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).
Hi
Y’all! June is upon us, and with it the
hot weather. I’m working on my plan for
going to California at the end of June. My current thought is that I will indeed come
back to Texas this Fall to lead more field trips, probably from Mid-October
through Thanksgiving, or perhaps all the way til the middle of December. You can look for a schedule from Aaron and me
sometime near the end of August or beginning of September.
As
you know, mandates from the government to ‘shelter in place’ or not travel can
indeed cause me to change my plans, but barring something like that, I want to
lead trips this Fall to get to see everyone I didn’t get to see this Spring,
and have lots of fun picking up agates and other goodies.
Also,
I’m still selling rocks by the bucket, and shipping them out. I’ve sent over 100 boxes of agate and other materials
to rockhounds across the country via USPS, and every box has gotten there safely.
I still have agate available from the Singleton Ranch ($125 for an unsorted
bucket, $250 for a bucket where I’ve sorted two or more buckets together and
removed everything that isn’t cutting material). There are a few buckets left
of Stillwell Ranch material ($250 per bucket), South Larremore Ranch rocks
($200 per bucket), East Needle Peak rocks ($200 per bucket) and Ritchie Ranch
agate ($200 per bucket). I have mixed
agate ($150 per bucket), Agate from Mexico ($175 a bucket) and all kinds of
other goodies. You can look at a
complete list of what’s available on my website, at www.terismithrockhunts.com/rocks-for-sale/.
I hope to add selected specimens to the
list of things for sale, but I don’t know when I’ll get that done.
If
you wish to get your rocks before I head west for the summer, you need to order
them by June 15th. You can
either have me save your rocks until you can get out here this Fall, or you can
have me pack and mail them to you at the cost of $50 per bucket.
I
hope y’all have a good summer and stay well.
See you in the Fall!
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.
Tired of being unable to go outside and hunt rocks? Would some good agate from the Big Bend help
you fight the “stay at home ‘til further notice” blahs? And what better present for Mother’s Day than
a few buckets full of agate?
I’ve spent my quarantine time learning how to
successfully ship agate, and reconsidering some of the prices on my agate
buckets. So here are the deals:
FIRST, $50 SHIPPING.
I can send you a bucket’s worth of agate via USPS for $50. Your rocks will arrive in 3 or 4 days in in 2
large, USPS flat-rate boxes. It takes me an hour or so to pack a bucket’s worth
of rocks into the boxes and tape it up with enough filament tape to make sure it
will get to you in perfect condition. So
far, I’ve shipped out more than 40 boxes, and all have arrived safely with no
damage or loss to the rocks.
SINGLETON RANCH AGATES ON SALE! 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 idea, 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.
OTHER CATEGORIES STILL ON SALE: In my first email about selling rock buckets,
there were several categories of rocks that were at a low price until I could
get around to sorting them. But with the quarantine, people haven’t been
able to come out rockhunting and pick up their buckets, so I’ve been spending a
lot of my time packing and shipping rocks. Since I won’t get to sorting those categories
of agate anytime soon, the lower prices are still in force. Those categories are:
Buckets of agate either sorted by color or marked ‘mixed’ or ’misc’. $150
Buckets of Rocks that Aren’t Agate or Jasper $150
Buckets of agate from Margarita Gardner $175
I have only a couple of buckets of Walker Ranch cutting
agate available at $250 per bucket. I have
had the chance to look at the contents of some of these buckets as I packed
them, and I was amazed at what wonderful things were in there. Lots of red
plume, black plume, flower garden agate, pastel fortification agates, and very
amazing moss agates. There are occasional
Native American artifacts (mostly scrapers) in there, too, and a few geodes. Once these last buckets are gone, there won’t
be any more available from me, unless the ranch opens up for rockhunting again
in the future. Better order one right
now if you want it! Those of you who
have reserved buckets already don’t have to worry: I’ll keep them for you until you can get here
to pick them up, or decide to have me mail them!
Since it looks like most of us will be staying home for
the foreseeable future, these prices will be good through the end of May. In June, if we’re free to travel, I’ll go to California
for the summer and won’t be back for a while…
I have a lot more types of agate for sale than I‘ve
mentioned in this email. I’ve updated
my listing on my website to show the number of buckets of rocks available in
each category now. Some of the smaller
categories are sold out. To see the
complete listing follow this link: http://terismithrockhunts.com/rocks-for-sale/.
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.
