Chuck and Becky joined me today on a trip to the Toutle area. ?We arrived at the parking spot around 9:00am, loaded our equipment onto the bikes, and started down the road.

Getting ready for some exercise.

The spot we were headed to is one that I have been to before. ?I picked this site because I wanted to make sure that Chuck and Becky found some nice material. ?It wasn’t long before we were able to start probing and digging.

Digging for the big one!

I was a little ways from Chuck and Becky. ?I had dug down about 1.5 feet to a gravel layer and was pulling out small agate, medium sized jasper, and and occasional piece of petrified wood when I hit one that sounded pretty good. ?I worked on it for about 5 minutes, getting it out of the clay. ?When I finally was able to see what I had I was amazed. ?This was one of the biggest carnelian nodules I have found anywhere.

Here is a picture of it right after I pulled it out.

This one id definitely a "KEEPER"!

I continued digging in the same spot and was able to find the piece that broke off the top. ?I was really excited about this find, but it wasn’t more that 5 more minutes when I pulled out an 8 pound piece of petrified wood that was riddled with carnelian.

Petrified wood with fractures healed by carnelian.

This was my lucky day. ?Here is a picture of the carnelian and petrified wood after I got them out to the bikes.

These were some really nice pieces.

By the time we got back to the bikes it was after 2:00pm, so we decided to head home. ?Chuck and Becky were ahead of me on the road so I stopped and took their picture.

Heading Home.

We got back to the rigs, loaded our equipment and finds and started on our way home. ?The day was perfect and we had a wonderful time.

OH! ?The carnelian weighed 6.5 pounds, if you didn’t pick up on that from the title.

Thanks for joining us.

chasfire