Back from the Dead

Olympic Orbicular "Poppy" Jasper

No, I haven't vanished off the face of the earth. Attentive readers may notice that I haven't posted anything here since October. The fact is, I have been traveling most of that time on non-rock business. Now that I am home again, it is pretty cold and rainy for field trips. So I am spending most of my free time slabbing some of the rocks I collected last summer.

Among these are two good looking samples of Orbicular Jasper, often referred to as "Olympic Poppy Jasper". This kind of rock, associated with basalt deposits around the Olympic Peninsula. They are not particularly hard to find - one of the best locations is Rialto Beach on the Pacific Coast, where you can pick up a few pockets full of jasper pebbles in less than an hour.

These two are from some other locations where I have found slightly larger chunks, some of them slab-worthy.  I will post more as I catch up with cutting.

Small Treasures

Jasper Patterns, Owyhee country

OK, OK, I've been pushing the Owyhee jasper a lot lately on this blog. The truth is, that's about the only rockhounding I've had time for lately, and most of it has been just going through the pile of material I brought back from my last trip. I've been cutting a lot of pieces on my Lortone 10" saw, with mixed results as I've mentioned before. Sometimes there is great stuff, and sometimes there is just another wasted hour of saw-time.

These never saw the saw: they were fragments of a rock I broke open to see what it was made of. I knew right away it was something special, but it was not big enough to slab. So I opted to toss them in the tumbler - and both came out smooth and lovely, with handsome patterns on all sides. (Both have a lot of blue on at least one face.)

Anyhow, nice stuff...of unknown provenance. I suppose I could keep better records when I am in the field, i.e. get a GPS plot of every piece I pick up - but hey. I'd rather be looking for rocks than bending over my laptop. Anytime.

I will be traveling for the next few weeks, so probably not posting. Maybe I'll bring something interesting home.

Hidden Universe

Exterior : Raw and Colorless

Interior : A  Hidden World of Blue

Most of the well-known Owyhee jaspers come out of named sites, with private claims and - typically - heavy equipment. I follow the low-rent strategy, searching for intriguing rocks in canyons and gravel bars.  The challenge is that most of the things I find don't look like much. As I have pointed out several times in previous posts, it often takes a rock saw to show what's hidden inside.

This is a perfect example. The upper picture is of a rock I collected somewhere in the Owyhee area (I didn't keep track). Like many of the jasper fragments I've found it is covered with an orange weathering crust that reveals very little of the rock's internal structure.

The rock saw, however, revealed a blue universe inside the rock that I would never have suspected, full of color and crazy patterns: a real surprise.

First Creek Jasper

Jasper, First Creek

There is a well-known location for agate and geodes in First Creek canyon, on the Blewitt Pass highway north of Ellensburg.  (see:  http://happyrockhound.blogspot.com/2011/05/first-creek.html)  I have passed by there several times on my way other places, but have never really explored the upper parts of the watershed. However, earlier this year, I did poke around the lower creek a bit, on the assumption that rocks wash downhill...

One of my finds was a weathered brownish lump that revealed just a hint of patterning inside. On a hunch, I tossed it in the bag and brought it home for the polisher.  This is what it looks like now,  after the final polish, a rather graceful stone of brown, orange and a streak of blue-gray. In other words, quite unlike anything I have ever seen come out of First Creek.

Maybe it's a glacial remnant from somewhere else, or part of a filled cavity somewhere in the local basalt. Either way, it's my "rock of the day."

Unexpected Fossils

Fossil leaves/needles, Owyhee country

Sometimes, when I am in serious rock-collecting mode, I am picking things up on a whim - a flash of color or pattern might catch my eye. But I generally don't spend a lot of time inspecting each one. Often they just go into the bag for future study. Maybe this is why my car rides so slow when I come home from a trip!

