Rocks and Cobwebs

I'm sweeping away the cobwebs from the part of my mind that's filled with rocks.

(Make any joke you like with that statement)

Finally, some hard-core rockhounding on the calendar.

I met up in Tuscon, Arizona with the rockhounding world's power couple, Jim and Vickie, and we drove off into the wilds to find some interesting minerals.

I saw this in the floor tile at the airport on my way and even though it looked real, I wondered if there are tiles sold that are printed with fossils?

Just in case, I decided not to try and pry this one free. 

TSA might have had something to say about that.

Here's the general idea of the driving we do on our trips:

And some of the scenery:

I had a split second of excitement when I saw the "ammonite" in the upper left corner until I realized it was a dead millipede. 

We were living large on this trip by staying in an RV park in Clifton, AZ, pop. 3,800.

I don't want to be unkind to Clifton but I got a general impression that the residents were either unhappy, incarcerated, or a bit off.  The RV park was maintained by inmates during the day.  I wasn't quite sure how to interact with all those orange jumpsuits.

Still, there are benefits to camping with electricity and water.

Vickie made me an excellent nest where I was able to relax at night while watching my favorite sci-fi show, The Expanse.  Jim was our private chef as well as the Bloody Mary maestro.

Vickie and I set up a rock washing station that ran day and night.

The atmosphere was pleasant with the exception of the flies that were fascinated by my Bloody Marys.

I had some highfalutin idea that I was going to meditate every day on this trip.

I figured I would head out into the desert with a pillow and sit down amongst the cactus to train my mind.  For safety's sake, I was going to instruct Jim and Vickie:

If you see me sitting still, I'm meditating.  If you see me laying down, I'm in need of medical assistance.

But how can I relax when there's rocks everywhere!

And meditating in the campground?  

Fuhgeddaboudit!

I sat down once with a 10 minute meditation timer going and at minute 6, Jim opened the door of the camper and shouted, "Your Bloody Mary is ready!"

Sorry, Buddha!  I'll have to catch up with you later.

Back to Round Mountain, AZ.

Round Mountain rockhounding area is such a cool place but you had better be in love with chalcedony coz that's what you're going to find.  You won't leave empty handed.  In areas, it covers the ground so thickly, it looks like hail.

I focused on round whereas Vickie focused on color.

She tweaked her rolling rock collecting vehicle and made it more suitable for rough terrain:

Vickie and I also hiked in search of the storied Clifton lavender agate.

Fail.

BUT, it was an excellent 2.5 mile hike along an arid wash and we each filled our backpacks to the point of discomfort with rocks.  We even had to pour out our water to make room for more rocks.

And here is my favorite rock of the whole trip:

Hell if I know what it is but I love it.

There were many small smooth geodes but this was by far the biggest I found.  I know there is some form of crystals inside but I will never cut it. 

 It's perfect just the way it is.

Even though I didn't find a single fossil, it was a very successful rock hunting trip.

What am I going to do with all these rocks?  I don't know.  I'll have to meditate on it.

For your continued reading pleasure, a little bit about mindfulness meditation from the Mindvalley blog site:

Mindfulness meditation is a powerful and ancient meditation technique that is proven to help reduce stress, alleviate anxiety and depression, and even help with pain and illness. By re-training your mind to stay present and calm in the moment, mindfulness meditation changes the physical structure of your brain, creating long-lasting changes and positive, healthy habits. You might think something so powerful must be difficult or require a lot of training, but think again! Mindfulness meditation is free, easy to do, and the only effort it requires is sitting still for 10-30 minutes every day. Anyone, regardless of age or ability, can practice mindfulness. It’s Buddhism that really helps us understand the origin of mindfulness meditation because it is integral to the Buddhist path. In Buddhism, it’s important to cultivate a non-judgemental awareness of yourself, your feelings, your mind and your surroundings. This distance and observation can be trained through a series of mindfulness meditations. For many religions, mindfulness meditations were used as a way to step back from the world and connect with your spiritual self. Sometimes this connection was used as a way to resist temptation, while other times it was used as a way to realize and understand the connection between “self” and “other.” Today the meaning of mindfulness meditation has shifted away from its religious connections. While some still practice it within the context of religion, mindfulness meditation has been adopted by psychologists, healthcare professionals and other secular organizations as an effective way to deal with the stresses and illnesses of the modern world.

• Awareness Is KeyAll mindfulness meditations focus on developing awareness. Sometimes this awareness is of the body or breath, while other times it may focus on the outside world or internal thoughts.

