Dennis and I headed out this morning to find the gold at the end of the rainbow.
Possibilities are endless.
We didn’t find any gold, but the quarries above the Lincoln Creek valley contained some interesting thumbnail specimens of crystals.
Dennis just retired, and wanted to get out into the woods. ?The weather has been a little bit stormy, filling all the creeks and rivers to the brim. ?It is really hard to find nice material when the water levels are high and filled with silt.
Our first stop was the Weyerhaeuser quarry located west of Centralia.
Dennis getting his first experience at rockhounding.
The quarry hadn’t been worked in quite awhile, so there wasn’t much to find. ?I did find a small pocket of natrolite.
This pocket contains calcite and natrolite.
Dennis wasn’t sure what or where to look, so he just kept pounding away at the rock face.
It rained on us a couple of times.
We worked this quarry for about two hours before deciding to head for the next location. ?Here is a shot of the material I kept.
Not an abundant amount, but enough.
The next quarry is on state land and had quite a lot of crystal filled rock boulders.
Lots of steep rock walls to explore.
We once again spread out and started pounding on the walls. ?I located one area that had some small pockets of crystals. ?Most of them would break apart so I wasn’t able to get many specimens, but I had fun looking.
I was able to keep a couple of nice thumbnail sprays of natrolite. ?Here is the best one.
It’s only about 1″ wide but the tallest crystal is over 1/4″ inch long
We worked the boulders and walls for another hour or so with the occasional logging truck rumbling by before we decided to head home.
Dennis didn’t want to keep any specimens, he just enjoyed getting outdoors. ?I was happy that he wanted to go, because it gives me the opportunity to explore new areas.
Thanks for joining us.
chasfire
You should’ve gone just a little further down the road from that DNR quarry and picked up a hand-full of Augite crystals. Harvesting a large one still stuck in the grey tefra matrix makes an attractive display piece.
Those boulders on the right hand side of that quarry are loaded with different zeolites. My 7 year old son found a gorgeous large clear Analcime crystal there last November. Unfortunately as you said the host basalt is very brittle.
Jim: I have been to the augite site a couple of other times, and have found some nice sized augite crystals for my collection. We didn’t stop this time though. I was hoping to check out some other quarries, but the roads were closed. Oh well maybe during hunting season.
chasfire