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I was recently collecting in one of my favorite areas, the Owyhee mountains on eastern Oregon. I have been sorting through the specimens I collated, tossing out some, and polishing those that are worth the effort, especially picture jaspers. (see earlier blog post)

But this one was a surprise, different from anything else I saw, and with a pale purple that caught my eye. I tossed it in the bag and only took a closer look today. Breaking off a piece revealed an inner layer  crammed with leaf fossils. I haven't identified them, but they look like conifer needles, twigs etc. strewn throughout a single layer in what I am guessing is rhyolite tuff. A nice surprise!

Christmas Morning

Owyhee Jaspers revealed

One great advantage of a rock saw is that you can non-destructively look inside a weathered rock whose outward appearance is almost nothing like its inside. I have just come home from eastern Oregon with huge amounts of jasper from the Owyhee country, but very rarely are the patterns and colors obvious through the weathered crust. Some things that look intriguing on the surface are dull inside. However, the reverse is also true - some real treasures have no outward sign of what's inside until you break them open - or use a saw.

In the past I had nothing more than a rock hammer to see what was inside - but jasper is really just a natural glass, and often cleaves and shatters in unexpected, and unwanted, ways. I hate to think about the number of really fine rocks that have disintegrated under my hammer! A lot of weathered picture jaspers, for example, are riddled with cracks, which is precisely why there are such great patterns in the first place. These clearly have no business being hammered...

The saw, meanwhile, provides a window into the rock, without risking damage. Now, all I have to do is choose the pieces that look good - like the three above, which I just cut yesterday from very humble fist-sized pieces. The best  go into the tumbler to smooth out the rest of the stone.

After this last trip, I've got many, many more waiting to be opened up.  Can't wait.

Crazy Mixed-up Jasper

Owyhee Jasper

For years now, I have been in love with the stunning variety of colors and patterns that jasper can take on. And when you are talking about colorful jasper, it's hard to beat those from the amazing Owyhee Mountains of Eastern Oregon. Yes, I find plenty of interesting things around my home near Puget Sound, but several times a year I make the 9-hour drive out to this, my favorite rock location on Earth.

I spent just a few days there this time, collecting in the Succor Creek drainage and along Leslie Gulch. To be honest, I stuck to some pretty familiar, accessible locations. Frankly, if it hadn't been 95 degrees I might have explored further away from the roads, but I promised my wife I wouldn't do anything too crazy. What's truly amazing is how much there still is, within easy reach.

As I may have mentioned before, my inspiration has been Hans Gamma's breathtaking collection of Owyhee area jaspers both on his website and his book.   He knows some really hidden corners of these mountains that some day I will get to. But for now, I have several hundred pounds of jasper to sort, cut and polish.  Stay tuned for results.

Skokomish Obsession

Orbicular Jasper, Skokomish River

Somebody stop me. I have made two trips now to the Skokomish River looking for orbicular jasper. Today was a beauty, sunny and warm, and the river was running gin clear (see photo below). Good conditions for looking for jasper. As before, there are loads of interesting jaspers on this river, but very few have well-defined red orbs, so you spend a lot of time picking up stones, and then discarding them.

This one was high and dry on the gravel bar, and jumped out because of its vivid color.

I found others in the water, as in the photo below. The only trouble is...you can't see the water. Believe it or not, these rocks are under a smooth sheet of water, e.g. just about perfect for scanning for rocks. And surrounded by drably colored rocks, the red jasper almost jumps out at you!

The Skokomish Runs clear in August

Hands and Knees Jasper

Cherry Creek Red Jasper

No, I haven't discovered a new type of jasper - the title of this post refers to how I spent most of my day today...on my hands and knees (in the water)

 I decided to go out this morning to Cherry Creek, near Duvall, Washington, to look for bits of high-quality red jasper. I had been there two years ago, and all I can say is, plants grow fast here in the Northwest. This small creek was walkable last time I was there - this time I was literally crawling up the creek, under an almost solid thicket of shrubs and small trees.

The only upsides to this technique are 1) I was a LOT closer to the stream gravel, so I could see some of the bits of jasper which tend to be small. and 2) I suspect I was the only person willing to put up with this - there was a pretty good scattering of jasper once I left the "easy" part of the creek.

