at 50 cents per pound back in the 60's. He also told me the California Division of Mines folks actually had him guide them to his pops old dig site to try to collect poppy jasper for the museum. Well, if that didn't sound interesting, I don't know what does.
So, I noticed the guy was chipping rocks with an old carpenter's hammer and gifted him with an Estwing rock hammer and the suggestion we go look for some poppy jasper. He agreed and off we went to the backside of the beyond and after several miles of four wheel drive road we found ourselves way up in the Mount Williams range of mountains up behind Hunters Valley. We went to his pops old pit and dug for a couple of hours with little success and finally decided it was either so deep it would require heavy equipment or played out. I was vastly disappointed till my new friend happened to mention that he remembered piling a bunch of poppy jasper from the site on a stone wall by his house. So off we went to his yard and began excavating the stone wall by his shop. As you can see by the cement on the rock in this pic, we may have had to bust up his stone wall a bit to get out some of the jasper *L*.
I God, that was a treasure hunt and we even managed to avoid the ever present rattlesnakes. We wound up with a good pile and after my eyes finished bugging out at the pretty poppies, I made him an offer and bought all he had that was cuttable. This is the stuff from the old Flora Claim. As you can see, the stuff varies from cut to cut, even in the same rock. the three slabs in the second pic came from the same piece in succession.
And guess what? After all this, this was still not the "right" poppy and different from that in the shop *L*. And so the search continued...Mel