My apologies to everyone for not emailing you sooner concerning rockhunts this fall and winter. I’ve been working on several projects, which are, of course, proceeding more slowly than I had planned. For the last few months I’ve been waiting for an appointment that will finally happen at the end of this month. After that there will need to be more appointments, each with a number of variables which can go wrong, thus pushing back schedules even farther.
I was going to wait to send this email until I had something solid to tell you about my rockhunt schedule, and what I have is a lot of conjecture and an inability to plan a schedule for fall and winter.
So the only thing ‘solid’ in my schedule is that I won’t be leading rockhunts this fall, and probably not this winter, either. Unless things change materially, however, I will be leading rockhunts next March and April.
Aaron Thomas and Jean Larremore are leading hunts in the Big Bend region this Fall and winter. You can get ahold of them through the Facebook group “Texas Rockhounds” (https://www.facebook.com/groups/775245782823113). You can PM them on Facebook and get an answer fairly quickly. I recommend them highly. You’ll have a great time and find great rocks whenever you go with them.
I miss seeing y’all back there, and I hope to see a lot of you when I’m there in the Spring. As I’ve done in the past few years, I’ll be holding my hunts Thursdays, Fridays, and Mondays, which are usually the days when neither Aaron nor Jean has another hunt. That way you can have a longer set of hunts and not have to choose between two ranches on any given day.
I’ll still be leading hunts to the Ritchie Ranch, the South Larremore Ranch, and East Needle Peak.
I’ll also have buckets of agate for sale. I’ve got about 400 buckets left, so there ought to be something you’d like to have in that selection. Since I’m not in Texas, I don’t have access to the buckets right now to show you photos or sell you something. I can, however, update my online inventory, and I hope to do that in the next week or so.
Be safe, y’all and have a great holiday season! I’ll let you know pretty soon what my schedule for the spring will be (probably as soon as I know Aaron’s & Jean’s schedules for the spring).
Note: For details about attending one of these incredible hunts, see the note at the end of this post.
The hunt at the 06 was amazing. We drove north of Alpine on 118 for a ways, out onto the flat valley. We turned right into a dirt road, and drove east on dirt roads for about half an hour. We stopped at a huge valley with a pipe-and-wire corral in the middle of a lovely set of mountains. This was a new place Aaron and James had only hunted once before. The hills were similar in height to the bluffs at the Walker Ranch, and of course steeper in some places than others. There were outcroppings of basalt here and there.
There were 9 or so rockhunters on the trip (I believe 10 is the limit) and we were pointed to a hillside about half a mile long. We could fan out enough that we would have not been able to see each another. Aaron & James handed each of us a walkie-talkie to use, and since it’s deer season, we were loaned bright fluorescent vests to wear.
At the bottom of the hills, there was a field of rocks about grapefruit to football size. There were agate and quartz crystal pieces in those fields, partly buried in many cases. As you went up the hills, they got rockier, and in some places there was grass stubble between the rocks. Now and then you’d find a patch that had several good sized agates on the surface, and more partially buried. In between those patches were smaller sized agate and quartz crystal pieces and some small nodules that were interestingly colored and otherwise marked on the outside. There were lots of worked pieces and evidence of a native American campsite. We had been advised to go around the campsites when we found them, and although the one I saw was full of broken agate and jasper pieces, there was enough good stuff all over the hills to make it easy to bypass the camp sites.
Some of the agate and jasper there looked
like material from the Ritchie. The dominant agate was
yellow/gold/brown moss in a background of cream, white, or blue
chalcedony.
The moss patterns varied from filaments of gold in lacy patterns, to
larger patches and islands of moss, to patterns as dense as the flower
garden moss from the Walker Ranch. There was enough of it on the surface
of the part of that hillside where I was hunting to fill up the beds
of several pickups. And the gold moss was ubiquitous: you would go
into and out of areas with other types of agate, but you never got far
away from the moss agate.
Along
with the gold moss on that hillside there was red moss, black plume in
cream and blue backgrounds, occasional pieces of red and gold moss, and
some really neat stuff that they call “crayola”. It looks like the
opalized agate that we found on the Ritchie, with much smaller opalized
bits in a chalcedony background, often in a regular pattern. There were
small and big pieces of that, some partly buried and a lot on the
surface. Many had surface pits that were in a regular pattern, as if
there had been filaments of aragonite or another material in the cavity
as the agate formed. Some of the prettiest colors were lavender, maroon
and mauve. I didn’t seen any ‘rind’ on any of the pieces, so they
probably came from a large seam somewhere up the mountain.