This location has been well-known for decades, and a lot of mineral clubs have field trips to the site,

(see: http://home.comcast.net/~wams1939/trips/cherry.htm)

so it's not exactly easy pickings anywhere. But it is close to home, and there is always the promise of a really nice bright piece of jasper. Not sure I found it today, but I got a nice bag full in a couple of hours.
Having said that, I probably won't be back without a machete...

Rock Saw Discoveries

Over the past year or two, I have been collecting rocks from a variety of sources - from the deserts of Idaho, to the Pacific coast, to the beach just below my house. Most end up being polished in my two Lortone rock tumblers with terrific results.

However, until this week, I was never able to cut into the middle of larger pieces: I needed a rock saw. Well, after hemming and hawing, I finally bought one last week on Craig's List. It is an antique Lortone LS-10, well-used, but still working - and I have been cutting ever since. I had a large box of large rough under my workbench that I had been waiting to cut into, and now I am finally getting to see what is inside these pieces.

Examples above : a pale jasper from western Idaho, and a piece of Succor Creek Jasper from the Owyhee country.

Cutting a rock is like Christmas: you never know what you're going to get. Sometimes you find great stuff - sometimes you get nothing. Still, it's another tool in the arsenal. Next, I'll have to start polishing the slabs.

Owyhee Agate Vein

Agate vein, Succor Creek, Oregon

Although most of what I found in the Succor Creek area of the Owyhee mountains earlier this summer was jasper, I did come out with some other interesting pieces. One of the most intriguing was this thin agate seam cutting through another rock I don't recognize. The agate is bright and colorful, and completely unlike anything else I have found in that area. Who knows where it came from, but the Owyhee country has so many spectacular rocks, both agate and jasper, that nothing should be surprising...

I'll be heading out there again next month for a week of rockhounding. Can't wait.

Rialto Beach Redux

Poppy Jasper, Agate, and....? , Rialto Beach

Last year I made a pilgrimage to Rialto Beach, not far from Forks, Washington (aka "Twilight" Town) to beach comb for orbicular "poppy" jasper. This has been a well-known location for jasper beach cobbles for decades, and every time I'm in the neighborhood, I make a point of stopping by.

I spent a happy hour or two looking for jasper, but also stumbled onto some other nice things as well - some petrified wood, and at least one piece of yellow plume agate. It takes a while to train your eye here: the weather was uncharacteristically dry, so all the beach stones had that pale, scuffed look, making them very hard to identify. I did carry a water spray bottle to test stones -and licked a few - but after a while, I began to see the characteristic smoothness of the harder rocks (mixed in with a lot of rough-surfaced sedimentary rocks, the most common thing on our outer coast).

In the end, I got a nice stash of poppies, and some other things I'll look forward to polishing. Always a great place - and the best part is,  after next winter's storms (profound on this wild coast) there will be a whole new crop of rocks thrown up onto the beach.

Gravel Galore, Rialto Beach

The Tip of the Iceberg

Succor Jaspers - polished

A nice batch of Succor Creek Jasper came out of the tumblers today, which shows you some of the diversity possible in this area, and the quality of the polish that the rock takes. Yes, there are a few nicks and scratches from the tumbling process; hopefully these will come out by the end, but a few still remain (usually the result of having some over-size rocks mixed in - these tend to break chips out of one another.)

The obvious question its "why not slab this stuff and enjoy the patterns in 2 dimensions?"  Well, I might if I had a saw, but I also get some pleasure out of the random-ness of this process, which seems somehow more "natural." Probably just a case of rationalizing my own equipment deficiency - but that's how it goes. I tend to scavenge for small tumbler pieces, preferring them to large hard-rock excavation, the kind that produces good slabs.  Maybe that will change one of these days.

Out of the Tumbler

Cayucos Jasper - Revealed

Tumbling stones, esp. hard jaspers and agate, takes patience.... and I am not a patient man. So when a batch's time in the grit is up (and maybe a few hours early) I open it with all the enthusiasm of a kid on Christmas morning.

