Winter roads …. take me … somewhere…

November 17, 2024November 17, 2024 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 3 Comments

It is the awkward time of our winter…….. that we are confused. We are racing to avoid snowstorms and dreadful cold temperatures in an RV when we would be totally warm and dry at home. In fact many nights would have been warmer had we stayed at home. It is the unfortunate truth that to get to somewhere warm for the winter, you have to go through somewhere colder. Last night we camped near Tonopah and it was -7 degrees this AM and there was frost on the inside of the front window. There is a blind that comes down that prevents the heat from within to warm the inside of the front window.

I guess it was an achievement as (-7C) (19 Fahrenheit) . the lowest temperature we have managed without any frozen pipes etc…while camping without hookups. Our furnace keeps the underneath part of motorhome warm (the basement) where all of the pipes and water tanks are. We are getting more confident with our winter conditions camping. This is never our intention, but nice to know we can get by in a pinch…. and weather IS getting more and more unpredictable. We camped at the Wasco county fairground campground which is further just south of the Dalles, in Oregon. It was a. wonderful site, and we saw a very unusual looking fawn. Instead of being brown with white spots it was mostly white with brown spots. Sadly….. easier for hunter to spot?

When we travel in Motorhome, Tucker usually rides right between us in a dog bed, and when the roads get too curvy, OR too up or down he squeezes in in front of me until things settle down, so you can imagine my thoughts when I looked down to see he was not in his bed! My first thoughts were that …. could we have left him behind at our last stop??? 🤔🤔 NOT very likely, in that his every move is closely monitored when we are anywhere away from home….So I looked back and ……… I guess after all of the years we have been traveling with him, he has decided he wants to try out the “other seats”. I guess he wants a better view🧐😎

Then today I looked back and WHERE IS TUCKER??

We have hit snow a few times now at the higher elevations, but we were lucky that by the time we came along the roads were bare and dry. The route we took was likely more likely to have snow in that we went through eastern Oregon into Nevada through a higher pass. But it really is quite beautiful and we have been driving the coastal route for SOOO many years, the change is nice. I have shown on this map the route we took from Burns OR to Winnemucca NV.

With any luck we will be somewhere that does not freeze tonite. We have heard that it IS snowing at home.

So for all of our friends who are staying home this winter in Canada, we admire you for your strength and endurance.🍻🍻🍻

Much love from Janet, Ken and Tucker, the dog who likes to sleep all over the place

time to go home…🤔choices

March 3, 2024 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 2 Comments

As luck would have it, we are 20+ hours drive from home and as you can see from photo….. each direction has severe storm warning 🤔. To top that off, we are at Lake Mead and the wind is howling at 20 mph. White caps….

Yesterday it was closer to 30 MPH and so we spent the whole day indoors. I should point out that we love our Motorhome and it is plenty big enough for us, however the size IS dependant on going outdoors during the day. It IS a small space to spend 24 hours.

What to do? Make sourdough….

NAP…. manoman am I ever bored….

BOOOOOOrrrrrreeeed

Or maybe work on Blog,…. 🙂

We are at Stewarts point …. a far east and north part of Lake Mead. Lake Mead is the reservoir created by the Hoover dam, and is a massive lake. It HAS been much more massive in previous years, and less massive last year when we were here.

We have been gone now for 2.5 months and are looking for a route to get home. Big storm across the west coast all the way, it seems, from Canada down into California. Apparently the Sierra Nevadas got 10 feet of snow. I am sure that Lake Mead WILL be much higher when all that snow starts to melt. But we only got wind and just a little bit of rain.

We have had a great winter, with a few exception type situations, but cannot really complain. In Fact I even have a funny story to tell about the day the transmission went in our jeep.

make no mistake it WAS a bad day…… We were going into Yuma from where we were camping, Ogilby road which is about 20 minutes drive out of Yuma. We just got into Yuma and Ken realized that he could not get the jeep in gear and with a whole lot of finagling, he managed to get the us parked right in front of a transmission lot. (most days we are off …. miles from any known roads, so at least it happened in a good place). We WERE going in to Yuma to have lunch with Kens cousin Morley and his wife Ruth. They very kindly came to pick us up while our jeep underwent “further testing”. After a wonderful lunch we came back to find out that all was good, as long as we had a spare 4900 dollars….. gulp… to spend on rebuilding the transmission….. and a week to hang around and wait for the “procedure” to be complete. SOOOOO. Morley and Ruth gave us a ride back to where our motorhome was parked. We got there and Ken realized that he had left the keys to the motorhome back in the jeep (at the transmission place in Yuma)

AND worse information, the only window that we left open was this tiny window above the sink

Ken felt quite certain he could fit through this opening (bear in mind it is only HALF of the shown window as half does not move) (I pointed this detail out to Ken, but he was STILL confident that he could get through the opening). So Morley backed his truck up to motorhome….

