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| Misc. Jasper & Agate, Area 54 |
Some rockhounding locations are in the guidebooks. Others are not, either by the author's choice, or because they are new locations, found just as others are exhausted by hundreds - if not thousands - of collectors. This place was not one I'd ever read about, except on a rockhounding club website. I don't know where it got it's name - Area 54 - but it does give the place a sense of mystery: it sounds like there should be aliens or UFO's around. All I can say is, I didn't see any...
The truth is, I don't know exactly where Area 54 is, or at least where the club trips go. It is somewhere on the road into the Panoche Hills in Fresno County, California. I never found the exact spot they described, but it doesn't matter. You can look anywhere in a 5 mile radius, or anywhere along that road and you will find colorful, sometimes stunning, material. The pieces I've posted here just came out of the tumbler - but I have much more.
My advice? Next time you're driving south on I-5 in central California, take a short detour and explore this canyon. You won't be sorry!
FOLLOW-UP NOTE: June 15. I've finally gotten these stones all the way through the polishing process, and sadly, they don't polish well. Most have a largely matte finish with only a few seams that took a good polish. I might have worried that I had done something wrong in the process (such as contaminating the batch with heavy grit somehow) but there were a few agates from elsewhere in the batch and they took a perfect polish - so I know it's the stones. So if they are jasper, they are a somewhat softer one.