This batch was one I particularly looked forward to since recent months have generated some exceptional collecting opportunities. A sharp reader will recognize these, for example, as polished Cayucos jasper : I posted some of the rough in this blog on May 2. All are of red jasper, with quartz/agate intrusions. Handsome stuff.

Also included in this batch were some pieces of Idaho Japer-Agate I collected in late June (see my July 4 post). One of them came out of the tumbler today with some lovely patterns and colors.

Idaho Jasp-agate

Skokomish Jasper

Skokomish River Gravel Bars

I set out this morning on the trail of poppy/orbicular jasper on the South fork of the Skokomish River.  It is only about a two-hour drive for me, and an easy day out. I used to go salmon fishing on the Skoko many years ago, and not been back in several decades. I was tempted this time by posts made by a fellow NW Rockhound Charley Price on his blog : Compass Mentus.  Charley recently posted about finding orbicular jasper on the Skoko, so I thought I would give it a try.

I hiked in about 1.5 miles on the Skokomish River Trail which begins at Brown Creek Campground, some 16 miles upriver (mostly paved).  It is a steep up and down (and VERY steep at the end with whatever you have collected on your back!) but eventually you get access to the river, which runs very clear, and has lots of interesting rock to look through. I kept my eye out for really bright orange-red rocks which is usually a tip-off for jasper.

Orbicular Jasper (on left) and another type

I came out with a backpack of about 35-40 pounds - most of it without clear orbs, but a few nice pieces.
I would say it's definitely worth another trip sometime and exploring further upstream.  However, I have to say that the cougar warning sign at the trailhead had me looking over my shoulder!  ("Never Hike Alone" it says...)

Another thing Charley tipped me off to was the presence of some truly weird pieces of mudstone, eroding out of a cliff at the water's edge. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, these pieces are in some pretty wacky shapes, but are hard enough to make it home intact.  Something for the grandchildren at the very least...

Mudstone animal : Platypus?

All in all, a nice day out in bright overcast 75 degree weather. Pretty much perfect!

Succor Creek Wood

Petrified Wood, Succor Creek OR

Haven't been out into the field lately, but I am still working on the material I collected at Succor Creek in early June. Although most is high-quality jasper, including some with nice "picture" designs, I also found a fair amount of petrified wood.  Here are just a few of the pieces I gathered along the creek.  I'm sure there's a lot more out there...

Hope to make it back to the area later this summer. In the meantime, I will be exploring some locations closer to home. Stay tuned.

More Succor Creek Jasper

Succor Creek Picture Jasper

I've been home from Owyhee country for two weeks, and am starting to get some of this material polished. These are probably not the most dramatic picture jasper pieces I've ever seen, but they have a wonderful variety of color and pattern.  I am also very pleased with some of the petrified wood that came from the trip.

I have much, much more to go through - and some will be reserved for the day - one day - when I actually buy a saw, and cut some slabs. I have hesitated to invest in a saw up until now because 1) they are expensive and 2) because I have no interest in making jewelry. I really only do this for the pleasure of discovery and the beauty of what emerges after simple tumbling. In every hobby there is the inevitable choice - do I keep this casual, or invest in more equipment with some larger goal.  Frankly, I'm not there yet.  But as I find larger, better pieces, I will be tempted to cut slabs from them - if only to enjoy the larger canvas for the art of the stone.

Surprises

By now, you will realize that my idea of heaven is to wander along local beaches picking up interesting stones and trying to piece together the stories behind them. I often fill a bag within an hour or so, and only weeks, if not months, later get to polishing them. So I can maybe be forgiven for not exactly remembering where I found this one, which emerged from the tumbler today. It is of a free-form yellow jasper together with what looks like a pinkish agate. Pink agate?  Never heard of it before - and as always, I have no idea where this rock originated, thousands of years before it landed on the beach where I found it. Yes, it would be nice to know: I'm guessing there are more like it...