• Non-Judgement Is EssentialMindfulness meditations all focus on experiencing awareness without judgement. In other words, mindfulness is about witnessing an experience or sensation without attachment or criticism.

• It Cultivates PeaceWitnessing something without attaching meaning or value creates an important detachment that results in a calm and peaceful mind. Though your feelings are valuable and important, mindfulness teaches you how to find serenity despite them.

Duly Noted

It's been brought to my attention

That I haven't written SHITE

in quite some time.

Well, there's shite to write about.

Rains continue and I haven't even been able to sneak into a river here and there as I normally do this time of year.

Fearing a total loss of kayaking skills

(not that skills are really necessary in Florida)

I've been out with fossil and kayak friends alike to clock some river time.

First up was a paddle on the Little Big Econ followed by a nighttime paddle at Haulover Canal in Titusville to view the bioluminescence in the water.  Stunning!

Next was 4 miles on the Weeki Wachee where we enjoyed a swim in the crystal clear water.

There's more!

Juniper Run was a challenging 7 miles of narrow twisting channels where you spent more time trying to keep your paddle out of the branches than you did actually paddling.

And finally, a first visit to Hogtown Creek in Gainesville.

We had basic creek entry instructions, from the park, but of course we witnessed other fossil hunters on their way to dig within the park boundaries.  This is why fossil hunting gets a bad rep at times.

We had been forewarned that we might run into a creek troll and he was there, trying to scare us away from the area but we passed him safely and didn't need to use up any of our spells or magic.

I found loads of tiny teeth but nothing even close to the gorgeous megs and fossils that are routinely posted on FaceBook from that area.  

Still beats getting skunked!

Pam also collected a nice assortment of small shark teeth.

Eyes on the prize.

I'll be heading out to Arizona in October with fossil friends, Jim and Vickie, with whom I've shared several memorable fossil hunting trips.  I was reminiscing about Round Mountain and the beautiful chalcedony nodules I found there and how I wish we could go back and spend a few days and

Ta Da!

It has been arranged.

Jim and Vickie have been known to overpack a bit so when Vickie posted this picture, I laughed. HARD!

Yeah, kinda like that.

Some day the water will go down...

but until then, I'm off to the desert!

From the eacourier web site:

Within a short drive of Safford lie two areas where gemstones known as fire agates may be collected. Just a bit northwest of Safford is the Black Hills Rockhound Area; further east, near the New Mexico state line, the Round Mountain Rockhound Area beckons collectors. These areas are open to the public and are under the auspices of the Bureau of Land Management. Both sites are available for rockhounding and non-commercial removal of specimens, with no fees or permits required.

Round Mountain Rockhound Area is a prime collecting spot for fire agates, an uncommon semi-precious gem found only in Mexico, California and Arizona. This particular spot is considered to be among the richest areas in the world for this gem. This is also a great wide-open area for primitive camping. If you've never done any rock collecting, gemstone hunting or have just thought about it, this is an excellent time and place to get started. It offers such tremendous rewards for so little effort.

Agate is a semi-precious gemstone formed by relatively recent volcanic activity. It is outwardly similar in appearance to quartz, but also shows interesting swirls, bubbles and patterns. Fire agate contains a variety of colors, highlighted by the refraction of light inside the stone. It is cut, polished and mounted by those in the know to make beautiful jewelry. It has been compared to opal, with its iridescent appearance, but is much harder and more difficult to cut. While many of the stones are white in color, the best specimens contain deep browns and reds, hence the name fire agate.

Hiatus or Depression? You Decide.

When the rain gods close a door, they open a...well...

Can't fool me again! ...or something like that...

Whatever...

I'm depressed.

Every fossil excursion I've planned since May has been waylaid by heavy rain and rising water levels.

At first I was having serious digging withdrawals, then I took advantage of the opportunity to catch up on all the projects and housework that had been taking a back seat to my fossil needs.  

Now I'm caught up.

Now what?!

A year has passed since I last met up with Miss Vickie in Keokuk, Iowa

and we were both ready to do some rock hounding.

I once again combined a trip to visit family and friends in Missouri with a trip to hunt for geodes.

Vickie got a haircut outside our luxury accommodations.  All the better to stay cool when you're rockhounding in July.

It is easy to find geodes in this area. The main difficulty is breaking them open.  Last year I loaded up 5 gallon buckets of unbroken geodes only to find that when I finally opened them, the majority were duds.  Opening geodes on site saves bringing home duds but it's also hard work.  We didn't have the right chisels for the job.  After several hours of pounding, mine flattened out so that I was basically smashing the geodes open.  We'll remember that for next time.

