Pisgah Crater for lava, agate, Newberry Nodules

Nodules proved difficult to find, and it wasn't until the sun was setting and we'd travelled high up the steep wild hillsides that nodules began to appear in abundance. Jeff and I both found bubbly white chalcedony swirled with reddish brown, similar to the amazing veins containing fire agate 150 miles south in Blythe. We visually scoured the hillside looking for a source, but 2 weathered pieces were all that was found.

Opal Hill Mine for Fire Agate, bubbly chalcendony, psilomelane (romanechite)

Mule Canyon Agate, Ulexite

Beautiful scenery in the hills behind Calico Ghost town. Specimens are easily found everywhere along the road, which runs down the center of a large dry wash. Kicking over a weathered rock may perhaps reveals beautiful banded agate and fragile slabs of ulexite

Acton, California for an exciting mine adventure, Malachite,

High on the side of a steep hill off of S

Howlite in Tick Canyon, CA

Howlite is a soft, easily workable, even dye-able, white stone. On either side of Davenport road, about ____ miles from Agua Dulce Road, black hill is spotted with white exposed chunks of collecting material. Specimens are abundant, and gathering is as simple as stepping outside your vehicle. Sizes range from coin size fragments to softballs sized chunks. The outside appearance is similar to cauliflower. One of the first surprising lessons I learned as a rock hunter was not to judge the outside appearance of a rock. After being exposed to the elements for countless years, the outside has weathered and oxidized, and in the case of howlite, turned black!

 Breaking open a black nugget of howlite will reveal and snow white interior, often laced with black veins. It is lovely!

34.895646, -116.768875

Garnet Hunting in the Marble Mountains - CA

A small brown mountains contains seams of garnets. A small brown mountain, you say? From where we sit, mountains abound, some big and some small, some so far out on the horizon and to seem blue, and somewhere, sparkling for the pleasure of the sun alone, seams of garnets wait to be unsewn. The silence of mountains made of marble.