Mark has been staying with me this week and we wanted to get out to do some rockhounding, ?The best option was to head for the Toutle area and my old stand by location.

The Toutle has lots of gravel but little agate.

We decided to hike in this trip, and managed to do it in about 40 minutes.

Mark needed a head start.

Once we arrived we didn’t take long to locate a good spot and start digging.

Mark is not afraid to get muddy.

I was in an equally muddy spot, and it didn’t take long to start finding nice sized jasper, agate, and petrified wood.

The Days Finds

As you can see, they need to be washed off before we could tell exactly what we had.

I finally wore out digging and headed out for a good exploring trip. ?My first find was a bunch of mushrooms. ?I don’t do mushrooms so I am not sure what this one is.

Could this be a false Morel?

What ever it is it doesn’t look appetizing to me. ?We were in a pretty swampy area and there were plenty of skunk cabbage around. ?I liked the look and pattern in this one so I thought I would throw in a picture for you to enjoy.

They are pretty, but don’t mess with them.

I finally got tired of exploring and headed back to Mark’s location, where I ate a little lunch, helped Mark fill in his excavation, and cleaned off my rocks and tools. ?We headed back to the truck and managed to make it home by 4:00pm.

Thanks for joining us.

chasfire