Post by Sabre52 on Jun 27, 2014 13:22:12 GMT -5
Ok gang, now we skip ahead a bit.
I had over time become a bit discouraged myself as I'd found nothing even remotely like the famous Hornitos Poppy Jasper of old but then, two things changed. My old hounding buddy had become discouraged too but one of my neighbors got a new ranch manager who, as it turned out, was as rock crazy as I was. Plus, he was younger, very physically fit, and like a dog with a bone when it came to a mystery. He started calling our search for the old jasper the search for the "Holy Grail". Guess you could say I traded up on hounding buddies Then a second great thing happened. We became acquainted with another neighbor ( cut up some trees for her that were blocking her roads) whose large ranch backed up on the hills with the poppy jasper. She gave us access through her ranch roads and now our long four wheel drive trip into the poppy region became a two wheel drive ending in a four hundred yard walk into the sites. Very cool indeed!
Our first trip into the area via our new shortcut found us discovering a new hillside with a few small old poppy pits. Mostly just solid red jasper there but we did dig up a few new varieties. We didn't keep much due to lots of fracturing but here are some type examples:
A multi-ringed poppy that graded into a chocolate orby thing:
And a small orb poppy we awarded the name, Hunter's Valley Ocean Jasper:
Now things were getting more interesting. matter of fact, everywhere you cut a hole on that hill had some kind of jasper but still not the "right" jasper, and then, we discovered the first of the old pits. Just off the road we were using for access and up a small hill we first found the old "Sierra Jasper" pit from the 1960's. Sierra Jasper is a very nice brecciated jasper that is composed of broken up poppies and here it was. Here are some examples. It occurs mainly in the form of large nodules at this site.
It also graded into a snowflakey stuff:
Also, about this time my new buddy and I developed a new prospecting technique, " The Crawl". The entire hill was covered by ten foot high manzinita, which is a shrub, for those of you who don't know it, that is springy wiry, and almost uncuttable with a machete. So we figured, there must be more poppy jasper beneath those thickets so we followed the examples of the pigs and bears, put on knee pads and crawled beneath the stuff on our belles and hands and knees. Turned out, there we little pits and jasper outcrops and float all over under there. I really liked this vein:
And found a massive vein of the pink poppy at the bottom of this pic but almost had a coronary dragging out a forty pound piece through the brush on a hundred degree day.
And still no Holy Grail Poppy *L*........Mel
I had over time become a bit discouraged myself as I'd found nothing even remotely like the famous Hornitos Poppy Jasper of old but then, two things changed. My old hounding buddy had become discouraged too but one of my neighbors got a new ranch manager who, as it turned out, was as rock crazy as I was. Plus, he was younger, very physically fit, and like a dog with a bone when it came to a mystery. He started calling our search for the old jasper the search for the "Holy Grail". Guess you could say I traded up on hounding buddies Then a second great thing happened. We became acquainted with another neighbor ( cut up some trees for her that were blocking her roads) whose large ranch backed up on the hills with the poppy jasper. She gave us access through her ranch roads and now our long four wheel drive trip into the poppy region became a two wheel drive ending in a four hundred yard walk into the sites. Very cool indeed!
Our first trip into the area via our new shortcut found us discovering a new hillside with a few small old poppy pits. Mostly just solid red jasper there but we did dig up a few new varieties. We didn't keep much due to lots of fracturing but here are some type examples:
A multi-ringed poppy that graded into a chocolate orby thing:
And a small orb poppy we awarded the name, Hunter's Valley Ocean Jasper:
Now things were getting more interesting. matter of fact, everywhere you cut a hole on that hill had some kind of jasper but still not the "right" jasper, and then, we discovered the first of the old pits. Just off the road we were using for access and up a small hill we first found the old "Sierra Jasper" pit from the 1960's. Sierra Jasper is a very nice brecciated jasper that is composed of broken up poppies and here it was. Here are some examples. It occurs mainly in the form of large nodules at this site.
It also graded into a snowflakey stuff:
Also, about this time my new buddy and I developed a new prospecting technique, " The Crawl". The entire hill was covered by ten foot high manzinita, which is a shrub, for those of you who don't know it, that is springy wiry, and almost uncuttable with a machete. So we figured, there must be more poppy jasper beneath those thickets so we followed the examples of the pigs and bears, put on knee pads and crawled beneath the stuff on our belles and hands and knees. Turned out, there we little pits and jasper outcrops and float all over under there. I really liked this vein:
And found a massive vein of the pink poppy at the bottom of this pic but almost had a coronary dragging out a forty pound piece through the brush on a hundred degree day.
And still no Holy Grail Poppy *L*........Mel