Now THIS is where medical knowledge comes in….in babies…. usually once the shoulders have been delivered all goes well…. and technically that may not be true for many of us……. but turns out it is true for Ken

Things look a bit iffy here…. but Ken was still quite confident.

SO the Shoulders have been delivered INTO the motorhome…….. and technically, I believe this is where I would get stuck… but not Ken…..

Now how many 69 year olds can you name who could pull this off….🤨🤨…. and slither down over the counter and onto the floor… YEA KEN

So we waited the week and got our Jeep back and headed north…. We have really enjoyed the wonderful places we have camped this year. I always am so impressed with the views, but rarely am I able to get pictures that reflect what I see. This year I DID get a few….. This is from Ogilby road, where we spent about 10 days this year.

…. and THIS ONE is another photo I got while a thunderstorm was passing. The desert is just SOOO BIG that you can get the whole half of the rainbow….

We shall see how soon we make it home and if there are any more adventures left in this trip.

Bye for now, much love Janet, Ken and the very bored Tucker dog….

In search of Palm Canyon…

December 23, 2018December 23, 2018 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday we decided to do a hike to find out where all these lovely stones come from, to a place called Palm Canyon, which is the only place in Arizona that native palm trees exist. The canyon is part of the Kofa mountain range. To make a long story short, Volcano, volcano, 25 million years, then earthquake….. then erosion.

We have come back to this area, over and over, as it is so breathtaking…. but I can never quite capture this in my pictures with my phone, perhaps we shall get a new camera so we can share the beauty of this area with everyone else. So if you look closely at the picture below you can see the windy road heading into the dark area at the centre of the mountains. It almost seemed to have a fairy tale feel to it, a windy road leading to a craggy rock cliff with a castle on it. THAT is where we are going..

This is looking into the canyon from just outside.

So as you get into the canyon, suddenly everything becomes lush, and there are plenty of plants that we have not seen anywhere else. For instance, HOLLY, which we have never seen down here, and represented a whole new issue for Tucker. (can you imagine walking on Holly with bare feet)

Well we climbed higher and higher up the canyon, in search of palm trees…

THEN the trail started to look more like this…. It essentially disappeared and we were just trying to find a way upwards. It started to become more like rock climbing and there were a few places where we COULD have maybe used some rope…

It was starting to get a little scary… and I was thinking to myself that this hardly seemed the kind of trail that they considered mild to moderate in the brochure, and only suggested bringing water. We had seen NO sign of Palm trees, and the people who HAD been coming behind is never seemed to get any closer, they just went back. 🤔 🤔 🤔 So I said to Ken, this seems like more than a half a mile. He said that it HAD said a mile in. So I pulled out the pamphlet and read it AGAIN.

It SAID about half way up the canyon (1/2 of a mile) there is a sign that says palms with an arrow point towards the palms. WE HAD seen the sign, and thought it was pointing to where the trail led. So we hiked half way DOWN the canyon and found the sign and sure enough it was pointing up a narrow crack between 2 cliffs… to, sure enough, ….the palms….

So for certain you would have to be standing right there to see them. You go into the canyon from west to east, and this little crack goes north. I guess it also explains how the trees survive there, they are sheltered from all sides and they have this canyon pointing directly south.

So we laughed all the way back to the parking lot.

I have tried to include more “awake” pictures of Tucker, as so many people commented on how tired he looked. I was just taking a picture of every extremely uncomfortable place he seemed to fall asleep.

Another funny story of the day was the intense echoing you got in the canyon. When we were WAY up the canyon, we felt like we had microphones on. Then part way down, Tucker barked at something, and we could not stop him from barking, because he kept hearing another dog.

