[Rockhounds] Field Trip Report - Alabastine Mine - Again

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

Pete,

The shark coprolites look like black jelly beans in the soft grey shale.

The gypsum bed is Missippean - Grand Rapids Group, Michigan Formation.

Pictures are on my home server so our club bulletin editor can pick  
them up. http://family.tomaszewski.net/IMRMC/Arrowhead.html.

Kreigh


On Sunday, May 3, 2009, at 09:43 America/Detroit, Pmodreski at aol.com  
wrote:

> Great that you could lead that field trip, Kreigh!
>
> I was just re-reading your earlier field trip report--trying to  
> remember if
>  you had any pictures posted anywhere, from the trip (I don't see any  
> on
> your  website).  And I'm curious, what do the shark coprolites look  
> like?
> (I'ld love to see a picture.)  And also I forget, do you know what the  
> age  of
> this gypsum bed is?  Devonian perhaps?  (I know you had written to  me,
> Kreigh, looking for sources of geologic reports to look up more info  
> on the
> history of the mine.)
>
> Keep up the good work!
> Pete
>
>
> In a message dated 5/2/2009 10:10:04 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time,
> Kreigh at tomaszewski.net writes:
>
> Back in  February I got to go collecting in the Alabastine Mine as a
> guest  with the Tulip City club. You can see the field trip report from
> that visit at
> http://lists.drizzle.com/pipermail/rockhounds/2009-February/ 
> 028204.html.
>
> Today  I got to return the favor and bring some members of the Tulip
> City  club, along with the Indian Mounds club, back into the Alabastine
> Mine for six hours of underground collecting.  It was a very  different
> experience being the leader of the trip (and the first  time I've led a
> trip underground).
>
> A third of the rockhounds  were kids. Almost half of the rockhounds had
> never been underground  before. And I turned them loose in six miles of
> tunnels that have no  lights. I didn't sleep well last night because of
> all the things I  could imagine going wrong.
>
> Like the last trip, they left the door open  for us. We ran the mine
> elevator ourselves. We did see an employee  this time, about five hours
> in, as he walked to the mine elevator  with a cart of something he was
> taking to the surface. The employee  ignored us. On our way out I  
> locked
> the door and shut it (my  tracking showed everyone who came underground
> had left).
>
> I  spent most of this trip wandering around the mine offering help to
> the new collectors. One of the rockhounds came out with an amazing  vug
> of perfect selenite crystals (to one inch) in a 50+ lb chunk of  rock
> that got hauled out on a dolly (after he got it back to the  lights and
> cement floor). One of the kids collected a box full of  shark  
> coprolites
> from an unusually rich find that got everyone  excited.
>
> While wandering around I managed to pick up two buckets of  decent
> selenite (massive pencil, not perfect vug crystals),  honey/salmon
> alabaster, and a little satin spar. I did my real  collecting back in
> February, so this was gravy. I had a pretty good  day collecting, but  
> it
> was not my focus.
>
> My real joy this  trip was the happy rockhounds, instead of the
> specimens. I was eight  the first time I got to visit a mine, and it
> made a lifelong  impression on me. Several of the rockhound families
> were taking  their first field trip.  Most of the kids were underground
> for  the first time. I have hopes I made a difference.
>
> I had almost 50  rockhounds on the trip. More than a ton of rock was
> removed from the  mine. Everyone got out safely, and left smiling.
>
> I was offered  permission to lead another trip at a time of my own
> choosing. It  doesn't get much better.
>
> Kreigh
>
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