We had 3 hours there and I probably picked up 100 lbs of what I thought
was good material. Aaron wandered around collecting full bags and
buckets, which he carried back down to the cars for us. Since I don’t
carry a rock hammer, he helped me get a couple of large pieces of the
‘crayola’ agate out of the ground, then carried them down for me. On
the way back down to the cars, I followed Aaron to another part of the
hill, which was covered with beautiful quartz crystal specimens. I
picked up some individual crystals that were at least 3” long, by far
the biggest I’ve found on any of the ranches. There were lovely crystal
on agate specimens sticking out of the ground everywhere! This was one
place where I didn’t mind picking up gold moss agate!
I didn’t get to see what everyone else found, so I have no idea what was
on the rest of the hill. We got back to the car a bit late, with Aaron
carrying all sorts of nice things for me. Everyone else on the trip
were people I had taken on fieldtrips, and everyone was excited by what
they had found. Some of them were making their second special trip to
Alpine from Houston, Schertz and San Antonio to hunt for one exciting
day.
Then we drove back the way we’d come for a
while, and took a different branch of one of the roads. In about 20
minutes we were at an area that was the other side of the mountain we
had hunted before. The valley we were in now was not very wide, and
there was supposed to be good agate basically everywhere.
There was a dry creek in the bottom of the valley, and since I was
looking for the ladies’ room, I wandered into the brush in the
creekbed. There were a lot of large pieces of blue chalcedony, some
quite vivid, with gold moss or plume in them. There were different
colors of blue and grey in fortification patterns or bands, and one had a
red coating inside, all over the botryoidal surface, but only on the
surface. I found several nice pieces of tube agate: one was blue with
blue quartz crystals on the outside of the tubes, another was blue with
black and grey fortification lines at the ends of tubes and then around
several tubes. That one had gold moss that looked like it was in the
middle of the tubes on one side that was broken obliquely to the
pattern. There were also several small pieces that were spectacular!
Although there was supposed to be agate up on both hillsides of the
little valley, I never got very far up the hills. I stayed in the creek
bed for a while, then ventured only a little ways up each hillside. On
one hillside I found several large nodules (the size of one of Johnny’s
croissant sandwiches) that were orange or yellow chalcedony throughout
and really big compared to the ones I found at the Ritchie and the
Walker. I also found some pieces off a large seam agate that had a
dense pattern that included red, blue, black grey and gold, and appears
to have some plume in it.
It was there that I came across the only annoyance of the day, in the
form of an individual bee that wanted me to turn around and leave. The
bee hovered around my face and hands for several minutes until I got the
hint. Since I’m really allergic to bee stings, I took his advice and
wandered away from there. Full grown human: 0, Bee: 1.
The other hillside had some blue botryoidal pieces with crystals, a
couple of nice red moss pieces, and my trip rock: a long, narrow nodule
of tube agate with the edges broken off in several places. The
chalcedony at the outer edge of the nodule was stained yellow and
orange., and only part of the nodule was filled in around the tubes. In
the lower part of the nodule, which was solid, there were filaments of
pink that went to maroon and gold. The other end of the nodule was
quartz crystal covered tubes.
We hunted there for another 3 hours, got back to the cars at 5 p.m., and
the rocks were weighed up. I had 153 lbs., which included a very large
piece of gold moss that was covered on one side with quartz crystals.
If it weren’t for the help of Aaron and James in carrying my rocks back
to the vehicle, I wouldn’t have gotten a third as much.
Today as I was washing the rocks and sorting them, I’ve found about 10
lbs. that, in retrospect, I should have left there. But first thing in
the morning you don’t know what you’ll find later, and when you’re
finding good stuff and having it carried back to the car for you, you
don’t take much time to high grade.