Much love…. thanks for reading, Janet… and Ken and Tucker.

All that glitters, is not broken beer bottles

December 2, 2018 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 2 Comments

Our rockhounding outings usually follow some sort of a similar script. We go to our rather “extensive” library of rockhounding books. Find the book/books for the state we are in and find a site near where we are.

We then have a look at a map that looks something like this:

I/WE then study the map and say “yup… looks pretty straightforward” “Just turn onto 4th street in Palo Verde and go 5 miles west.” At this point we usually leave the book behind because it seemed SOOOO straightforward. Then you get out there and there ARE no roads heading west, there is one going south west, and so you take that one thinking that perhaps writer was just vague… So you follow THAT road for about 7 miles. Now I should tell you here that the term “road” is also somewhat ambiguous. It can mean many things. It can look like this:

Or something like this:

And you never really know if you are just following the tracks of some crazed ATVer……

And then when you come to something like this you KNOW you have been following a crazed ATVer…. WHOOPS dead end.

At the end of a wash. To fully understand the area, you have to take into account that when it rains a lot in a short time the water takes out the roads and leaves you with “washes” which are basically “part time” rivers. So we hike up to get some sort of an idea of where we are, and at the top of the hill, there is just a bunch of OTHER hills. The glitter is just the sun shining off of the Rhyolite…. no beer bottles. We have found that when we are searching for a site, and come across broken beer bottles… that we must be close, because at least someone else has found this place. I can only imagine what broken beer bottles and rockhounding have in common…. but Broken Beer bottles = you are close!

So when you look out at a landscape like this you have to think how easy it would be to lose the JEEP….

JEEP, what jeep…? 🙂 Makes me think of Fargo. It was down one of these dips 🤔

NOTE to self, NEVER forget where you left the jeep.

ON this particular day we did not find the place they were talking about, but on the way back we DID see a road that DID actually go west, that MIGHT be the one we were looking for… I guess another day.

I wish I had better camera skills, or perhaps a better camera (I just use my phone, or iPad) But these mountains are truly breathtaking. These are the mountains within the KOFA wilderness refuge, and with the jeep we were able to drive right up into the centre of this HUGE area, so see these mountains from the other sides. Having the jeep is definitely worthwhile getting us to places we would never have gotten to without it. The motorhome just sits in one place for a few weeks, while we take side trips in the jeep.

The area in the centre of this range was more green than anywhere we have been locally. Apparently there was more rainfall in October than is usual as well

And as usual we are eating well. We bought a Paella pan last year thinking it would fit in the small motorhome oven. WE did have to make some minor adjustments to make it fit…. but had our first vegetarian Paella. I used my roasted tomato sauce instead of the canned tomatoes that the recipes all call for, and I think it was the very best Paella we have ever had. Peas from our garden as well.

Today we head off into the Palo Verde wilderness in search of….. broken beer bottles.

MUCH LOVE to those who “travel” along with us. Janet

Rockhounding and religion

November 27, 2018November 27, 2018 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 2 Comments

I see rockhounding as a lot like religion. We can spend hours out there climbing, hiking, getting lost….. anything.. as long as we BELIEVE there is something out there to be found. (even when we find nothing) 🙂 Some days we even lose each other, like yesterday. We have a loose agreement, and walk some distance from each other, and every now and then if we do not see the other we start loud whistling or calling out. Yesterday the wind was loud, so likely took our whistles and yells into the hills. Another game we play is to ask Tucker where the other one is. I kept saying to Tucker, “WHERE IS KEN?”… and he kept looking….

Don’t you love his bandana? Although it really is his colour, it actually has a useful purpose. That is to cool him off. We keep it wet and it aids in cooling him. and then FINALLY>>>>>>>THERE IS KEN!

Granted, this game DOES work better on the beach.

OTHER things one might find in the desert, are ………Gypsy wagons. Friends/neighbours from Bandon, in Quartzite. Amber and Elton are heading east, we are heading west, and we met in quartzite.

Now this wonderful Gypsy wagon, Amber has built over many years and each year she continues to modify.

She is holding her time machine, a box she has created from odds and ends of little brass bits that once had a totally different use. Inside this tiny wagon, they even have an old stove that they use to burn pine cones to heat them up on cold nights.

