I reached down to pick up a small piece of jasper, when I got a call on the radio ?from Garry. ?He sounded pretty calm, but all I heard was ” Large log with cavity covered in druzy amethyst”. ?I immediately headed to his site and was truly amazed at what he found.

 

The shadow of my hat is peaking into the picture to show a relative size.

This find is one of the many finds we located during this trip, which started when my Son, Scott, said he wanted to go camping during the week of June 10th. ?Scott likes to rock hunt just about as much as I do so we arranged to head back to Central Oregon and the “MOTHER ?LODE” of agate that I was at during my last trip with Garry and Mark. ?Garry was able to go with us and we arranged to leave on Tuesday. ? We arrived at our camp site with enough time to set up camp and head out.

The “MOTHER LODE” is over three miles from camp, but we still had plenty of daylight left when we finally made it there.

Scott and I headed up a small hill and started to dig, thinking that the best ones would be buried.

It didn’t take us long to fill our packs and decide to head back to camp. ?This left us enough daylight to enjoy a nice hot meal and talk over our finds. ?Just before bed we decided to check out another area that we haven’t been to before. ?This area was not as far, but required a hike over some fairly steep terrain.

Wednesday dawned clear and cold, and after a quick breakfast of oatmeal, fruit, and coffee we headed for the hills. ?We arrived in the area around 9:00am and started checking out the ground.

It didn’t take long before we were finding material. ?Mostly dark brown jasper, but with the occasional red, white and blue material. ?We searched throughout the morning and afternoon.

I was hiking over some pretty nice country when I located two small round logs. ?One of them looked like it contained orbs mixed it with some nice jasper.

I was heading back to meet up with Garry and Scott, when I stumbled upon a large log, with lots of orbicular patterns in it.

I determined that this log was to large for me to haul over the mountain, so I broke off a couple of smaller pieces. ?I called Garry and Scott over and we located two more larger logs in the same area. ?They were also left behind.

We finally decided to head back to camp, searching for more material on the way. ?We had only been on our way for a few minutes when Scott called and said he found what looked like another log. ?This one consisted of golden yellow jasper with agate throughout.

This piece was large and heavy, but we determined not to leave it behind. ?The trip back to camp was uneventful. ?We were not looking very hard because our packs were already full.

We arrived back at camp in the late afternoon, and decided to rest before heading out for an evening ?hunt.

This trip was mostly exploring, but we did find a nice large blue/gray log buried in a hillside.

We chipped off a couple of pieces and headed back for supper and a good nights rest.

Thursday’s forecast was for a chance of rain, and anyone who has been to Central Oregon knows not to get stuck on dirt roads during a rain storm. ?Garry and I decided to head back to the Wednesday site and explore a little more, while Scott stayed near camp and nursed a couple of blisters.

We have now reached the point where Garry found his Amethyst druzy log. ?While we were working on getting it out of the ground, it started sprinkling on us. ?So after choosing a few choice pieces of this log to carry out we headed back to camp, where we loaded up our gear and hit the road to home.

Friday I spent cutting the logs we found and it turns out that my two and Scott’s big one are what is known as Tempskya. ?This is a tree fern that apparently grew in the Cretaceous Period. ?The information I found indicates that the nicest material is a golden color with lots of agate. ?Here are some pictures of the three nicest logs.

We had a great time and found some unique material.

Thanks for joining us.

chasfire