Going Crazy in California

San Simeon Jaspers - Naturally tumbled

I do a lot of beach-walking around the Northwest where I live, and often find intriguing and worthwhile rocks mixed in with a lot of junk. So you can imagine what a kick it is to stumble on to a place where nearly every stone is colorful, and beautifully patterned. I had heard about the brecciated jaspers of San Simeon Creek, near Cambria, California and seen some beautiful examples (see Hans Gamma's mouth-watering collection ) but nothing prepared me for a walk along the surf-line yesterday. It was like walking through a kaleidoscope...  In less than an hour I had filled up two cloth bags, and I could have spent days there, seeking out the perfect specimens.

an iPhone sample

The location is the small beach area just south of the San Simeon State Park campground. It's only a quick scramble down the slope and out to the beach. Most of the rocks on the beach itself were tumbler-sized. I'm guessing the big specimens must be somewhere up in the Coast Range headwaters of San Simeon Creek and others. But there are also loads of medium-sized rocks (e.g. 1-4 pounds)  up high on the beach, but I didn't have time to carefully go through them. I'll bet there are some winners there.

But for anyone whose idea of a perfect day is to walk along a wild Pacific beach picking up beautiful stones, you would have a hard time finding anything better than San Simeon.

Beach Surprise : "Plume Agate?"

Beach agate, West Seattle

It's been a while since I was out on the beaches near home - blame it on cold weather and too many buckets already full of rocks, waiting for the polisher.

But on a handsome sunny winter day, I hit the beaches near Alki Point. I am always attracted by color and design, but especially if there is any sense of transparency, e.g. that glass-like quality that suggests "agate."

Here's one I found yesterday, an already well-rounded, naturally polished agate. My first thought was that it was what is known as a plume agate, in which impurities grow into the quartz often in lovely, lacy patterns. But when I took a close look at this, it does not have the typical "plume" patterns, but instead appears to be some sort of brecciated rock into which quartz has filled the gaps. Hard to tell what the green stuff is, but it's clearly fractured and shattered. Now, of course, it is suspended in the quartz matrix. Not sure what to call it, but it's handsome nonetheless.