Favorite Self-Collected Specimens

Paul: That is a beautiful agate. When my wife and I go to the Upper Peninsula, we go via Minnesota along the Mississippi river. There are numerous places where we find Lake Superior agates in old rock quarries, walking the gravel county roads, and in plowed farm fields. We have yet to check out the Wisconsin side of the river. We then continue to the U.P. We always make reservations to stay with our good friends Bob and Cherri Hughes, owners of the White house Motel in Mohawk. We eat breakfast at Slim's cafe next door, and two or three days a week we have our evening meal across the street at the White house Inn. White house Inn has what is called the Senior Prom every Sunday evening (good food, local band, dancing for......of course seniors!!!!!!!!! We have really grown to enjoy mingling with the locals and listening to stories of old. We do however put in a lot of hours in hunting beach agates. We usually go down to the lake at the mouth of the Gratiot river and walk the beaches from 8-9 am till sunset. I have peripheral neuropathy in my legs (Charcot Marie Tooth disorder) and cannot keep up with my wife in walking great distances very fast. I actually get down on my knees and with a sturdy 3 foot long child's rake will dig holes in the stones and gravel with much success in finding agates and fossils. All together now we probably have somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000-10,000 agates. We probably have 2-3,000 fossils. When driving the back roads in Minnesota looking for agates, we came across a couple hillside locations where we gathered some fabulous sand formations. Almost like finding desert roses in Arizona. They were fragile till I sprayed them with hairspray to keep them from crumblling away. We are not booksmart about these things, we just love the outdoors and each other's company. I just stumbled on your post here while I was trying to find a way to post on locality talk pages. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to put a post up about how I shold be able to get on localities. Still haven't found the way to do so yet. When I click on the discussion panel, it drops down to "localities" but there is not a drop down for "create talk pages". I feel terrible that you, Scott, and others are spending your valuable time trying to help me do this. I am sure it is some simple thing I am overlooking. I run the mouse over every inch of the page trying to find an outlet that will allow me to post. (1) I go to message board and click on "Localities"....(2) I have gone to the only post I see that is from Michigan out of nine pages and click on it. (3) When it appears I click on the locality name and then hit the discussion button and only "localities" drops down. (4) Or after I go to the message board and click on "Localities", I go to the search box and type in Keeweenaw, Michigan, USA, hit go, and it says..."Sorry, you do not have permission to post/reply on this forum". I can tell from your posts that you are a learned person. Thank you so much for giving me a chance to babble on. I am positive when I figure out how to get around on this website, get a better camera to take photos, and learn the do's and do not's of cleaning minerals, I shall be taking up a lot of space with my postings. Have a good one Paul. Bill

Bill,

It sure sounds like there is a problem with your membership level.

Managers, would somebody please check this out for Bill?


As another test, search for "Keweenaw Co., Michigan, USA" This should bring you to the Keweenaw Co. locality page. When I'm logged out, there are only three menu choices at the top of the page: Display, Photos, and Search. When I'm logged in, there are these three, plus Discussion, Favourites, and Edit. Putting my mouse over Discussions brings up just one choice in a drop-down menu: Create Talk Page. If I click on this, it takes me to the Start a New Topic screen. If it doesn't work this way for you, there's a problem with your membership level.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2012 02:11PM by Dan Fountain.

Dan: I pulled up localities site. Typed in "Keeweenaw Co., USA", hit "search", it came back "No results found for this site". There was the box with my name....Author....Billl Boehm....right above that it said "New topic". I clicked on that, waited a couple seconds and.......same response.........."Sorry, you do not have permission to post/reply to this forum". It must be me. It is embarrasing to me to be such a "pain in the _ _ _ to all the good people that have tried to help me out. Dan you, Paul, Scott, Rock Currier, David and a few others have offered suggestions as to how I should proceed and it just must be me. I went to a couple other sites and was able to click on new topic and could have posted. I didn't because I was just testing to see if I could. I appoligize to you people on this forum for using this space to complain about my inadequancies in navigation. I am not really good on a computer but I thought I could tackle this. I'm beginning to sound like a broken record.......Bill

Bill Boehm Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Dan: I pulled up localities site. Typed in
> "Keeweenaw Co., USA"

Try spelling it Keweenaw Co., Michigan, USA

Do this search from a Locality search box like at the bottom of this page, not from the search box in the Locality forum. If I try it from there, I get the same message!

This is a Japan-law twin I found at the PC Mine, north of Basin, Montana, back around 1982...this oddly-shaped habit was referred to as a "Madagascar"-type twin...a few of these were found on matrix, but this is one of the best I got:


William C. (CHRIS) van Laer: "I'm using the chicken to measure it..."

This is an example of the variety of quartz known as "onegite"; it is essentially amethyst that has become saturated with iron so much that it has precipitated out as goethite in the last phases of quartz growth. From the Wissikihon Creek area east of Butte, Montana, in Jefferson County. Note the base of smoky quartz, followed above by amethyst, and finally the brownish, included onegite.


William C. (CHRIS) van Laer: "I'm using the chicken to measure it..."