Buying vs. Finding

Kaleidoscope Jasper

 So, here's the question: is there a difference between finding and buying a rock?  Quick answer: I'd rather find my own. For me, a big part of the pleasure of rockhounding is the hounding itself -- the research, the hunt, the sudden thrill of discovery. The intensity of this pleasure is reflected in the vast boxes and bins filled with rocks waiting to be polished or sawn, or somehow dealt with. I collect WAY more than I will ever find a use, or a place, for.. .

This doesn't mean I haven't spent an embarrassing amount of time on eBay, drooling over gorgeous pieces of stone that someone else has found and offered up for sale. I have even bought a few. But there is no comparison between finding one in a Priority Mail box and finding one on a gravel bar, beach or cliffside.  I can admire the rocks I buy, but lost are the memories, the stories, the sense of accomplishment.  To me it's the difference between catching a salmon, and buying one at the market for dinner. (OK, there are weaknesses to that comparison - rocks stay with you long after the salmon dinner is done)

I suspect everyone's a little different on that score. I can fully understand the value of wanting to collect the most beautiful specimens in the world. After all, it is the extraordinary beauty, and astonishing diversity, of rocks that attracts us to this hobby in the first place. Want to see an amazing collection of jasper?

Go to Hans Gamma's site here

or be blown away by the Morrisonite slabs here

Yes, I would be happy to own any of those. But I would be even happier if I'd FOUND one of those. 

-----

Note : the piece pictured above is from a box of Kaleidoscope Jasper rough I ordered last year. Polished, it is a thing of beauty - but does it compare with some far less exotic things I have found myself? Not even close.

Poppies Transformed

A few months ago, a reader was kind enough to share with me his location for Olympic Poppy Jasper. He  generously took time out of his day not only to lead me to the outcrop, and but to help search for specimens on my behalf. I came home with a boxload  of rough - and only now have started polishing it.  This two-inch piece is small, but with a brilliant color, and striking, naturalistic shape. Needless to say, I'm thrilled.
To be honest, none of the material looked that impressive when I got it home. These scarlet poppies do not normally form massive  blocks: most of what we found were modest little clusters in otherwise rather uninteresting basalt. But trimmed and tumbled, they really pop.
But the best thing about the day was the unselfish attitude of my host. I will remember that every time I look at these handsome stones.

Succor Success

Succor Creek Jasper

I'm home and have had a chance to clean up some of my rocks from Succor Creek.  Wow!  I am delighted to have hundreds of pieces of every size and shape. Some I will save for slicing, but I have loads of tumbler material of very high-quality - much better than I got last year.  I am particularly happy to get so much of the Succor Blue Jasper, which I think it stunning.
I haven't shown any here, but I also got some very nice petrified wood fragments - including one very dramatic chunk of swirling black wood. (I'll try and post it later)
I also did some poking around some other areas in SW Idaho, and found a small creek in the foothills around Boise with some stunning football-sized chunks of Yellow/Orange Jasper.  It looks like it may have cracking problems, but I will have to cut into it to see how it holds together. But it has the potential to be stunning.  Two sample pieces below.

Idaho Jasper

All in all, a VERY successful trip. But as I mentioned in my earlier post, next time I go back, I really have to explore some more. There must be vast quantities of hi-grade jasper in those mountains...

Return to Succor Creek

Succor Creek Canyon,  E. Oregon

I've come out to eastern Oregon/Idaho for a few days to do some photography - and also to do some rockhounding in one of my favorite locations - Succor Creek in the Owyhee Mountains.  It is a beautiful place, and a terrific location for jasper, agate and petrified wood. I have done well with all three, simply by poking around the extensive gravel bars along Succor Creek.
Last time I was here it was a month or two earlier in the year, and the water was much higher, faster and colder - so getting to any gravel was hard. But now the river has dropped - but the fierce summer heat hasn't hit yet.
I spent 4 hours out there today, and came back with about 100 pounds of tumbler material. Most was found just along about 200 yards of overflow river bed - see photo below. I am really pleased with some of the picture jasper pieces and some large chunks of wood.
Every time I come here, I plan to explore the hills around the creek, which is presumably where all this stuff comes from - but I do so well just scavenging the river bed that I've never gone much farther afield.
I'll post pictures of some of my better finds when I get home this weekend.

