Category Archives: Rock Hunts

Greenstone Bonnie

Bonnie was the Greenstone Queen on a recent collecting trip to the Keweenaw.

The Greenstone Queen hold some of her best ones.

I was scheduled to demonstrate wire-wrapping for a couple days at the awesome Copper World in Calumet. I really enjoy making jewelry and visiting with customers, many of them old friends after purchasing Snob Appeal Jewelry over the years. Bonnie went digging Michigan Greenstones (chlorastrolite) while I was busy at CW.

You never know what you have when it comes to Greenstones in the rough. She did dig up quite a few suspects. We went out together the next day and she again out-hunted me.

The spoil piles where we used to just find nice Greenstones left and right are mostly gone, being crushed up for road fill. Right now much of the crushed rock is being used for logging operations. Isle Royale Greenstones, particularly good ones, are getting much harder to find every year. We are just thankful we still have some for sale. I have also noted that these rare Gemstones are not only popular in the Upper Peninsula, but we have sold them to customers in several States. I think some savvy people are noting that these little green beauties are one of the most extraordinary gemstones on earth.

Here is the almost finished Greenstone.

I came home and cut out stones. Most were small with varying quality. Bonnie did find one Quarter sized stone that had a thin, but perfectly patterned layer. I carefully worked this stone to develop its’ pattern. Cutting Greenstones is exceptionally challenging. You have to know precisely when to stop or you will cut right through the pattern. There is a razor thin line between a perfect cut and a worthless stone. Slow and careful is the secret.

After a slight re-cut for balance, I finished this one. Pretty nice!

I ended up with a very fine, chatoyant beauty, of 4 grams. The biggest Greenstone she has ever found, and a real showpiece.

I re-cut the cab slightly to make it more uniform, than wrapped it in Pink Gold and Gold Gold. The Greenstone’s huntress was very happy.

I also found two very large Greenstones with Pink Prehnite inclusions that I purchased. These two stones came off Isle Royale between 1932 and 1942, before Isle Royale was a National Park.

At 8 grams each, these are museum sized beauties with a good story. You seldom find anything like this anymore.

I was told that the area where these were found is buried under a path that the National Park created. The stones were found by a family that rented cabins on the island back in the day. Somebody is going to acquire some nice Isle Royale Greenstone jewelry when I wrap these.

Bonnie done those Greenstones proud. You gotta love a woman that doesn’t mind getting dirty, and looks good doing it.

Not much of a city anymore, but hopping during the Copper Era.

Petoskey Stones-Hunting in December?

Do we go Christmas Shopping or rock hunting? What a stupid question!!

Seldom does Northern Michigan weather allow rock hunting in December. Under normal circumstances we would be under at least a foot of snow by mid-December.
Unusual temperatures above 50 as well as misty conditions came together to allow for one amazing Petoskey Stone Hunt.

Where's the Petoskey Stone?

I no longer hunt Petoskey Stones on the beach for several reasons. The main reason right now is that the water level is way low and the rocks are covered in moss and slime. You cannot even identify a Petoskey Stone under this mess. The second reason; as experience has taught me that the more perfect, mud-free Petoskey Stones, can only be found in the on shore gravels. I hunt a few private gravel pits for the best stones.

Just a bunch of plain sandy rocks?

Today we found the stones damp from the mist, and washed out of the gravel by the melted snow cover. Bonnie was happy today with her finds. She sometimes is discouraged as she has trouble finding Petoskey Stones if the weather dries up. Today was moist, but not drowning us. Treasures were found by both of us.

Fist sized Petoskey Stones seemed more common than usual. We found some nice little bead stones and several of the most coveted Pink Petoskey Stones. I picked up an assortment of glacially tumbled rocks to consider for jewelry later.

After they're sorted and washed, they look a LOT better.

I sorted the stones by “Grade A”, “Pinks”, and what I call “Weirdos”. These include all the other fossils, jaspers, agates, and strange stuff that the glaciers brought for me to find.

The "Nice Ones" pile.

Today I found Petrified Wood, Pudding Stones, Agates, and assorted “Heinz Stones” (These are stones that are all mixed up and contain a lot of stuff). I usually identify some of the materials within these Heinz Stones, but some of these stones are really stunners.

The "Weirdos" pile.

My Favorite, the rare "Pink Petoskey Stone" pile. Three to five of these is a good day indeed!

We have actually hunted Petoskey Stones on New Years Day several years ago, but rock hunting, especially a great hunt, seldom happens in December.

Sad to Leave Copper Country

Our favorite beach to watch the sunset-just south of Dapple Grey B&B on M26 near Copper Harbor.

As the sun sat over Lake Superior on our last night in the Copper Country, we reflected on the amazing time we had. Sure there were some difficulties on the trip, and you just cannot go get everything you might need without driving 40 miles. Still, we love this place.