My total adventure cost $213: $60 entrance fee and $153 for rocks. Was
it worth it? Oh yes! It was exhilarating, hunting on ground that had
not been hunted much before. It will be years before that particular
hill runs out of large pieces, and there are hundreds and hundreds of
hills on that ranch. Aaron and James and the other guys that were there
to help dig and carry were helpful and nice. Aaron explained a bit of
the geology to us before we started in the morning, and told us where we
should find better material. I’ll admit I didn’t understand much of
the geological information he was telling us, but his advice on where to
find the good stuff was similar to what we had been practicing on the
Walker, Singleton and other ranches. And the good stuff was indeed
there. I’ve been on a lot of field trips (over 1000 when I quit
counting), and this is one I’ll remember for many years. I’m going back
again in 2 weeks.
Regards,
Teri
Note: The rockhunts on the 06 Ranch are being led by Aaron Thomas and
James Winn VI. They begin at the Tri-La-Bite food trucks in Alpine.
They currently happen only on Sundays, and are limited to 10 rockhounds
per hunt. As of publication time, all hunts scheduled through 1/31/21
are full, and a new schedule for the Spring will be published in
February. Once that schedule is published, I will try to schedule my
rockhunts to other ranches (if indeed I am leading any) around the 06
hunts so you can come out to the Big Bend and go on hunts ion 4
different ranches in 4 days. If you have any questions about the hunts,
you can reach Aaron Thomas at noraathomas@msn.com or
roadcutgeology@yahoo.com
It’s time
again to start considering what to give your favorite rockhounds for the
holidays. Obviously, the answer is not just ‘rocks’, or
even ‘great rocks’, but ‘large
quantities of great rocks’. To make your
rock shopping easier, I’ve gathered more Walker Ranch cutting agates, and
dropped the price on some other categories of rocks. And, if you order soon, I can pack them and ship them to you before
the holiday rush. Or, you can come out
for rockhunts and pick them up yourself.
Here’s what I’m featuring:
Walker Ranch
cutting agate, $250 per bucket.
Walker Ranch
and Big Bend Crystal and Botryoidal Specimens, $100 per bucket.
Ritchie
Ranch agate, $100 per bucket.
As you may recall,
I ran out of buckets of Walker Ranch cutting agate last spring. However, I’ve figured out a way to gather Walker
Ranch agate from a number of different types of buckets (Walker Ranch
specimens, Misc. Agate, Misc. Rocks, Cut Ends, agate sorted by color, agate nodules,
etc.) That idea is working well. I’ve gone through different buckets to find
the Walker Ranch agate, and I now have 2 buckets of Walker Ranch agate to
sell. I believe I’ll have perhaps 10 more by the
time I’m done. Although these buckets
are not ‘unsearched’, they are full of great stuff! I’m not holding out any cutting material that
I find in the other buckets or anything like that.
Because the
Walker Ranch specimen buckets have been raided for Walker Ranch cutting agate,
I can’t say they’re ‘unsearched’ anymore, so I’m selling the Walker Ranch ‘searched’ specimen buckets, and many other buckets of
crystal and botryoidal specimens, at $100 per bucket.
I’ve also
reduced the price on the Ritchie Ranch buckets to $100 each, through the end of
the year.
Shipping
cost is $50 per bucket. I take checks, PayPal,
and cash.
Regards,
Teri
P.S. I’ve had people ask me for details of the new
ranch Aaron Thomas is beginning to lead fieldtrips on. I really know nothing about it, except that
it’s just north and east of Alpine, and Aaron has shown me photos of wonderful
agates that came from there. If you would like further information, please
email Aaron at noraathomas@msn.com, or
roadcutgeology@yahoo.com.
I’ve finally got a rockhunt schedule for Fall 2020. Right now, with COVID and the resulting
changes in how things are done, we are fortunate to still have three great
ranches available for rockhunting: The
Ritchie Ranch, the South Larremore Ranch, and East Needle Peak.
I’ll be leading my field trips, cycling between all three
ranches, each Thursday and Friday in October and November. Aaron will be leading trips on most
Saturdays, October through December.
This will give y’all three days in a row for rockhunting on your trip out
to the Big Bend, and you can pick and choose which days you’d like to hunt.
I’ll also be leading additional trips now and then, so if you have a special request, let me
know. You can sign up for Aaron’s field trips the same way you sign up for
mine: send me an email with the days you
wish to attend, and make sure to include the phone number for a cell phone
you’ll have with you. Both Aaron and I
will be leading trips to the South Larremore Ranch. Aaron’s field trips will be limited to 25
people, and there’s still no limit to the number than can attend my field
trips.
