[Rockhounds] Fwd: 2007 KY Fluorite Fieldtrip Reports - Final Installment (was: Got Fluorite?)

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

Thank you Nate!

It has been a real pleasure to read your vivid installments of a great 
collecting trip.

Kreigh


On Sunday, Sep 21, 2008, at 23:07 America/Detroit, Nathan Martin wrote:

>
>  Here is the final installment of my 2007 KY fluorite fieldtrip log.
>
> ---------------10/12/07--------------
> On Monday night a cold front moved through the Marion, KY area 
> bringing a
> little rain, some thunder and lightning and a much-appreciated break 
> to the
> heat.  The sunrise Tuesday morning was spectacular as the diffracted 
> rays of
> the sun just below the horizon gave pink edges to the departing 
> clouds.  I
> had called Bill Frazier the night before to tell him that there were 4 
> of us
> who wanted to go back for one more day at the Eureka Mine.  I also 
> told him
> that I would show him a promising location to do some excavating to 
> enhance
> future collecting at the mine.  At 8 AM the four diehards (Bret 
> Howard, June
> Epp, John Campbell and Nate Martin) met Bill at the museum parking lot 
> and
> headed back out to the mine.  As we drove through the KY countryside 
> and
> turned onto Columbia Mine Road I couldn't help thinking that this 
> might well
> be my last time to see this particular part of the world.  This was 
> now my
> fourth trip to the area and there are so many other places that I want 
> to
> collect that I may not be coming back to this particular spot again.  I
> reminded myself that this is the way life is and you need to simply 
> enjoy
> the journey.
>
> When we got to the mine I took Bill up to the prospect pit that had 
> been so
> productive the day before and we showed him examples of some of the 
> material
> that we had found.  When I recommended that he do some excavating 
> there for
> future collecting his reply was, "When will the Boston Mineral Club be
> coming back?  Your club found this spot and you should benefit from its
> excavation!"  I didn't exactly know what to say so I simply told him 
> that I
> would let him know one way or the other.
>
> I had originally planned to go up to the Columbia mine to do some
> fluorescent collecting under my newly made blackout cloth.  However, I
> couldn't resist completing the digging out of the area around a dead 
> tree
> that Ed Norton and I had worked on the day before.  The weather was 
> cool and
> the air was dry and comfortable, such a pleasant change from the past 3
> days.  I started my digging in the compact KY clay using my Estwing 
> miner's
> pick to find rocks within about 6" of the surface.  When you do this 
> you
> just hope that the crystals are facing down.  The sound of a steel tool
> breaking fluorite crystals is not a pleasant one and I heard it several
> times.  A three-pronged garden tool was useful in digging out a rock 
> once it
> was exposed.  By noon, I had covered a roughly 6' by 6' area and had 
> found
> nearly two dozen specimens ranging from thumbnail specimens that I 
> found
> hidden in lumps of clay to hand-sized small cabinet specimens studded 
> with
> fluorite cubes and rectangular prisms.  Most of the fluorite crystals 
> are
> dark purple but I found a few of the pretty pale lavender variety that 
> I had
> seen others collect.  The crystals at this spot also did not exhibit 
> the
> stepped growth patterns that I had previously seen from the Eureka 
> pit, but
> instead were sharp smooth crystal faces with sizes ranging from 1/8" to
> 5/8".  After eating lunch, I set up a wash bucket to clean up the 
> specimens
> I had collected and then sorted out the keepers and wrapped them up
> carefully for the long trip home.  I never did make it up to the 
> Columbia
> mine but I had clearly made the right decision as to where to collect.
>
> John Campbell left around 1:30 PM to catch his flight out of Nashville 
> and I
> left around 3:00 PM.  Bret and June stayed on since they were not 
> heading
> back to their home in Pittsburgh until the next day.  Before leaving I
> visited Yoder's Variety store and bought an assortment of jellies and
> butters (its hard to get elderberry jelly and strawberry butter out 
> here on
> the east coast). On the way out of town I picked up one last Marion 
> Pit BBQ
> sandwich with baked beans and coleslaw to have for dinner on the road 
> and
> headed up state road 60 toward Evansville, IN and the long 1200 mile 
> drive
> home.
>
> On Wednesday I couldn't resist cutting through Indiana to collect at 
> another
> geode site.  This one featured optically clear calcite crystals in 
> quartz
> and dolomite.  If I had the time and energy I would have gotten out my 
> saw
> to try to rescue some of the larger geodes with better calcite crystals
> inside but neither time nor energy were available in great abundance 
> so I
> collected what I could and then hit the road again.  I made it as far 
> as
> Youngstown, OH on Wednesday and then drove the rest of the way home on
> Thursday.  The constant rain "dampened" my enthusiasm for any 
> additional
> collecting stops even though Peter Cristofono had found good plant 
> fossils
> at one of the I80 exits in PA on his way out to KY.
>
> The inexpensive way to get great specimens is to buy them!  But a trip 
> like
> this is not about the economics of building a mineral collection.  The
> shared experience of visiting a distant locality with a congenial 
> group of
> collectors, gaining a sense of its history and geology and uncovering 
> its
> beauty in crystals long hidden in the earth is in the words of the 
> current
> credit card commercial, "priceless".  My thanks to Ed Norton, Steve 
> Towne,
> Bob Lancaster, Peter Cristofono, Linda Frahm, Bret Howard, June Epp, 
> Don
> Swenson, Kieth & Cindy Newman, John Chipman, Ted Straiton, Rob & Jenn 
> Sawyer
> and John Campbell for their partnership in this adventure.  I had a 
> great
> time.
>
> best regards,
> Nate Martin
>
>
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