Heading For Home

After five snowy days in Wyoming, we are trying to leave for home. Our plan was to leave Story this morning, go as far as Casper today, and spend this afternoon and Saturday morning rockhounding in Shirley Basin.

It seems, however, that the weather had other ideas. The big snowstorm that was supposed to move in late this morning got here overnight instead. It's supposed to dump 8 inches of snow in Shirley Basin, and the low tonight here is predicted to be -1.

Definitely not good rockhounding weather. That will have to wait for the next trip.

We did get the jade we bought shipped....and we badly underestimated how much we had. While we were hunting I picked up some agates and some other odd pieces of pretty rock that I can't identify--maybe 20 to 25 pounds of it--so I have to figure that into this.

However.......we took 6 large Flat Rate Priority boxes to the Post Office this afternoon. The lightest box weighed 4o pounds, and the total weight was 255 pounds and change. When you allow 10 pounds for the boxes--considering that I reinforced them--and 25 pounds for the other rocks--that still means I just shipped 220 pounds of Wyoming jade home.

I hadn't gone through the buckets until I packed it all. There were a few pieces that don't look like much, but most of it is very nice, and there's a lot of pink jade among it all.

I am really looking forward to getting home and getting it sorted out. Of course, with the African material due in next week, it may be a while before I get all of it organized!

Off to school!

William Holland, here I come!

I found out a couple days ago I received a club scholarship to a week at William Holland School of Lapidary Arts. I had to be sure I could schedule it, and have my dogs and my son covered, before I could commit, but everything is lined up and I'm going to the cabochons class the week of September 6.

Whoo-hoo!

In return, I will come back and teach a minimum of 30 classes at the club.

I've already kind of started getting into what must be done. The president and one of the board members had a piece of equipment torn down, and on Saturday morning I jumped into helping with it. I've already figured out that lapidary equipment isn't rocket science; it's more just common sense. And the more I can learn, the more I can fix--plus the more of my own I can fix.

Now I need to find somewhere close to William Holland where I can go dig rocks. We get out at noon on Wednesday and have the afternoon off, so I want to go somewhere I can do some rockhounding.

In the beginning.........

OK, let's start with: I love rocks. I remember being about six or seven years old and reading a magazine article about mining opal in Australia. The idea of digging something so beautiful out of the ground, one small rock at a time, fascinated me. I wanted to go to Australia and own an opal mine!

When I went to college--Florida State University, class of 1975--I majored in biology but I had to take a few other courses in other sciences. I chose a geology course, thinking I would learn something about rocks.

NOT!

It was about planetary formation and plate tectonics and stuff like that, and after the first two weeks I was bored to tears.

Then real life intervened and I was busy making a living, and fast forward to four years ago. I happened to be in Michael's and saw a tumbler kit for sale and bought it on a whim to tumble some rocks. It was a miserable failure, but it whetted my appetite for rocks again.

So I got on eBay and bought a Lortone tumbler and some tumbling rough and got started. Now I have five Lortone double tumblers and ten tumbler loads going at any given time.

Then I found the local gem and mineral club--Tampa Bay Mineral and Science Club--and started learning wire wrapping. It wasn't long before I was cutting cabochons and learning silversmithing.

Then some equipment became available and I bought a very old Lortone 12-inch slab saw and a used Lortone combination saw/cabbing unit.

See how this thing kind of snowballed?