If you haven’t hunted
with Aaron, his fieldtrips are different than mine. He keeps the group together and hunts with
you. He’ll even carry your rocks back to
the car. On my hunts, I give you
instructions, make sure everyone knows what they can find, and then you hunt by
yourselves until it’s time to get together at the end of the day. I try to meet with everyone once they’re out
hunting, to make sure they’re having fun and finding good stuff.
All field trips will begin at Tri-la-Bite, which is the food
truck run by Aaron and his wife Katrina. It’s at the corner of Holland Avenue
and Garnett Street in Alpine. It’s on
the left side of the street, across from the Sonic Drive-In.
There will be some protocols in place for extra safety
during the COVID pandemic. I’m asking
everybody to wear a mask whenever we’re grouped together, and have your group
stand 6 feet away from other groups and me.
Once we’re rockhunting, however, you and your group can remove the
masks.
Rollin’ Rock Club membership is still required for my field
trips. Cost is $10 single and $16 for a
dual membership. Membership will run
through the year 2021.
Aaron and Katrina have also opened up a rock shop in Alpine,
called the Circle T Rock Shop in honor of Aaron’s family’s ranch. It’s located on the east side of 5th street
in Alpine, just north of Holland Avenue.
They’re usually open Thursday through Monday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. They also have a Facebook buy and sell group
called Circle T Rock shop, https://www.facebook.com/groups/2555173857901636/,
where you can buy agate from local ranches by the pound. And there are lots of other goodies available
in their shop.
As for me, I’m still selling agate by the bucket, as listed
on my website, www.terismithrockhunts.com.
I’ll get back to Texas at the beginning of October and hunt through lots
of buckets to re-sort the material into more single-ranch buckets, especially
Walker Ranch buckets. I’ll be also
offering special deals, and going through my studio to see what else I have to
offer. If you aren’t coming out here for
field trips, I can mail a bucket of rocks to you for $50. Last Spring, I mailed more than 150 boxes of
rocks via USPS, and every one of them got there in good shape with all of the
rocks protected! A couple of them did
take scenic trips around the United States, however, before getting to their
new homes.
So here’s the schedule.
Be sure to look at the start time for your field trip because the Ritchie
Ranch hunts begin at 9, not 8. That’s
because the drive to the Ritchie Ranch only takes about 8 minutes, so we
can still get out hunting by 9:30 or so.
For
those of you who don’t live in Texas, Friday, May 1 was when some restrictions
on travel ended. Hotels and motels in
the Big Bend can open back up at 25% of their capacity, and restaurants can, as
well, if they have room for social distancing.
However, the nice spring weather happened while we were sheltering in
place, and now it’s pretty much summertime conditions: very hot, often windy,
sometimes rainy, with occasional thunder storms which can bring lots of hail,
or perhaps a tornado or two.
Because
of the weather conditions, Aaron and I have decided that we won’t be leading
field trips again until Fall. We
have lots of people tell us that they can take the heat because they’re from
the Gulf Coast. But the heat we have here is very dry heat, and
you can get dehydrated here very quickly.
The combination of the elevation, the dryness, and the heat with
no shade has sent many people to hospitals with heatstroke over the years, and
we won’t lead field trips in conditions which may permanently injure your
health (or ours!).
On
another topic, my rock sales are going well.
All of the Walker Ranch cutting agate buckets have been sold, as well as the buckets of agate nodules. But there’s lots of other good agate still
available. Both the Singleton and
Stillwell Ranches are great locations that are not open to the public any more.
In my last email, I detailed the reason that I dropped the price on the
Singleton Ranch tock buckets, but I’ll repeat it here: Unlike the Walker Ranch buckets, where I
separated specimens and cutting material, the
buckets of agate from the Singleton Ranch are completely unsorted. That means you’re apt to get specimen
material along with the cuttable agate. In order to make sure you feel like
you’ve gotten a good deal, I’ve lowered the price of a bucket of Singleton
Ranch agate to $125 for an unsorted bucket. Or you can spend $250 for a bucket where I’ve
combined two of the unsorted buckets and removed most of the stuff that won’t
cut.