Gravel beds, Succor Creek

California Treasures

Cayucos Jasper, California

In a post a few weeks ago, I reported that I spent a wonderful few hours exploring the beaches near Cayucos, California, in what turned out to be a mother lode of jasper of every pattern and description. Many were so beautifully rounded that they needed little tumbling, and just the addition of a polish to make them stand out. Well, I finished a batch today - and they are beauties.

There are brecciated jaspers (apparently common along in coast range in this area) and a variety of other colors and patterns. It was probably the single most productive few hours I've ever spent chasing rocks.

Having said that, the beach is NOT the best place for collectors looking for slab-worthy chunks of the stuff - these are all small, and really only fit for those who are content with tumblers. I am one of those, and I am delighted with what I found.  Too bad it's a thousand miles south of here!

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.

A Polished Gem

I was photographing birds along the shore this morning (see below) but out of the corner of my eye noticed a shiny, rounded pebble with an unusual pattern. I pulled it out of the sand, and rinsed it off. What was immediately obvious was that it was heavy, hard and already very smooth - as if it had already been through a tumbler (which, I suppose you could say, it had).  I will polish it further but hopefully this striking pattern is not just on the surface and will survive the experience.

Speaking of surviving the experience : here's a gull trying to swallow a starfish on the beach below my house this morning. Amazingly, he finally got it down - but he didn't look altogether happy with the decision.

Under the Sand

Sometimes a rock will catch my eye with only a tiny spot visible - that was the case with this handsome stone that was mostly buried under the sand. No idea what it is, with its smooth swirls of red and green, but it was definitely worth digging up and tossing in the bag.  It'll be a month or more before the thing gets a polish.

Treasures of the Conveyor Belt

I have posted many times about the diversity of rock types found along Puget Sound beaches - but I thought this picture tells the story pretty well. These are all stones found within a mile or so of my house and include jasper, agate and petrified wood (inc. the black thing in back) This is pretty typical, though it takes time to find this stuff among the millions of cobbles that line our shores. Still, I would argue that the rock diversity here is as high as any location in the world, largely because of the glaciers that carried stone from locations all over the NW region and kindly dropped them at our doorstep...

(Full disclosure: though found on the local beaches, these puppies have been tumbled and polished at home..)

Finding Jade...?

For some time, I have wondered how to identify jade in the field, especially because the literature suggests it comes in many colors and forms. There is plenty of jade in the Pacific Northwest, so there are almost certainly pieces of it on the Puget Sound beaches I normally patrol.  I found this one a few days ago, and the brilliant color jumped out at me, even in the drizzling rain.  It has the translucence associated with jade, and does not scratch with a steel knife - but how do you know?  More importantly, does it matter?  This will eventually polish into a handsome specimen, jade or not. Still, it would be nice to know.  Any suggestions?

Half and Half

To me, every rock tells a story, and I find this one particularly interesting. It is clearly a piece of what geologists call a "contact," a point where two different rock types abut one another. This can be two layers of sedimentary rock, reflecting a change in the depositional environment (e.g. a layer of mud, followed by a layer of silt) or...

(NOTE: if these were sedimentary layers, they would have been laid down horizontally, not vertically as displayed..)

...or they could represent a molten rock intruding into a crack in an existing rock. (in which the orientation could be in any direction) For example, the black rock may be part of a basalt dike that intruded into whatever the gray-green stuff is.

Or maybe there is something else going on. But whatever the story, it was a striking find on the beach this morning...

Ancient Mystery : Fossil Whale Bone?

