[Rockhounds] Santa Barter Faire: cheap rocks!

[DonH]

John Siebel wrote:

> For anyone who may be in the neighborhood this weekend, the Santa Barter 
> Faire is happening Friday 9/7 through Sunday. Santa is about 20 miles SE 
> of St. Maries, Idaho 

Hi all,

Being about 1.5 hrs. from Santa, and likely the only person on the list 
besides John able to go, and not having seen the Siebels for a while, I 
decided to take a ride.

The day started in the cool 60's with no clouds.  I had a nice ride up 
to Santa.  Despite John's directions I wasn't sure where to turn off, 
but I saw a Sheriff's dputy helping a disabled vehicle so I asked him. 
He said, "oh, you must want the Barter Faire, here's where you go...." 
and off I went.

The road was unpaved and dusty, and I was behind two other vehicles, so 
the car got nicely floured.  Windshield wipers are good for fine dust as 
well.  As I got close to the spot, I could not believe the number of 
cars parked along the road.  As I walked up, there were two large 
hand-painted signs: "NO ALCOHOL"  "NO DRUGS".  People were camped 
everywhere.  John was not exaggerating, in fact he understated the case: 
  there were more tie-dyed clothes, pot-leaf t-shirts, and water pipes 
   in sight than has ever been at the accumulated total of all Grateful 
Dead concerts.  I was certainly the only one there clean-shaven with a 
crew cut, though there was a few college kids out to see the sights (or 
at least I assume they were; they had on clean jeans and t-shirts and 
had caps on backwards).  Forgive me ladies, but I also saw more bra-less 
women in peasant halters than I've ever seen in my life too.  A number 
of people were playing conga drums, none of them in rhythm with each 
other.  I should note at this point that, after looking very hard, I 
never did find John Siebel, and was disappointed!

Back to the important part: there were about three vendors with rocks to 
barter or sell.  One fellow had some nice loose euhedral and subhedral 
garnets up to 1 cm in a dish, along with some nice broken chunks of the 
lavender/purple star garnet rough.  Not being inclined to try to orient 
and cab some star garnet rough, I picked some nice sharp crystals, 
including some twins, eight of them in all.  When I started looking he 
had said "we can do a deal if you get a bunch of stuff," but given how 
things are in the world today, I was expecting the original price to be 
typical retail.  I also bought a few pounds of knapping obsidian for one 
of my new neighbors who said he can't find anything to knap around here. 
  I braced myself as I asked, "what is the total for all this?"  It was 
ten dollars!  That was a very fair price for a bag full of stuff.

All in all, there was more rough than anything else; some picture 
stones, and some lacy agates (good lord don't ask me all the colloquial 
names of rocks).  However these things were going for pretty low prices, 
with bulk discounts, and any local lapidary would have done well to 
stock up.  Except for the garnets, there wasn't much worthwhile in 
mineral specimens.

After buying a nice bag of rocks, I got some Chinese ginger candy and a 
yak sausage and yak jerky.  Then I took the dusty road back.  It was 
quite an experience, and now I know a little bit of what Woodstock must 
have been like.

On the way home I stopped at the Elk River Country Cafe (in Elk River 
with a population of 170) which, believe it or not, has been voted for 
the best hamburger in the region, and even better, was featured in the 
New York Times travel section on July 1 for having the best huckleberry 
cobbler in the northwest!  Well the fine fellow who owns the place was 
proud as a peacock over that one, waving the paper around.  Of course 
that's why I made the detour, and I nodded in agreement as I rapidly 
spooned the tart purple cobbler into my mouth as fast as I could swallow.

On the way there and back it was open range day--cows chilling in the 
road everywhere.  While waiting for them to decide what to do, I played 
my music and sang songs for them.  I had my Johnny Maestro CD.  For the 
record, they seem annoyed at "The Worst That Could Happen," but are 
msemerized by "Welcome Me Love."

Well, sorry that 95% of this was NOT about rocks, but people seem to 
like the colorful trip reports that others post.  So there is mine!

Best,
Don