The
Singleton material has some bouquet agate in it, and in general those pieces
run fairly small. Many will make only one cab, and to do that you’ll need
to hold the piece in your hands while you grind a flat spot to glue the dop
stick on. The colors are usually
pastels, and there’s also quite a lot of black and white plume agates there, as
well. There’s also water-level agate, which is where the silica that
formed the agate was dissolved in ground water flowing horizontally. The
different minerals in the solution at different time made different color
bands, mostly blue, grey, black and white. The bands are absolutely straight,
so the material looks great if you cut diagonally across the bands for your
cab. There are moss agates and occasional tube agates, and some very neat stuff
that is brecciated common opal with a background of chalcedony. The opal can be
any color from white through the buff, pink, and red colors into brown, and the
chalcedony background can be clearish, white, light blue, dark blue, or
black. The buckets of Singleton material are $125 each, since I
never separated the specimen material from the cutting material. Or, I
can send you a bucket that I’ve “curated”, taking the best cutting
material from two Singleton buckets and putting them into one bucket, for
$250. that saves you shipping cost for the second bucket and doesn’t
leave you with a bunch of specimen material you don’t want.
The Stillwell Ranch had a whole bunch of different types of agate,
jasper, flint, chert and petrified wood. Pieces can be quite large:
perhaps the size of a brick. I am continually surprised at the variety in
the Stillwell agate. In one afternoon a couple of years ago I
found agatized petrified wood in nine different color combinations. The
pieces appear not to have grown in the location where they’re found.
There are several hills on the ranch that are actually just giant rock piles,
deposited there in prehistory when the Rio Grande was many miles wide.
There are plume agates, mosses, fortifications, tube agates and some others
that I can’t begin to describe. There will also be colorful petrified
wood, and perhaps some flint and chert that were exceptional for some
reason. They may have originated any where along the course of the Rio
Grande, from Southern Colorado through New Mexico and the Big Bend of
Texas. Because this ranch is now closed to rockhunting, the buckets are
$250 each.
The South Larremore Ranch is very interesting. It has gravel piles
sticking up above ground level. These piles were the bottom of an ancient
lake, and they have some incredible agate in them. It also has the
creekbed for Calamity Creek, which is the creek that goes through the former
Woodward and Walker Ranches, and picks up pieces of plume agate on its way
down. So there’s material there that looks like what you would find on
the Walker and Woodward Ranches, in addition to the pieces in the gravel piles
that can look like the spectacular fortification agates from Mexico. There’s
also agatized wood, and perhaps some flint and chert that were exceptional for
some reason. Pieces are generally small. South Larremore Ranch
agate is $200 per bucket and the South Larremore Ranch is still open for rochunts
in fall, winter and spring.
There have been a couple of changes to the schedule for
rockhunts this winter and spring. First,
the Stieg Ranch will not be hosting rockhunts this spring, due to damage to the
roads that can’t be repaired quickly. So
the weekend hunts to the Stieg Ranch will be changed to the Woodward’s Needle Peak
site or the South Larremore Ranch.
Secondly, Aaron and his family have determined that he needs
to receive something for his time spent on the rockhunts so that he can keep
leading trips every weekend. We’ve decided to add a $15 charge for his services
as a guide added to each of his field trips, starting this Saturday, February
15th. That means that his
hunts to the Woodward’s Needle Peak and the South Larremore Ranch will cost $65
per person. That will enable him to keep the hunts small and
focus on sharing his knowledge of the geography and mineralogy with y’all so
you can find better rocks!
There are no changes to my fieldtrips for this spring. I look forward to seeing y’all out here on
Spring Break and throughout April!
Regards,
Teri & Aaron
P.S. I now have my
whole rock collection inventoried and available for purchase. Right now the listing is on my website, at http://terismithrockhunts.com/rocks-for-sale/. However, I intend to publish it as an email
in the next few days. It’s first come,
first served, so take a look and let me know what you want!
Aaron Thomas and I are happy to present the Big Bend
rockhunt schedule for Winter and Spring, 2020.
Aaron has added a new ranch:
The Stieg Ranch, near Balmorhea. The Stieg Ranch is an alluvial fan, which
is relatively flat terrain, with a creek bed running through it. Both the alluvial fan and the creek bed have
every type of agate that eroded out of the surrounding hills. You can find the Balmorhea Blue agate, banded
agate, jasper, petrified wood, chert and artifacts. The fee will be $50 per person, and that will
entitle you to a 5-gallon bucket full of collectible rocks.