How could you get cold in such a cozy spot?

“Celestine” is clearly a work of art.

Great to run into old friends along the way. We spent Thanksgiving just north of Phoenix with friends from Canada.

OTHER THINGS you might run into in Quartzite….. ONE STOP SHOP for everything you could possibly need to show that you are___________________________ 🙂

But then you get out of town again…

We have been on the road for almost a month now and FINALLY getting into the groove.

Much love to all, thanks for following our travels.

Janet

Beatty and Bullets AZ…

November 25, 2018 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ Leave a comment

“After a thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat, we didn’t wake up until the next morning ” to head west. Well north and then west. We are in Beatty Az now, and we pulled up to our usual place off in the desert. There was another rig there, so we gave them LOTs of space and parked a few hundred yards away. We were just getting out and looking around when there was a series of gun shots.

Well we are kind of used to this having lived for 13 years in Rural Oregon, but not in this situation. Our dog is petrified of the sound, and I think we are a bit uneasy…. SO we packed up and moved to the location, in these pictures. In retrospect, I was thinking…… what a great way to keep an area to yourself 🙂 Just fire off several rounds of bullets whenever someone else shows up.

Tucker took all of his toys OUT Of the motorhome, and left them all around, he clearly liked the new “digs” better…..

We actually went to Wickenburg, on Black Friday, shopping for GEODES 🙂 (then we came to Beatty.

Geodes are…. “a rock containing a cavity lined with crystals or other mineral matter.” this is a wonderful article with great pictures to show how they form GEODES

What we are finding each year we rock hound is that each year we get better at spotting certain characteristics: You can see in this lower left one a bubbly sort of outside… “Botryoidal”, is the geology term for bubbly.

Sometimes only a few bubbles…

SOME BIG bubbles…

Then PRESTO…..beautiful crystals inside. Some you crack open and nothing inside. For the most part, we are trying to leave them all intact, so we can cut them properly with a saw when we get to Quartzite… or when we get home.

We are getting back in to Cactus territory, so once again looking for booties for Tucker….. turns out what we are going to need to do is to order them and have them delivered to a USP in a town we are planning on getting to. They are a very specialty item and though stores SAY that they carry them, what they mean is that they can GET THEM IN…. which is not much use to travellers.

Although I failed to get a decent picture, we were recently at a gas station and while wandering around I found a series of bird nests in very prickly cacti… … Could not help but wonder how the little ones learning to fly must be VERY accurate taking off.

Well expect to get some DAZZLING Pictures this year from Brenda. In previous years we could only get SO far out to find rocks, as the motorhome is NOT a 4×4, and we could only go SO far in the bikes, because Tucker would get TUCKERED OUT.

Now we just leave the motorhome on one place and go to all the other places with the Jeep.

A Shock….ing story

January 21, 2018 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ Leave a comment

Back when we were in Kingman, Ken came around the back of the rig, while filling up with gas, and there was a guy under our motorhome. EEEK.. Well it turns out that he had been following us and noticed how dreadful our shocks were. He just HAPPENED to have a mobile “replacing shocks” service.
Now although we were very leery, we also had been wanting to change the shocks and it is always extremely complicated to get anything done on our rig (as you will see in this story)…. so we went with it. I got the cash and insisted Ken stay with them the whole time. (after the disastrous brake situation where the guy put one of the callipers on wrong).
So we pulled into the parking lot of a mall, and they got the correct size measurements and one of them went off to purchase them. He came back and within an hour we had brand new shocks on the back of the rig, and it all went well. Kind of funny, as we were driving away, we could see them following another older motorhome…

This blog does not have any associated pictures so I thought I would intersperse a few from the gem show. This is tigers eye from Australia.

SOOOOOO then we decided we wanted to get the shocks replaced for the front. Ken figured he would do it himself.
We were in Parker AZ. Ken found an online ad for a store in Parker, and gave the guy the measurements, and he said that they would be in the next day by 4 and the shop closed at 5.
We went up to Lake Havasu for the day to visit friends and rushed back to Parker in time to get the shocks. We could not find the store, and so Ken phoned again and turns out that the store WAS in Lake Havasu city, where we had been all day. SHEEsh. So then he figured what the heck, and decided to drive up the next day to pick up the shocks anyways (about 35 miles..) He got there and they had ordered the wrong size.
So we hung around another day, deciding to really solve this problem and once more they got the wrong size in. So we decided to give up on this place… and move on down to Quartzite. He went into a shop there and ordered the part and was quite specific….. but once again the wrong park came in.