The big advancement this year

was a handy "barge" to transport our finds along the creek.  Vickie's husband, Jim, constructed this for us and it was such a help.  He also sent 2 of his amazing custom Bloody Marys for me in Vickie's cooler.  

Joy!!!

Can you say "impetigo"?

Neither can I but, man, these creeks get gnarly in warm weather.

Add to that all the small patterned snakes swimming in the water around my feet and you've got a DEFCON 1 creep out factor.

So you may ask yourself, "Did they get out of the water?"

Nope.

Gotta find those rocks!

Doesn't this look like rock candy?  Yum!

I found plenty of geodes but not the variety of interior minerals that I found last year. 

This was different for me: a solid interior of a mineral that resembles mica. 

I wanted to bring home a biggun' this year, through the Vickie and Jim snowbird system: I send all my rocks to Wisconsin for the summer and they find their way to Florida in the fall.

This monster had been broken into several pieces and abandoned on the shore, probably because there is an unattractive mineral deposit over the crystals, but I couldn't help myself. I loaded up a few of the best chunks to work on at home.  The crystals have an interesting multifaceted shape. The biggest piece, in the photo above will come home in November.

There are fossils, too!

I found a few more bits of fossilized lithostrotionella coral.

Doesn't this stuff have a nickname?!

Vickie found this pretty crinoid stem so I knuckled down and managed to scrape together a few pieces for myself:

Some interesting shell fossils as well:

This year we planned to hunt for 2 half days and one full day,

but after one half day and one full day, we opted to eat meatloaf at a local diner and head our separate ways.  

Still...as I drove out of town I couldn't help thinking, 

"Maybe just a couple hours in the creek before I go."

I know you have wondered, from time to time, about the origins of the word "mollycoddle".

Here's your answer from the World Wide Words web site.

Mollycoddling

Q From Richard Buttrey, UK: Have you any idea where mollycoddlingoriginated?

A Let’s take it in its two parts. The second comes from the verb to coddle, meaning to treat somebody in an overprotective way, as though he or she were an invalid. The verb in this sense is not recorded before the early part of the nineteenth century — its first appearance is in Jane Austen’s Emma: “Be satisfied with doctoring and coddling yourself”. It looks very much as though it comes from an older sense of the verb meaning to boil gently, to parboil. That sense is linked to caudle, an old word for a warm drink of thin gruel mixed with sweetened and spiced wine or ale, which was given chiefly to sick people. Hence, by association of ideas, coddle took on its modern sense.

The first bit is on the face of it easy enough, since it is from the pet form of the given name Mary (as in Sweet Molly Malone of Dublin’s fair city). But Molly has also had a long history in several different but related senses associated with low living. (The name was popularised by Middleton and Dekker’s play The Roaring Girl of 1611, which featured a criminal called Moll Cut-purse.) As either molly or moll, from the early seventeenth century on it was often used to describe a prostitute, hence, much later, the American gangster’s moll. As molly it was also a common eighteenth-century name for a homosexual man, often in the form Miss Molly, and a molly house was a male brothel (as in Mark Ravenhill’s new play at the National Theatre in London, Mother Clap’s Molly House).

It’s sometimes said that the molly in mollycoddle comes from the sense of a prostitute, but the usage evidence shows that it was really linked to the gay associations. As a noun, it was used particularly of a man who had been over-protected in childhood and so considered to have been made into a milksop or effeminate. For example, William Makepeace Thackeray wrote in Pendennis in 1849: “You have been bred up as a molly-coddle, Pen, and spoilt by the women”. The verb came along later in the nineteenth century and was used more like the way we do now.

C'est Fini!

It's over!

I probably write that at about this same time every year when the water level of the Peace River gets too high for digging.  

Luckily we worked in a final 3 day camping trip before the rains started, and dug our little hearts out.

I brought along a kayaking friend, Kitty, and although she is no stranger to hunting for fossils, nor kayak camping, the whole digging in the river deal was new to her.  

She did a lot of digging but also took advantage of the peace and quiet of the area.

She looks like she's reading but she's not.

She's asleep.

But before the nap, she managed to find this really cool fish jaw:

Before I get into the fossils, here's one of my more interesting and unsettling finds:

A straight razor that is still incredibly sharp.  Yucky thoughts of accidentally stepping on this the wrong way.  The name "Cheminova" is imprinted on one side and all I could find on Google was an Indian agricultural chemical company which kind of makes sense for the area.
All that being said, watch your step out there!