The same beach is scenic during the day also.

The Yoopers are a very independent species. They have to be. They have all the important things like pasties, fresh air, scenery, rocks, Vollwerth meats, Copper World, rocks, no freeways, beautiful, sunsets, snow, Monk’s Muffins, and rocks.

I have started cutting my treasures today, as well as working on some custom jobs I picked up while up there. People find rock treasures and bring them to me to cut, polish, and make into their own wire-wrapped gemstone jewelry.

We have loads of good friends in the Keweenaw, as mentioned in a previous blog. Many of our local friends show up where they are least expected. The latest was Robin from Garden Goods, the garden store we shop at in Traverse City who showed up at the campground host’s coffee hour!

Thanks for saving the crest of Brockway Mountain.

Rock hunting is not as good as it used to be. Mine waste piles are being crushed up and hauled away for logging roads. The natural beauty of the area is being threatened by all the trees being cut. Even though the Keweenaw is a National Historic Park, it seems not to matter that the mine piles are being taken away. I feel that these piles are also historical sites and should be protected.

One good sign is that money has been raised to purchase the land and save the crest of Brockway Mountain. We saw a rebuild underway at the overlook of Copper Harbor on Brockway Drive. New stone border walls and benches are expected which should make it safer.

What lovely things you see off the beaten path.

If you really want to get away you just can’t beat the Keweenaw. We’ll be headed back up for color. I expect it to be early this year. We saw trees have begun to change already. We’ll remember the good times we had in the U.P.

Thomsonite Salvaged from the Road

It’s always a dilemma to know what rock to go hunting for in the Keweenaw. The choices include scouring the rock piles Chlorastrolite (Greenstone), Datolite, Prehnite, Thomsonite, or walking the beaches for Lake Superior Agates. All of these Michigan stones are good for jewelry, so it is a pleasure to add any of them to my supply piles. Just as a lark, Bonnie & I decided to wander north in search of something, and ended up on a two-track where we had previously found Prehnite and Thomsonite.

Too bad I chipped this one.

As is my usual habit, I drive slowly down the track, and peer out the window. As I was looking out the window, I saw a small white rock nodule lying in the middle of the road. If you have ever hunted Thomsonite or Verigated Prehnite (U.P. Thomsonite), you would know to look for white bleached out nuggets of rock in the banks and the trail. I took my pick and without completely getting out of the car, hit the end of it, exposing a wonderful eyed Thomsonite. I should never have his this stone, but fortunately I just chipped it. I don’t believe I’ve ever found a nicer Thomsonite. These are so very rare when they are beautiful colors with eyes.

All day long we looked for similar pieces, but never even came close. Some days are like that, you find the best thing first, and then all the rest fails to deliver that same excitement. I can’t wait to get home and put that stone under my grinder. It will surely be the best drive-by road hunt I’ve ever had. And it was shady too. A “Cool” rock hunt in more ways than one.

The finest piece of Pink-eyed Thomsonite I ever found in the Keweenaw,

There will be more on this stone when it is finished and in a pendant.

Cliff Mine-Prehnite Hunting

The hounds are released on the Cliff Mine Pile.

The pile was bulldozed and the Copper Country Mineral Retreat hunt at the Cliff Mine began at 9am. A good crowd of eager hunters attacked the pile. A nice trench was excavated and some entered it while others, like me hunted the surface. The Cliff, even though hunted for over a hundred years by rockhounds, still produces some fine copper specimens as well as other copper associated minerals. Native American Indians hammered this copper in prehistoric times, and chisel chips left from their mining are found at the Cliff today.

A nice trench was excavated and our buddy Keith from Baltimore found his way into it.

A great view of the Cliff mine showing the trench that fellow rockhounds were searching.

Since I already have so much native copper, Bonnie and I spent the day hunting for gem Prehnite for our jewelry. The Prehnite at the Cliff formed in small veins maybe a few inches thick and is apple green and speckled with copper. We were quite successful and found good pieces with some help from Pam Hecht who is a good buddy and led the hunt.

Prehnite comes in various forms and colors in the Copper Country. One of my favorites is referred to as “U.P. Thomsonite” and is verigated, often with eyes. Prehnite comes in assorted pastel colors, the most common being pink and green.

A seam of Copper bearing Prehnite from the Cliff Mine.

Here is some of that Prehnite on my workbench. Notice the copper?

The Cliff mine was the first successful copper mine in the Copper Country of the state of Michigan. The mine is at the now-abandoned town of Clifton in Keweenaw County. Mining began in 1845, and the Cliff was the most productive copper mine in the United States from 1845 through 1854. Large-scale mining stopped in 1878. The Cliff was a fissure mine where the seams of copper were vertical.

