I had the best day with my Missoula friends Tom and Debby and Helena friend Diane.  As Diane put it, it was like spending the day with Santa Claus in his workshop.

We had the table completely covered with beautifully tumbled Montana Agates, cabochons of all shapes and sizes, gold and silver wire, tools, and several styles of wire wraps.  

We compared styles and shared tips and techniques. Angie particularly like the fact that Tom keeps a big box of dog biscuits in his rock workshop.

We wrapped some beautiful Montana material and Tom gave me some tips on finding some rocks in Montana. 

Like this.

And we all kinda fell into a rock euphoria.

Just as some (very) early trick-or-treaters arrived.  LOL, those were some of Tom and Debby’s neighbor girls stopping by to say hello. 

Kat Jo

Lowayne

Camping here at Aspen Acres for a whole week, the second time we’ve stopped somewhere for a week, has been a fascinating education.  Met two couples who used to be neighbors and now come here annually to golf and camp and have fun.  Norm and Lowayne, Martin and Kat Jo invited us to brunch at their campsite to sample breakfast burritos and cornmeal mush.  Bill and I never had mush before and we must say, it is out of this world!  The recipe is on the package of cornmeal and you mix it up and cool it in bacon drippings…. yes, that’s what I said.  Oh man, how good they are.
It was my immense pleasure to create custom pendants for these beautiful ladies according to their specifications.  Here they are modeling the pendants and here are the pendants, close up.  The pendant on the left is White Jade, wrapped in sterling silver.  The one on the right is Amethyst, also wrapped in sterling silver.  They looked beautiful on this sweet, fun-loving pair of friends.

What we learned was that Idahoans have a deep affection for their state and its diversity.  The state is very conservative, although not quite as much as Utah or Texas.  Apparently, most of the potatoes are grown in the southern portion of the state. The northern portion abounds with mountains, canyons, hot springs, lakes and rivers.  The northeast portion (eastern, really) of Idaho is part of Yellowstone. 

Potatoes Being Irrigated

Last night we were invited to sit around a campfire with another pair of neighbors.  Jack and Patty, Trad and Darby explained that the northeastern part of Idaho is really part of the dormant Yellowstone Supervolcano.  There are two calderas in the volcanic field surrounding the outer rim of the Yellowstone Caldera that are in Idaho.

The effects of several eruptions can still be seen today. Craters of the Moon, national monument in Idaho is a vast ocean of lava flows with scattered islands of cinder cones and sagebrush. The most recent flow in eastern Idaho is the Hell’s Half Acre lava flow which erupted about 4,100 years ago and is 125 square miles.  Crater Rings are two adjacent and symmetrical pit craters that are among the few examples of this type of crater in the continental United States. The pit craters, which are volcanic conduits in which the lava column rises and falls, were formed by explosions followed by collapse.  Those ancient eruptions have helped create the eastern part of the Snake River Plain from a what was once a mountainous region.

On the outer rim of all this heated upheaval, in a little mountain town called Spencer, ancient geysers deposited encapsulated silica in layers which formed into something special in the volcanic rock there.  Out of the fiery volcanoes, came opal.

When we were first in Sioux Falls, I got a hint there were actually some falls here.  Well, we came back for an appointment to fix our RV, and since we didn’t have a house for a day, we took care of some errands and decided to investigate the falls. 

Here the Big Sioux River charges over beautiful red rock that is native only to this area.  The rock was uncovered 14,000 years ago when the last glacial ice sheet redirected the river and exposed the hard Red Sioux Quartzite bedrock which was formed from sediments which formed on an ancient sea floor.

The name came from a journal entry by Louis & Clark describing the falls and calling it the “Sous River”.  Settlers soon followed and spent the first winter here at the falls but encountered problems with local Indians and the deaths of two prominent townspeople occurred.  Settlers abandoned the town until the establishment of Fort Dakota in 1865, and the town grew from there around mills powered by the river.  The town boomed with the arrival of the railroad and the only thing that paused its growth was the depression and a plague of grasshoppers. :-/

The Red Sioux Quartzite is found to be very resistant to weathering and is used as building stone.  It’s color ranges from pink to dark red to burgundy to purple and you see it all over Sioux Falls and surrounding areas.  I had the chance to grind and polish some of this pretty stone.  It reminds me of Raspberry Aventurine, and takes a polish nicely. 

Repairs have been made and our South Dakota plates are on our home on wheels and truck.  Today we head out to western South Dakota, to the Buffalo National Grasslands and the agates there waiting for us to discover them.

Fellow rockhound Greg from Sewaren, NJ came over to hunt with Angie and me.

Greg started hunting crystals with my friend Pete, and has been out with me once before. Last time we hounded together, we hoofed it up the creek picking Amazonite/Moonstone with Greg hauling his large rock bag and tools. I felt for him, so I carried alot of the rock myself in my own backpack. He later said he was a little embarrassed, him being a thirty something year old in good shape and me… well… er… older. Oh well, LOL, I decided to take it easy on Greg and took him for “a walk in the park” this time.

Where does Blue Quartz live? In a Blue Lake… of course!

We found some good ones!

If you haven’t seen blue quartz cabbed before, it looks like this…
and this…