[Rockhounds] Trip Report - Denver Area

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

My oldest daughter, Norma, moved to Denver last August for a job, along 
with her husband, Brian. My wife, Monica, and our youngest daughter, 
Grace, went with me to visit them in a quick trip this past week.

We left Grand Rapids, MI, late last Friday morning and drove to 
Lincoln, Nebraska, before finding a place to sleep. We arrived in 
Denver Saturday evening. Sunday was family time to catch up, go to 
Church, and watch some Olympics.

Monday we visited the Colorado School of Mines Museum in Golden, toured 
the Celestial Seasonings plant (they have a prairie dog preserve on 
their grounds), visited the Coor's Brewery, and went to Lookout 
Mountain to visit Buffalo Bill's gravesite and enjoy the views. I 
highly recommend the Mining Museum, and their gift shop; I took a lot 
of pictures of outstanding specimens.

We also stopped at Red Rocks on the way back and saw an outstanding 
rainbow (I hope the pictures turn out). On the way back we also stopped 
at a great roadcut and collected millions of years of sand/silt stones 
covering most of the colors in the rainbow. I'm looking forward to 
learning more about the geology behind my specimens.

Tuesday was the high point of my collecting trip. We drove to Pete 
Modreski's house and loaded collecting tools into our van. I was very 
pleased that Jane (a fellow Michigander) decided to come along. Pete 
and I had been conspiring for months about this trip. It was a true 
pleasure to finally shake hands with an old friend.

Our first stop was a roadcut occurance of Sillimanite and Fuchsite. 
Jane talked about the fun stuff on the other side of the road.

We continued on to Harris Park where Pete's Club had a claim. I've had 
better days, but good specimens of amazonite and smokey quartz were 
collected. I am used to 500 feet, and collecting at 9,000 feet was hard 
work.

Supper at a Coney Island, serving elk and buffalo dogs, was a real 
treat. The restaurant really was a giant hot dog in shape!

On the way back we stopped at the other side of the road cut Jane had 
identified. Cool Moly minerals, natural asphalt, sulphates, and a 
normal fault from an old earthquake.

While trying to get a good photo of the fault Dr. John Palermo (I hope 
I got his name right) stopped to make sure we were not having problems. 
He invited us to visit his property after finding out what we were 
doing.

Dr. John had a limestone quarry, and lime kiln, that supported the 
original Coors brewery in making glass bottles (by providing the lime 
for soda-lime glass). Pete and I had a chance to collect at a rare 
location, and document an unusual historical site (I sure hope my 
pictures come out). Dr. John's family was connected to some very well 
known oil wells.

The locality also supported an interesting artesian well, and an old 
NASA tracking station (reused by a local TV station). Dr. John was the 
next door neighbor to Adolph Coors. His children have taken over his 
veterinary practice; I wish John was my neighbor.

My thanks to Monica and Jane as Pete and I explored, and took pictures, 
and collected specimens. It was a very long day! I'm glad we took the 
long way back (thanks for showing me dinosaur tracks).

Wednesday we hiked Falcon Mountain before starting the long drive back 
to Michigan.

It is going to take me many weeks to identify and catalog all the 
specimens I collected (thanks again Pete!).

Kreigh