Aaron will be leading field trips every weekend from January
4th through the end of April. I will be gone for January, February,
and the beginning of March, and will begin my weekday hunts on Monday, March
16. I’ll have hunts every weekday during
the two weeks that constitute spring break for most Texas schools, so there
will be hunts each day from Saturday, March 14 through Sunday, March 29. Then there will be rockhunts Thursdays
through Mondays for the next several weeks until Monday, April 27. This will give y’all the longest possible
time for rockhunting on your trip out to the Big Bend, and you can pick and
choose which days you’d like to hunt.
You can sign up for Aaron’s field trips the same way you sign up for
mine: send me an email with the days you
wish to attend, and make sure to include the phone number for a cell phone
you’ll have with you. Both Aaron and I
will be leading trips to the South Larremore Ranch. All of Aaron’s field trips will be limited
to 12 people, and there’s still no limit to the number than can attend my field
trips.
All field trips this year will begin at Tri-la-Bite, which
is at the corner of Holland Avenue and Garnett Street in Alpine. It’s on the left side of the street, across
from the Sonic Drive-In.
So here’s the schedule.
Be sure to look at the start time for your field trip because they vary
depending upon the ranch. I love y’all, but I’m tired of getting emails and
calls for questions that are answered in this email, and available on my
website.
I’ve finally got a rockhunt schedule for the rest of
November and December, and there are some very exciting developments for y’all!
I’m now working with Aaron Thomas, who is a degreed mineralogist
and geologist, and a full time Alpine resident.
He and his wife Katrina run a food truck
business in Alpine called Tri-la-Bite, so he’s only free to lead field
trips on Saturdays and Sundays. He has been
rockhunting in the Big Bend for most of his life, and has several ranches
available for field trips on an occasional basis and a couple he can go to all
the time. Aaron’s very enthusiastic as
well as knowledgeable, has more stamina than all of us put together, and is lots
of fun to be around.
Because of Aaron’s schedule, I’ll be moving my field trips
to the weekdays before and after the weekends when Aaron can lead trips. This will give y’all the longest possible
time for rockhunting on your trip out to the Big Bend, and you can pick and
choose which days you’d like to hunt.
You can sign up for Aaron’s field trips the same way you sign up for
mine: send me an email with the days you
wish to attend, and make sure to include the phone number for a cell phone you’ll
have with you. Both Aaron and I will be
leading trips to the South Larremore Ranch.
All of Aaron’s field trips will
be limited to 12 people, and there’s still no limit to the number than can
attend my field trips.
For this set of rockhunts, the new ranch Aaron has available
each weekend is the Needle Peak property owned by Jan Woodward. This is the traditional Needle Peak site
which has produced great pompom and moss agates and for the past 60 or so
years. It’s west of the East Needle Peak property we’ve been hunting on for
years, and if you wish to climb up to where the agate is coming out of the
mountain, it’s rather steep. But there
is plenty of agate to be found on the flat area below the mountains and above
the creekbed. I was there last weekend
and there are spectacular things to be found!
And Jan Woodward is donating all proceeds from the hunts to the local animal
shelter in the name of her late husband Trey Woodward.
All field trips this year will begin at Tri-la-Bite, which
is at the corner of Holland Avenue and Garnett Street in Alpine. It’s on the left side of the street, across
from the Sonic Drive-In.
So here’s the schedule.
Be sure to look at the start time for your field trip because they vary depending
upon the ranch. I love y’all, but I’m tired of getting emails and calls for questions
that are answered in this email, and available on my website.
Date
Location
Leader
Cost
Start Time
Requirements
Thurs. 11/14
Ritchie Ranch
Teri
$10 entrance + $1/lb
9:00
Cash or check
Fri. 11/15
East Needle Peak
Teri
$40
8:00
Cash or check
Sat. 11/16
South Larremore
Aaron
$50
8:00
Limit of 12 people.