Fissure mines are always interesting to search. I spent the day looking for gem quality Prehnite, and Bonnie and I found many nice pieces. These veins of Prehnite are commonly no more then an inch or so wide with a split down the middle as the Prehnite formed in from the outside of the vein and met in the middle. Much of this Prehnite is loaded with specks of Copper and is a pleasing apple green color.

Although amygdaloid and conglomerate deposits of the Keweenaw tended to be lower-grade than the fissure deposits, they were much larger, and could be mined much more efficiently, with the ore blasted out, hoisted to the surface, and sent to stamp mills located at a different site. Amygdaloid and conglomerate mining turned out to be much more productive and profitable than fissure mining, and the majority of highly successful mines were on amygdaloid or conglomerate lodes. The first mine to successfully mine a strataform ore body was the Quincy Mine in 1856. The most productive deposit, the Calumet conglomerate, was opened by the Calumet and Hecla mining company in 1865. (Mine information from Wikipedia)

I’ll be excited to cut this Prehnite and make some attractive pendants.

Copper Agates and Brolling

I got an opportunity to use my new rock-hunting tool, the Broll (I think it’s an abbreviation for a bucket roller). The Broll has recently come on to the market and is a wonderful, work saving device. I saw it advertised in Rock and Gem magazine, and my wife got it for me as a gift. It has large wheels and a ring that holds a five gallon bucket. I tried it a few times at home and found the only issue I had with it was it only had a grip handle.

Brolling on the rock pile.

Being a tinkerer I added a wagon type handle, making the Broll more towable. I mounted the handle vertically. This is my natural position for towing it. I had the opportunity to use it on the rock pile and on the beaches of Lake Superior. The bucket swings in its ring making it swing back and forth as I pull it across the very uneven terrain of the mine dumps! What a verstile tool!

A Broll on a stroll.

It easily holds my hammers and small tools as well as a load of rocks. Get one; the Broll is really great. No–I do not hold stock in the company!

How can you have so many rocks and no agates?

I found one very nice Copper Agate that really set off my pinpoint detector. It is in its ugly stage in the rock so I’ll show you later when I cut it out.

The beach produced a couple small agates, some Unakite, Quartz Crystals, and assorted “pretty” rocks for Bonnie’s gardens.

Today we are going to our first organized hunt at the Medora Mine. Looking for Greenstones!!

Sorting Lakers in Minnesota

Except for the occasional construction zones, getting to Minnesota was uneventful. We are camping in one of my buddies cemetery. I could make a joke or two, but I’ll keep my mouth shut on the campsite. We are 5 minutes from the Celebration of Agates Show at the Hopkins High School. Seminars and set up are today, and we are looking forward to it.
We got in yesterday and parked between a couple trucks that occasionally work the gravel pit on the property. I’ll say more about that later.

Two of the three and a half buckets of Lakers.

Fred, my friend that owns the cemetery, had saved three 5 gallon buckets of Lake Superior Agates and other assorted glacial rocks from the aforementioned gravel pit.

I'm just FORCING myself to sort these Lakers.

I spent a few hours sorting and so far I have one 5 gallon pail of agates and one bucket of leaverites; Nice rocks, but space limits me to the cream of the crop. One bucket to go yet. SO depressing having to sort all these agates. Ha! ha!
Later on we walked up to the small gravel pit where a couple large piles of roof rocks were stored, and guess what. It started raining and dampened the rocks. We had fun looking for Lakers and found a few. How good is this for a day? Can today be any better? Stand by and see.

I never got a chance to post this on Wednesday, so let’s continue. We attended several interesting seminars today and perhaps I will expand on this in the future. I am in a hurry tonight (Thursday). We just ate and have to run back for some last minute set up at the Celebration of Agates.

When we went back to the RV, I see there is another half bucket of agates to sort through, so I have to sort 1 1/2 buckets tonight. What stress I am under (NOT)! The big show gets underway tomorrow at noon.

On the Workbench at Copper World

Bonnie's agate and Datolite. I wonder what color it is?

This past weekend we made it to the Copper Country for one last trip. The colors were not in bloom yet, but we had great weather for a couple of hunts. We found some great Greenstones in matrix at the Central Mine and Bonnie and I both found a Datolite. Bonnie sat down to dig a hole and had worked on it for 20 minutes, searching for the elusive Datolite. She sat down and found one under her knee right out in the open. We have not cut her Datolite yet, but this mine has white, blush green, and some light brown Datolite.

I'm working at Copper World-I Love this place!

I wire wrapped at Copper World in Calumet all day Saturday. I have great fun talking to patrons as I explain the wire wrapping process. I had a great day all the way around. While I was wire wrapping Bonnie went to the beach and found a nice Lake Superior Agate right in a spot that hundreds of others had probably walked over at a public park. It pays to know what you are looking for!