This specimen came from an uncommonly productive pocket at one of my favorite collecting spots in 2009. The pocket, about the size of a squashed soccer ball, produced a couple of flats of nice specimens and was conveniently located at eye level. Most of the specimens were removed by hand with a padded box held underneath to catch those loose ones that would fall when disturbed. This pocket is shown in the second picture.



Barite, Boulder Hill Mine, Wellington District, Douglas County, NV. 10x7.5x4.5 cm.


This specimen from the pocket shows at the upper left typical zoning outlined by micro stibnite with late-stage, bright red realgar crystals. 4.5x4x2.5 cm.


Pocket containing barite crystals and powdery jarosite (?) rich fill.

Cheers!

Steve



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/24/2012 09:56PM by Stephen Rose.

Dan: I clicked on Localities page. Went to the bottom of the page and in the search for Locality I typed in "Keweenaw Co., Michigan USA", hit search. Keweenaw Co., Michigan USA turned up at the top of he page but there was no tool bar under the -add/edit-search pages - no discussion bar. .....However......all the mines from A to Z were listed! ! ! I loved seeing that but it still doesn't enable me to post. Bill

Bill, I think you needed to click on a locality in that list, go to this locality [www.mindat.org], under the locality name you should see 6 boxes, the 4th box 'discussions' in the drop down menu is create talk page. Can you see this ?

Hi Debbie: I clicked on the www.mindat.org in your posting. Keweenaw Co., Michigan USA came up at the top. There are three (3) boxes there. Display...Photos......Search..... that is all. Thank you. Bill

Bill,

Are you sure you're logged in? Just because it says "Welcome Bill Boehm" at the top of the page doesn't mean you're logged in, just that Mindat recognizes you. If the menu at the top of the page says "Log In", you're not logged in yet. If it says "Log Out", then you are. Hope this helps.

Hi Dan. I sure appreciated your chiming in on this and taking me under your wing so to speak. Yes, when I first go to my favorites and go to mindat.org, I sign in first thing. I have had so many good people trying to help me solve this problem that I am ashamed to even ask for more help. It must be something I am doing wrong. Why is it that I can go to a lot of other sites and post without any problems and have so much trouble with this one site? Thanks Dan. Bill

Hi Debbie Woolf: No matter what I do I cannot get to a discussion panel that has a drop down panel that says 'create talk page'. However, Dan Fountain was kind enough to start a talk page for me so untill I find out what is wrong at least I will be able to vent all my ramblings on to a lot of receptive ears. As Dan questions, maybe there is something wrong with my membership level. If any of the managers view this would/could you investigate this for me? My sincere thanks to all of you for your attempts to help me. Bill

Sorry you're having so many problems using the site Bill, but it appears Dan has come to the rescue in creating a talk page about the Keweenaw!!

Back to favourite self-collected minerals; this is a true case of where patience can really pay off. This specimen featuring copper wires in prehnite with calcite and silver was pounded out of a much larger rock at the Osceola No. 4 Shaft in Houghton Co., Michigan back in 2003. FOV on this is about 2 cm across with the wire being 5 mm long.

Fluorite crystals on a shard of iron oxide-stained barite. 6x4.5x3 cm. Boulder Hill Mine, Wellington District, Douglas County, Nevada



Cheers!

Steve

About 15 years ago, I got into a large series of vugs that produced about 20 flats of this iron-stained barite. This is one of only a few pieces I have left, about 10 by 12 cm across. From Palm Park, Dona Ana County, New Mexico, USA.

First I would like to echo the previous commentor that said to move the recent off topic discussions to the newly set up thread and keep this thread to the topic of self-collected specimens with accompanying pix. This Indiana geode, from Monroe County, found in 2008 shows a calcite, barite and unusual gypsum (selenite needles). These are very uncommon in Indiana geodes, but are occasionally found in Keokuk area geodes from Western Illinois, Iowa and adjacent areas of Missouri.

Nice, Bob! I don't remember ever seeing or hearing about geode-gypsum from that area.

This little baryte with minor fluorite is from the same location as my previous couple of postings, the Boulder Hill Mine near Wellington, Nevada. It measures 6x4x3 cm.



Cheers!

Steve

HI STEPHEN Thanks for your kind words and support. Here is a website that shows some collectors' collections of Keokuk and related geodes from over in that area. Note that no Indiana geodes are included, but some really nice and different ones are presented. www.firstcrackgeodes.com Note that several do contain selenite needles variety of gypsum. BOB

Interesting website, Bob. Thanks for the information.

We'll do the baryte thing, one more time. I think that I posted a picture of this one some time back on another thread, but it is worth another look.

This geode is from the "aragonite" road cut on (old) SR37 about 5.5 miles north of Bloomington in Monroe County, Indiana. It was collected in 1965. The pale yellow baryte prisms are partly coated by a late stage of worm-like aggregates of calcite rhombs. The larger calcite rhombs are partly eroded and the original carbonate layer on the quartz shell, probably ferroan dolomite or ankerite, has been altered to iron oxides. Overall size: 8x7x4.5 cm. Large baryte is 2.5 cm. long.



Cheers!

Steve



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/27/2012 06:02PM by Stephen Rose.