Cash or check
Sun. 11/17
Needle Peak
Aaron
$50
6:30
Limit of 12 people
Cash only
Mon. 11/18
South Larremore
Teri
$50
8:00
Cash or check
Thurs. 11/28
South Larremore
Teri
$50
8:00
Cash or check
Fri. 11/29
Ritchie Ranch
Teri
$10 entrance + $1/lb
9:00
Cash or check
Sat. 11/30
East Needle Peak
Teri
$40
8:00
Cash or check
Sun. 12/1
South Larremore
Teri
$50
8:00
Cash or check
Mon 12/2
East Needle Peak
Teri
$40
8:00
Cash or check
Sat. 12/7
Needle Peak
Aaron
$50
6:30
Limit of 12 people
Cash only
Sun 12/8
South Larremore
Aaron
$50
8:00
Limit of 12 people
Cash or check
Sat 12/14
South Larremore
Aaron
$50
8:00
Limit of 12 people
Cash or check
Sun 12/15
Needle Peak
Aaron
$50
6:30
Limit of 12 people
Cash only
Sat 12/21
Needle Peak
Aaron
$50
6:30
Limit of 12 people
Cash only
Sun 12/22
South Larremore
Aaron
$50
8:00
Limit of 12 people
Cash or check
Rollin’ Rock Club membership is still required for my field
trips. Cost is $10 single and $16 for a
dual membership. Membership will run
through the year 2020.
Those of you who are friends of mine on Facebook have
probably heard the sad news, but for those that haven’t, my husband and best
friend passed away on August 1, 2019, in Hollister, CA, where we were spending
the summer. While Smith had been ill for many years, his death was
unexpected. Emotionally, I have been
supported by our four children and four grandchildren, who came from Texas,
Ohio, Virginia and England to be here with me.
I’m learning to understand what the word “widow” means in practical
terms, and what the future is likely to look like for me. I’m just hoping that I don’t have to get a
real “job”, since that would mean that I couldn’t lead rockhunts on the days
when I work.
I intend to come back to Texas in the middle of October and
lead rockhunts through the end of November.
However, the Fall schedule is still up in the air because there’s the
possibility of a new ranch being available in South Brewster County, near the
Stillwell Ranch. I won’t be able to tell
you how good it is until I get there to look around, and that won’t be until
October.
So… I can either wait til then to publish the actual
schedule, or I can publish it right now with the caveat that the locations may
change if this ranch proves to be as spectacular as I believe it will. What I can tell you for sure is that I will
be available to lead fieldtrips on the following dates:
Friday, 10/25 through Sunday, 10/27
Friday, 11/1 through Sunday, 11/3
Friday, 11/15 through Sunday, 11/17
Friday, 11/29 through Sunday, 12/1
If the new ranch proves to be good, I’ll probably add either
Thursdays of Mondays to the schedule and go to each of the ranches on one day
of the four-day weekend. Let me know by return email whether you’d like me to
post a schedule that may change or wait til October to post the names of the
ranches I’ll be hunting at each day.
The prices for each ranch is the same as in previous years:
Ritchie Ranch: $10
admission fee and $1 per lb of cutting agate or good specimens.
South Larremore Ranch:
$50 per person per day.
East Needle Peak: $40
per person per day.
And Rollin’ Rock Club membership is required. I’ll hold the memberships and not submit them
until December, so they will apply for 2020 as well. Cost is $10 for a single membership and $16
for a dual membership for the year.
Hope to see you this Fall!
If not, I’ll be back in March and April for what may be my last set of
rockhunts.
Well, spring is coming, and it’s time for me to start selling my agate
collection. I have not even gotten halfway through a detailed inventory
of the whole collection, but I know enough of what’s there to begin
selling what I would consider to be some of the most desirable agates in
the collection: those from the ranches now closed to rockhunting.
This means cutting material and specimens from the Walker and Singleton
Ranches.
In the Fall, I sent out an email asking those on my
email list how they would like to purchase the agates, and almost half
of those who responded said they would like to purchase the agate in
5-gallon buckets, unsearched since the time I filled them. So that’s
what I’m going to start with.
Full 5-gallon buckets of Walker Ranch or Singleton Ranch agate will be $250.00 each. These buckets will contain a mix of cutting material and specimens, but most of the material will be for cabbing or tumbling. When I filled the buckets, I packed them, so most of them will weigh about 50 lbs., and have a mix of larger and smaller pieces. If you only want larger pieces that you can slab, these buckets are not for you, since I filled in the spaces left between bigger pieces with tiny ones. My philosophy is that if you can make a nice cab or tumbled stone out of it, it’s a keeper. The Walker buckets can also contain a few Native American artifacts or reduction chips, including scrapers of various sizes and materials.