This is a massive ?? Jasper piece from Australia, the rocks that come from these far away places, they ship them over.

Finally finally … he resorted to the OLD FARTS forum, and one of the guys “BILL” coming to the Safari rally ordered the shocks, picked them up in Havasu and brought them to the rally. They were the correct ones. Ken had a hard time getting one of the old ones off and so “BILL” had the compressor tool to take it off, Ken got them off, put on the new ones and now we have 4 new shocks. So the morale of this long story, is that sometimes…. things that seem pretty weird, work out.

This some of the jewelry that our friends from Hawthorn AZ their shop is called ROCK CHUCK, have made. They do the mining, cut the cabochons AND make the jewelry. These pieces are a mixture of the various gems they mine. Turquoise, and varicite are the two I recognize.

HUGE ammonites from morocco

We have officially said goodbye to Quartzite and are heading up to Havasu to drop off the rental car. It will be great, because it is not much fun driving in 2 vehicles, Tucker gets lonely, he IS a 2 person dog, AND it has not been very useful. We WILL work out something different next year.

BYE for now

ALL MY LOVE

janet

KOFA… and the YUMA proving grounds

January 17, 2018January 17, 2018 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ Leave a comment

We have spent a few days at different parts of KOFA national wildlife reserve. It was established in 1939 to protect the desert bighorn sheep, following a campaign by the Arizona boy scouts. Major Burnham who was a frontiersman, and become and conservationist observed that the populations of bighorn sheep were sharply declining and encouraged the boy scouts to take up the campaign. For 2 years, 10,000 boy scouts campaigned through a “save the bighorn” poster contest. The name KOFA, was derived from an acronym of one of the areas most notable mines the King OF Arizona gold mine. Oddly though, hunting IS allowed for the big horn sheep, but limited.

The mountain range although not particularly high, is extremely rugged, so provides excellent habitat for plant and animals adapted to the harsh desert climate.

The larger mammals like the bighorn sheep and mule deer find refuge from the heat in the caves. We did not actually see any wildlife, as we stayed outside the refuge with the road looking a little much for our rig. The closest we came was Tucker found a shell of a tortoise. Looks like a piece of paper in front of him…

These area are all close to each other, Brenda, Quartzite Blythe. While hiking around Brenda, we were hearing VERY loud sounds…. ….. Guessing we thought they sounded like thunder, or the sound a jet makes when it overcomes the speed of sound (sonic boom). We just did not get what these sounds were. We thought we might come over the next ridge to see that a huge bomb had been dropped.

We put it all together yesterday, hearing these sounds again, realizing that they actually DO test bombs at Yuma proving grounds, which is adjacent to the KOFA wildlife reserve.

Interesting bedfellows? The first area we camped alongside the KOFA mountain range, we had to travel 5 miles along a road going through the proving grounds.

I did not get a picture of the sign as you start into this. It basically said that you were not allowed to stop for any reason over the next 5 miles, as it was military property. Driving south from Quartzite to Yuma, there was a figure in the air that you could see for at least 40 miles in each direction. When we stopped to camp for the night we looked up and OMG, of all the places we could have chosen to camp for the night, we were directly below it. Tucker looked up and barked at it. Ken looked with binoculars and it is attached by cables and the whole lower part of it is cameras…… hmmmm

Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) is a United States Army facility and one of the largest military installations in the world. Situated in southwestern La Pas county and western in southwestern Yuma county approximately the proving ground REALLY IS used for testing military equipment. And here I thought we would be safe by avoiding malls and theatres.

In a typical year, over 500,000 artillery, mortar, and missile rounds are fired, 36,000 parachute drops take place, 200,000 miles (320,000 km) are driven on military vehicles, and over 4000 air sorties are flown from the proving ground’s Laguna military airfield. Though about 90 percent of the proving ground’s workload is devoted to the test and evaluation of weapon systems and munitions, training activities are important. Dozens of units visit the proving ground each year for realistic desert training, especially before deploying overseas.