I found this fist-sized rock along the shoreline yesterday, and immediately noticed some unusual things about it.  It is very heavy, and filled with linear vesicles - and reminded me of bone, especially whale bone. I don't know if that's what it is - fossil whale bone - but it certainly seems possible. I am going to do some tests, and maybe have someone look at it who might know more than me (which is almost everyone).  Stay tuned.

Follow-up  4/10/12 :  I took the sample to the Paleo team at the Burke Museum today to see if they had any reaction to it. They did, and it pretty much coincided with mine, e.g. "it might be bone....or it might not."  Hardly the conclusive verdict I was hoping for. But yes, it is pretty weathered, pretty small, and does not have any obvious structures that would help identify it.

MAY 2013 UPDATE: I finally got around to cutting  this puppy open and you know what?  It was nothing - some sort of mudstone devoid of any interesting pattern or structure...

"Treasure" Transformed

One of my favorite rocks from the past month was a striking red stone I picked up on a beach near Port Townsend.  I liked it so much, in fact, I posted it on this blog on March 12 (see below), a handsome "jasper" with a graceful white stripe running through it.

Well, after a week in the tumbler, the rock was transformed: the red is gone, and the white squiggle virtually erased. Without doing serious tests, I'm guessing this is not jasper after all, but something much softer - and that the stripe did not run through it, but was just a shallow surface feature. Whatever the explanation, I am both disappointed...and curious. What is this thing? Rarely have I had a stone be so completely altered by relatively slight polishing. Still handsome, but nothing like it was...

It's Easier in the Rain

Just home from two weeks in California, and a rainy afternoon gave me a brief opportunity to scour the beaches I have not seen for a while. The rain broadens my access by revealing colors and patterns of rocks across the entire beach, rather than just in the surf zone. This one was high on the beach, and at almost 6" long, jumped out at me.

The one below will almost certainly NOT take a polish, but it might be pretty striking anyhow once it's tumbled a bit.

Good to be back!

Geology 101 Redux

Variolite "Cross-section" - Elwha River

One of my favorite finds from my search for variolites on Sunday was this fellow. About 6" inches long, it shows the distinctive feldspar "dots" of all variolites, but grading dramatically in size from the bottom to the top.  Varioites are believed to form inside "pillow lavas" or basaltic lava that erupts underwater, forming unmistakable round structures visible in many NW roadcuts (especially on the Olympic peninsula). My sources tell me that the smaller dots form as the edges of the pillows, which cool more quickly, while the larger dots grow in the slower-cooled, better-insulated interior of the rock.

This makes sense to me, but whatever the explanation, I thought this sample was particularly cool...

Oddballs and Snowcones

Jasper with graceful seam, Discovery Bay, WA

Sometimes, when walking the shoreline looking for rocks,  you stumble onto complete oddballs - rocks so weird that they just jump out at you. That was the case for this one. I was walking the western shoreline of Discovery Bay, a place I'd never been before, picking up odds and ends during a brief, but intense, hailstorm. I found lots of the usual: bits of quartz, agate, red jasper.
Then I came across this thing. I think it's a piece of jasper with a white quartz seam running through it, but not quite like anything I've ever seen before, sort of like a melting scoop of ice cream. The bold pattern jumped out at me, and it went straight into my collecting bag. Can't wait to polish it and see what that reveals.

Return of the River

Variolites,  Elwha River

One of the biggest things happening in the Northwest this year has been the beginning of two dam removals from the Elwha River on the Olympic Peninsula. It is a huge project, the largest dam removal effort ever undertaken in the US and promises to restore both a spectacular river and the salmon runs that used to inhabit it.  For more information on the project, see here.

I had a chance to visit a part of the river yesterday that has re-emerged from the lake that once covered it;  gravel bars have appeared that I have never seen before!  And those gravels were covered with a rock that I have been tracking for years - Variolites (see previous posts here). I have been convinced that one major source for this rock is in the Elwha Valley. Now after finding dozens within a small area, I am convinced of it. I guess the trick will be to travel upstream until I can't find them anymore - and then look in between!

These things have no gem value, or any other reason for being sought, other than personal obsession. Stay tuned.