Many of these rocks were collected quite a while ago, while others came from the most recent years when the Singleton and Walker Ranches were open. Most of the buckets are not marked as to date collected and packed, but some are. In general, those collected earlier may have bigger pieces in them, since there were more big pieces easily available in the first seasons the ranches were open. But agates collected later may be of a generally better quality since I learned as I went along and only picked up the best things I found every time I collected. If you have a desire for material collected early or late, let me know and I’ll try to get you buckets from the time frame you wish. I can generally tell when things were collected by their location in my yard, even if they don’t have dates on them.
Right now I probably have 30 – 40 buckets from each ranch ready for pickup, out of a total of over 150 buckets from each ranch. And I still have over 150 buckets where the identifying paint has faded and I’ll have to open them in order to determine what they are.
I also have buckets available of specimen material from the Walker and Singleton Ranches. These buckets can contain quartz and calcite crystals, in small and medium pieces, or geodes, saginite and calcite pseudomorphs, tube agates, botryoidal pieces, and pieces of plume or bouquet agate where the background has not yet filled in. Walker Ranch buckets can also include pieces of a flint-like material that is often pastel and can have very interesting shapes, and perhaps a bit of amethyst. Singleton Ranch buckets may also contain brecciated opal pieces that can be spectacular, and an occasional piece of basalt with tiny bits of moonstone in it. Specimen buckets are $150.00 each.
I have one huge specimen lot that came from Telephone Hill on the Singleton Ranch. It’s a huge botryoidal geode in at least ten major pieces and more than 4 5-gallon buckets of minor ones. After you put it back together, it will be spectacular! I’ve figured out how seven of the major pieces go together, basically, and it will have a curved bottom and a diameter of probably 3 to 4 feet. The colors are blues, grey and white. The whole thing would make a great display either as separate pieces or put together. All of it is for sale together for $750.00.
I have also had many requests for geodes, and I have probably 30 5-gallon buckets full of Mexican geodes that I purchased over the years. They are in sizes ranging from a chicken egg to bigger than an emu egg. I’m willing to offer these by the pound as well as by the bucket, since not everyone wants a whole bucket of geodes. But the general consensus was that grandkids loved geodes, so it’s good to always have some around. I’ll sell any quantity of a pound or more at $3 per lb., no matter what size they are. Buckets will generally weigh light, because geodes leave a lot of air space, so I’ll just weigh the full buckets and sell the whole bucket at $2.75 per lb.
I’ve got lots of other categories of agate and other materials in my collection, but I needed to start somewhere. While the rest of my collection will be available once I have finished my inventory, some other things can perhaps be made available this spring if you let me know in advance so I have time to locate and pack them for sale. These other things include: agate from all the ranches I currently lead field trips on, and miscellaneous U.S. agate for $200.00 per 5 gallon bucket; agate from Mexico either organized by what it is or where I got it at anywhere from $200 to $600 for a 5-gallon bucket; and large agate and petrified wood pieces (from about 10 lbs to over 400 lbs) at $2 per lb.
And there’s also over a ton of beautiful slag glass in all colors at $6/lb for up to 20 lbs, $5/lb for 21-100 lbs, and $4/lb for 101 lbs and more. The sooner you let me know what you want, the more likely you are to get it this spring. Send me an email stating your name, cell number, what you want, and when you are going to come to get it. I’ll reply letting you know the agate is being saved for you. You can either pay in advance or when you pick it up. I’ll accept both cash and checks.
Now, as for delivery: right now I’m hoping that y’all will come out for rockhunts this spring and pick up your purchases then. If you can’t do that, please still let me know what you want to purchase, and I’ll put it aside for you. Perhaps we can make some arrangements for delivery. My son lives in Kerrville, and he could probably take a bucket or two home with him when he comes to visit, so that might be an option if you live near the Hill Country. I’m not able to lift a 50-lb bucket, so if y’all need help with moving them, perhaps we can split them into more than one container to lift.
If you have any questions or comments, please email me.