With regards to the blimp, I found this information. We had thought it was to do with Yuma Proving ground, but turns out it is more about border surveillance.

“For the past two decades, a large aerostat balloon maintained by the U.S. Air Force has rivaled Castle Dome as a fixed point of reference over the southern portion of YPG’s range.
Providing an important link in the “radar fence” along the international border that detects drug-smuggling airplanes, the same principle has been applied to supporting American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For nearly a year, motorists traveling the isolated stretch of Highway 95 that passes through the northern-most section of Yuma Proving Ground have been treated to the site of several more white blimps floating high above the desert floor. They look quaint and placid as they hover, but these dirigibles are being rigorously prepared for action overseas.

Persistent Ground Surveillance Systems (PGSS) marry the most cutting-edge, high-tech detection sensors to an inexpensive platform: an ordinary blimp. The moored lighter-than-air craft float as high as 3,000 feet above the ground, lofting a sensor suite that allows ground controllers to continuously monitor a huge swath of land.”

Which would explain the ever apparent border patrol vehicles.

Ken and I were looking for a certain rock site 2.5 miles south of ” STONE CABIN”, and the directions in the book were a little vague, so I drove the car back up to get my bearings from STONE CABIN and had to go through a border patrol inspection site, complete with dogs etc. This site is permanent between Yuma and Quartzite. I was wondering what they thought about us going back and forth through the site …… looking for a rock site.

Although I do not believe my photos do it justice, these mountains are the most spectacular that we have seen on this trip.

AND then the kitchen sink drain started to leak…..

…. and one more BRAND NEW part to our motor home, gradually we are getting a new motorhome.

MUCH LOVE TO ALL

Janet

Fire Agates

January 14, 2018 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ Leave a comment

Ken and I have become quite interested in Fire agates after finding them at Saddle mountain and near Oatman, Arizona. One might say we have become obsessed……

I should note here that we did not find our treasures in precisely the place the book outlined that we would. Perhaps we were….. thinking outside the box. Turning left instead of right, on one side of the road instead of the other….

It has been hard to envision how the rough form of Fire agate becomes the gems seen in many booths at quartzsite.

rough one of mine… thin layers will need to be removed.

rough of mine

gems at quartzsite

Just google ” fire agates” to see much better photos of them. I HAVE tried stealing pictures off the internet, but am not computer savvy enough to figure out how to do it.

What we have discovered is that there is a little more work involved in getting the rough stone down to the fire agate gem.

The following is an excerpt from an article by Edgar B. Heylmun, PhD 2002 (of course I HAVE corrected his spelling of the word colour) 🙂

“Agate nodules are created when silica, in solution, enters and slowly fills a gas cavity in volcanic rocks. Agate and volcanic rocks have more porosity and permeability than what meets the eye, and layer upon layer of silica is deposited in the cavity until it is filled. Agate may also be deposited in seams and fractures in volcanic rocks. The mineralized solutions were probably formed during the cooling of the volcanic rocks, though considerable silica could be deposited over the years by cold circulating ground water. The porosity of agate is demonstrated by the ease in which agate can be artifically coloured.

Fire agate is a challenge to cut and polish in such a way as to preserve the fire, so it is popular with lapidary artists. The fire is caused by a thin layer of iridescent iron oxide that was deposited in a botryoidal (bubbly) manner. The bubbly nature of the layer was probably caused by small gas bubbles that were later filled with silica and water. It is imperative that the layer of silica covering the iron oxide be clear. Otherwise, the fire would not be discovered. When grinding, a lot of delicate work is required, aided by microscopic examination. There may be several thin layers of iron oxide, each with fire of a different colour, so it is quite a challenge to cut and polish such material en cabochon. The principal flashes of fire are golden yellow to green, but some valuable specimens exhibit a brilliant red. Sometimes, fire is evident in specimens before any cutting is done. The iron oxide is hydrous, so water in the thin layer adds to the fire, as does water in inter-layered silica which may, in fact, be fire opal. One of the lapidary rules is to wet grind fire agate, not saw it.”

There is a “fire” that exists deep in the stone that you must grind/Dremel….. your way into without destroying the stone within. You must use diamond blades and Dremel tools …. but bearing in mind that diamonds are harder than agates, so if you go too far you destroy the “fire agate”.

