huskeric
spending too much on rocks
Member since May 2016
Posts: 353
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Post by huskeric on Aug 25, 2016 17:02:47 GMT -5
I had taken my son to soccer practice on Tuesday, and decided to go on a walk to pass the time (and maybe look for rocks). At the park where he practices, they have a very large gravel parking lot, most of which is just the typical white gravel that you would normally associate with gravel lots/roads. However, out along the edge, someone had dumped some stone that was a little different. I probably should have dug around in the pile a bit more, but didn't want to look like a lunatic (moreso than usual). I pulled these out of the pile: The ones I'm most enamored with are in the bottom left corner. I *believe* they are both agate, but not absolutely positive. The larger of the two has a really cool reddish-purple hue to it. Here is a shot of the red one, this looks to me like the Lake Superior agates I have seen: Am I way off, or did I find some agatey goodness?
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Post by pauls on Aug 27, 2016 18:32:05 GMT -5
Quick answer to bump your question up. A saw is a wonderful tool for exposing Leaverite and most of those look like it, probably Quartz or Quartzite, maybe something in that red one but you wont know until its cut.
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huskeric
spending too much on rocks
Member since May 2016
Posts: 353
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Post by huskeric on Aug 29, 2016 16:59:56 GMT -5
pauls, I wanted you to be incorrect, but the saw did in fact prove it to be leaverite. I cut the purplish one, and it's probably not any sort of agate, but it is pretty. I'm gonna throw that one in the tumbler, and the rest in my garden.
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Post by pauls on Aug 29, 2016 18:49:36 GMT -5
My grandkids have great fun finding pretty rocks in my garden, and there's stacks of them, rocks that is not grandkids, though there's a couple more due soon, grandkids this time not rocks there's always rocks on the go. They can have any amount of finished rocks but I guess they are a bit like me and enjoy finding them themselves. I would love taking them to my favourite spots but the most recent trip to Agate creek in Queensland Australia was 13800 Kilometers, so probably a bit much for the grand kids, though I did do it with my own kids when they were little and they had a ball, six months correspondence schooling, an hour or two doing lessons and then the rest of the day to themselves, that trip was 36000Kms.
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huskeric
spending too much on rocks
Member since May 2016
Posts: 353
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Post by huskeric on Aug 30, 2016 9:10:36 GMT -5
pauls , that is awesome! I bet your kids learned and remember so much more on that trip than any other year of school. That is one HECK of a drive though! Was there much to see on the way, or just thousands of KM of flat, straight roads?
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Post by pauls on Aug 30, 2016 17:17:25 GMT -5
That 36000Km one was the trip of a lifetime, completely around Australia, Camping in tents and travelling dirt roads wherever possible. I allow about 300Km per day average when planning a travelling trip like that. Sometimes more when its just highway with bitumen and white lines but often we stop for days at a time so it averages out.
Anyway that wife jumped the fence to what she thought was greener pastures.
Next wife came along and she wanted to see things, so a few small (by my standards) trips when I had my annual leave. Then I was made redundant, 57 and couldn't get a job because I was too old. So we packed the tents in the 4WD and started some big trips, on one of these we were heading to an outback national park and stopped for lunch at Georgetown in Queensland. They have a really nice little museum that houses a superb rock and mineral collection. My wife was blown away with the Agates and asked "where do these come from"? Me, "Oh just down the road a bit" so we were off to Agate creek. I just happened to stumble on the find of a lifetime, a 46Kg Agate and she was hooked.
We are now getting a bit old for doing the camping in tents and sleeping on the ground bit so I just built a small camper rig that jacks on and off the back of my Toyota truck. We hate the bitumen highways and keep away from tourist spots as much as we can, but we see some beautiful country. The trip this year apart from camping in designated camping areas at the fossicking places we didn't pay for accomodation or camp sites at all, so really our only expenses are fuel and food. We always try to find a camp well away from towns and highways and apart from Salt Water Crocodiles in the tropics there's nothing here that bothers us. Salties really are scary and they travel hundreds of Kms up rivers, so we keep away from rivers and beaches in the tropics.
Those travel shows like to show the outback of Australia as a great flat place but in reality its not, there's always something happening in the landscape and the best thing about rock hunting is it gets you out into the real landscape and its stunningly beautiful.
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