Discovery Bay, Olympic Peninsula

I've been in the office a lot lately, or visiting with family - always wonderful - so I haven't been out much looking for rocks. But on a drive back from Port Angeles yesterday I spent a happy hour along the western shore of Discovery Bay. This is one of my favorite shorelines for rocks, since there are rarely any waves, and the diversity is as great as anywhere in the northwest. The site is near the Gardiner boat ramp - a little tricky to find but worth looking for on a falling tide, when the cobble beach is still wet. This makes identifying interesting specimens that much easier. (Best of all is a rainy day, when EVERYTHING is wet and shiny...)

This may not look like much, but as a geologist, I find it tells a pretty interesting story, with bits of green stone in a speckled matrix. I'll know more when I polish it.

Polisher Preview

Cayucos Jasper, CA

Here are two early pieces of the Cayucos Jasper from the Central California coast I found earlier this month (see below) An astonishing diversity of color and pattern, found within just a few yards of the beach. Definitely a place worth going back to.

Right off the Beach

Many of the stones I gather are truly "diamonds in the rough," rocks whose pattern and color you can really only guess at until the tumbler has scoured off the weathering crust, the scars, cracks and staining.  Then there are the stones that appear, at first glance, as if they have already been polished and shaped.
That was the case with this one, a reddish-purple stone that looks like a translucent jasper/agate. It has a glassy character, but also a granular texture, along with random black dots and faint stripes.

If you have any ideas what this might be, I'd love to know. In the meantime, it is simply a lovely stone of an unusual color.

California Discoveries

Cayucos Jasper, California

I drove to California last week for work, but along the way poked around some new rockhounding areas, specifically the Central California coast near San Luis Obispo. Several good locations were listed on the websites of local rock and gem clubs, so I thought I'd give them a try. In the end, I came away with a lot of terrific material like this red and green jasper,  from one of the beaches around Cayucos.

Really, there was agate and jasper scattered all along the shoreline in this area, and given more time, I would have wanted to scour the surrounding hills for outcrops and exposures. Maybe on another trip.
I also didn't have time to make it up to San Simeon Creek, which is supposed to be pretty productive as well. Still, I was delighted with what I found in just a short time, and look forward to a chance to go back at some point.