This is one that I have found that has very little chalcedony covering the fire. I guess it was with this one that we began to understand the process.

I am thinking the process will be great fun, sort of like cleaning the garlic, you peel away the outside layers of the garlic to reveal the colours within. I LOVE that part of being a garlic grower.

… and flowers on the cactus…

Tucker pretending to be a coyote.

and Mr RV repairman KEN…. Kitchen sink was leaking yesterday, now we need to get a new drain. Piece by piece we are buying ourself a brand new RV…….. 🙂

I have struggled writing this Blog, because I did it 2 days ago, and went to post it and it disappeared Hard to write the same thing twice.

MUCH love to all

Janet

Biking and Brenda

January 9, 2018January 9, 2018 ~ mymostrecentobsession ~ Leave a comment

We are having a total blast with these bikes.

We have been experimenting with Tucker, as I realized that it is likely the heat that wears him out. It is not THAT hot here, but there is no real shade. So while we are out on the bikes, he finds whatever places he can for shade. We stop every 1 mile to give him a break, and water, and he seems to be doing better. Yesterday I tried a makeshift “cooling collar”, soaking wet facecloth, but he got it off, today we will try a wet scarf.

Scotch Creek (where we live) is a LOT hotter than this in the summer, but the trails we hike usually have lots of shake trees.

Also sticking to the “roads” which are basically very very rough 4×4 roads, he is not getting any cactus spines in his feet.

AND ME…. I am becoming a real mountain biker. Ken is amazed of the terrain I just weave my way through. BRAVE BRAVE Janet….. These fat tires just ride over everything, and I am now actually trying to steer around big rocks. Usually I see something scary and for some reason just steer straight towards it. I have not crashed in 3 whole days, amazing. The gravel is often quite thick, and with the pedal assist function, (and the fat tires) you just keep going through the gravel….. and yes fishtailing. Ken has this BIG smile on his face.

So each day we are heading out on the bikes, going anywhere from 2-3 miles out and stopping frequently to look for rocks, scenery etc… Having picnics….. getting back to the MH at about 3 in the afternoon. Then we clean all of our rocks, and try to keep only the best.

Which brings me to the part about rock graveyards.

Whenever we find more rocks, we have to go through what we already have and throw some out. So each place we camp, usually has a pile of “what we thought were treasures, but do not think are treasures anymore”. Often what you find today, makes yesterdays finds look like JUST ROCKS.

We CAN tell others do this too, in that often we find other rockhounds rock graveyards. Sometimes we pick through them for special rocks we do not have samples of, but usually end up throwing them away at the next stop. I am sure this entity will be very confusing to geologists in the future.

Well yesterday was laundry day…… and I was wondering what this guy had on his right hip….? Not seen one of those before, likely something to keep his quarters in 🙂

So once a week we go back into town (quartzite ) do the sani dump thing…. fill up with fresh water, drop off our small bags of garbage at the dump and do laundry. That took 2 hours and so we spent the afternoon looking at the thousands of rocks at the gem show which is on now in quartzite.

These are mexican fire agates, we are just learning about how to work with fire agates…. how to bring out the fire, which would be the dark spots on these. I fear my pictures never do the rocks justice.

and a lovely sink we bought for 150.00…. made of limestone from Morocco. We also looked at plates.

and some incredible tigers eye from Australia. Tigers eye is a chatoyant gemstone that the way the minerals align within the rock it gives a wavy type of appearance. Again I wish my pictures did the rocks justice.

The show that is on now is pretty large, and is called the Desert Gardens Gem and mineral show, and it goes the whole month and then from the 17th to the 21st is the HUGE QIA POWWOW which is all the same sellers that are here now, plus many many more. Many specialized rock people JUST come to the pow wow. At least that is how I understand it.

We have met sellers from India, Morocco, South Africa, Argentina, and TEXAS so far. It truly is fun just looking at all the rocks. We have lots of books for identifying the rocks we find, but just like I cannot do the rocks justice with pictures, it seems that neither can anyone else. Much better to see them LIVE. AND all the sellers are more than happy to tell you ALL about the rocks. Great place to learn.

Well back to sorting rocks.

Much love to everyone

Janet