It's Spring.... Lets go Rockhounding!

Well, we all had cabin fever pretty bad around the Brown home. Jordan had been bugging me for weeks to go out and look for rocks. So, we finally got out and did it.

We woke up a little early for a Saturday morning and we all hurried up to finish up our chores. By 10:00 a.m. we were off. We were not out of Boise long before our first adventure hit. Some nice lady riding a bike had a minor accident and had fallen onto the sidewalk. We stopped to make sure she was fine... she was. The only thing hurt was her pride. Once that was out the way, we ventured on.

I wanted to go somewhere remote and somewhere we had never gone before. Most of our best finds had been around the Succor creek area, and we had pretty good luck in the canyon below the Morrisonite claims. So, the next logical location would be somewhere between the two sites, somewhere south of Mahogany Mountain.

We headed down US 95 and took the southern entrance to Succor Creek road. After passing a 4 wheeler, a motorcycle and a bunch of cowboys herding cattle, we came to our turnoff. We ended up stopping for a break at this point. We let the dogs and boys out and hunted around for rocks. Succor creek has some amazing picture jasper if you can find it. We did. Both Tammy and I found same great chunks of picture jasper, while my sons found jasper with very interesting patterns.

We drove and drove slowing down at times and looking at the side of the road for any sign of good rock. It took a long time to go about 30 miles. During this whole time we only passed 2 people and they were on horseback... I certainly got my wish for a remote location.


Rough area of where we played

Eventually we stopped on a hunch and to take care of some business - this turned out to be one of the best rock sites we have ever chanced upon. The view was amazing, the rocks were plentiful, the air smelled so good - filled with the fresh scent of new sage.



Tammy with Ginger - pretty view

Off the road a little way we found rocks of deep red and green and pocketed with small, solid thundereggs filled mostly with opal. Sometimes we would find blue opel and one specimen showed fire. Beautiful stuff.

We had also found some green jasper in decent quantity and size. Lots and lots of agate - layered druzy that was built up like fire agate, some lacy matierial, a little seem agate, a little fortification agate, and lots of water line agate from thundereggs that had eroded.

After scouring the ground for a few hours we all headed up a hill to a cliff face that was pocketed with lots of holes...which is usually a good sign for thundereggs. Instead of thundeggs, we found lots of small geodes and the boys had a blast cracking them open. Most of the time they had brown or clear crystals inside, but a few were lined with amethyst and sparkled purpled. No big crystals but a lot of fun.



Jordan finding geodes

Jacob looking at a collection of small geodes

After lots of fun, work, and sun we all climbed in Jeep and headed back.

On the way, the boys got to see a Sheep herder and his dogs drive a fairly large herd of sheep across the desert.

By the time we got home, we were all dog gone pooped out.

I will leave with one last picture of our "haul".