The workbench produced several pendants including two wonderful Michigan Greenstones, a Lake Superior Agate, and a Prehnite.

My workbench at Copper World. Also notice the orange Laker "paint" agate on the bench.

The Prehnite is a cabochon of the Prehnite seam I found at the Cliff Mine and is shown in the blog I posted on August 12th. As I suspected, this apple green Prehnite was loaded with copper. I cut several nice cabs from this rock. I wrapped it in Argentium and double gold filled wire. I think the round shape and the copper inclusions made this piece a standout. What do you think? It will make a wonderful piece for someone.

The finished pendant was just amazing.

My Best Datolite Ever

The faithful husband encouraging Bonnie to "did faster".

The faithful husband encouraging Bonnie to "dig faster".

The pitter patter of light raindrops was my alarm clock. Bonnie & I were up and off before dawn’s light. Only a thermos of coffee and a portable monk’s muffin went with us, as we hurried to our destination. The goal was to get there before “The Badger” got there. .(Why? I don’t know—a point of honor I guess.) We had seen him digging a hole the other day, and knew he was attacking the rock pile with a sense of purpose. We saw evidence of his success and wanted to be successful too.

Don's BIG hole.

Everybody was digging BIG holes

Chrystal's odd find while metal detecting

Krystal's odd find while metal detecting. Would this be a "float hammer" just because she was looking for "float copper"?

At 6:00 am the traffic is pretty light on US 41 in the Keweenaw, but low and behold a car appeared and turned into our very own destination rock pile. I knew who it was! Yes, the Badger, a vigorous and determined datolite digger had arrived moments before us. The bad news was that the rain disappeared, and had not been sufficient to clean off the rock recently moved around there, so there was no datolites washed out. At least the dawn had come on enough that we could see.

We watched the experienced work of the Badger (this is not his real nickname, I just called John this because of his digging skill) and joked around with him. He is a recently Tech grad in geology engineering and is goofing off this summer gathering datolites and other rock treasures. John Dezelski dug and looked. He ended up the day with around a dozen. Bonnie & I dug and between us finally got 3. You have to develop an eye, because otherwise they are camouflaged.

"Don"atolite

I have been hunting minerals in the Keweenaw for years now, but I always focused on greenstone and “cutting material”, a vague term used to cover pretty rock found in this area–Patricianite, Prehnite, and others. I have dug for datolites before, but I don’t recall finding many! Luckily sometimes when you’re digging you find other stuff to please you.

Greenstones seem to be getting harder to find as the years go by, especially real nice big ones. All my old glory holes have been hauled away for road fill. We used to get Greenstones and Datolite at many locations and now those piles are gone. It’s not like the good old days. If you want a greenstone or datolite at a reasonable price, act now. Less supply means higher prices.

Aliens and Salamanders

Copper Harbor (left) with sheltered harbor and Lake Superior on far left. Lake Fannie Hooe on the right. We are camped on the west side of the lake.

Today was a wonderful 75 degrees with a nice breeze. It rained during the night so we thought maybe some Greenstones would be washed out at the Central Mine. We headed out with our rock buddies Chris and Krystal, but had limited luck. There was not enough rain to wash the stones out.

It's a long way down US41 to Miami from here.

I found a rock with a drill core hole in it and forgot to take it when we left. I stashed it so I’ll get it tomorrow. I thought it would make a great planter for Bonnie. We all got a few things, but nothing to brag about. We left the Central and headed out to the logging road where Chris found his float copper the other day.

Chris again was the star, with a nice Lake Superior Agate he found where the bulldozer tracks were in the logging area. He also found a couple small pieces of Float Copper and Crystal found a small piece of float also. I hiked back into the bush and found an exposed Prehnite outcrop where I picked up a couple pieces to cut later.

These guys were digging so fast they were just a blur.

After we had lunch Chris, Bonnie, and I hiked back to the Prehnite area to dig. Krystal rested in the car as she got little sleep due to a bear roaming around their campsite during the night. We all dug, but the holes produced little except the blue spotted salamander Bonnie unearthed which was interesting to examine. It emitted some sticky substance from glands in its’ tail onto Chris. We released it so it could crawl back into a hole.
Just after that wildlife encounter the strangest alien looking bug landed on Chris. It stood still long enough for we to get a great shot of it. If anyone can ID either this Salamander or the bug, please let me know.

The Salamander. When we sprayed water on him he really was excited.

We think the "alien" is a moth. Does anyone know about this chartreuse bug?

We split up and Bonnie and I checked some outcrops on Brockway Mountain Drive for rare agates, but found none.

I think after some burgers on the grill we will go downtown Copper Harbor and be tourists tonight.