And now for the fossils!

I found some more glyptodont scutes including a thick double section:

A nice pre-equus tooth (I think):

I found several equus teeth which made Kitty comment that a horse must have died in that spot.  

Pam and I tried to explain how to know when things were and weren't "associated".

Here's a handful of little goodies:

Some gator teeth:

Small bison tooth:

Interesting crystalized marine items including sea urchin spines, coral, and a shell:

Antler:

Turtle:

Broken fish mouth plate, barracuda tooth, and twig/root:

(I know I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel here but I told you I didn't have a great season)

Mammoth and mastodon enamel:

And some shark teeth, always nice to find:

We made a new friend in camp:

and tried a new recipe that we will continue to perfect:

(That's butterscotch, chocolate, and marshmallow fluff on a banana)

Goodbye, dear camp!  I hope to see you again next year!

I wanted to throw in a photo of a new t-shirt I bought:

Here's some additional information from Wikipedia regarding the Bone Valley area of Florida which contains the Peace River.

The Bone Valley is a region of central Florida, encompassing portions of present-day Hardee, Hillsborough, Manatee, and Polk counties, in which phosphate is mined for use in the production of agricultural fertilizer. Florida currently contains the largest known deposits of phosphate in the United States.

Large walking draglines, operating twenty-four hours a day in surface mines, excavate raw pebble phosphate mixed with clay and sand (known as matrix). The matrix contains a number of chemical impurities, including naturally occurring uranium at concentrations of approximately 100 ppm. Because this phosphogypsum is slightly radioactive, its use is banned in most situations.^[1]

The matrix is then dropped into a pit where it is mixed with water to create a slurry, which is then pumped through miles of large steel pipes to washing plants. These plants crush, sift, and separate the phosphate from the sand, clay, and other materials, and mix in more water to create a granular rock termed wetrock. The wetrock, which is typically of little use in raw form, is then moved largely by rail to fertilizer plants where it is processed. The final products include, but are not limited to, diammonium phosphate (DAP), monoammonium phosphate (MAP) and trisodium phosphate (TSP).

Waste byproducts are stored in large phosphogypsum stacks and settling ponds, often hundreds of acres in size, and up to 200 feet (60.96 m) tall.

Phosphate processing produces significant amounts of fluorine gas, which must be treated by filtering through special scrubbers.

Much of the final product (known within the industry as 'dryrock') is transported by rail to facilities along Tampa Bay, where they are transloaded onto ships destined for countries such as China.

Phosphate product intended for domestic use is assembled into Unit trains of covered hopper cars for northbound movement.

Phosphate is a declining export to China. Previously, significant amounts of rock were shipped to China, where it was processed into phosphate fertilizer. The majority of phosphate mining in Florida is done in the Peace River watershed. Phosphate mining companies use draglines to remove surface soils up to 60 feet (18.29 m) deep over thousands of contiguous acres. Once land is mined, state law requires that it be reclaimed. Wetlands are reclaimed on an acre for acre, type for type basis. Most modern mining permits actually require companies to recreate more wetlands than were initially present on the land. More than 180,000 acres (728 km²) have already been mined and reclaimed in the Peace River watershed. As reserves in the northern portion of the bone valley are depleting, mining companies are now seeking permits for another 100,000 acres (405 km²), which will replace reclaimed mines to the north.

One byproduct of the extraction process is clay, which is stored in settling ponds and eventually comprises 30%-40% of a mine site. Some of these ponds can measure thousands of acres. Rain drains slower through these clay-laden ponds than typical soil. Critics argue that this, in turn, reduces baseflow to the Peace River. Some studies have indicated that reclaimed lands actually provide a more consistent baseflow because the sandier soils of the reclaimed land provide faster baseflow, while the clay provides a slower steady flow, creating more flow during dry periods than native land. Since the 1960s, the average annual flow of the middle Peace River has declined from 1,350 cubic feet (38.23 m³) to 800 cubic feet (22.65 m³) per second (38.23 to 22.65 m³/s). Critics argue that this flow reduction is due to phosphate mining, but studies by the Southwest Florida Water Management District have shown that the reduction in flow is due to multidecadal oscillation in Atlantic Ocean temperatures.

Critics argue that each holding pond has been perceived as a risk that threatens water quality, public health, wildlife, and the regional economy. Dams restraining the ponds have overflowed or burst, sending a slurry of clay into the river, and coating the riverbed for many miles with a toxic clay slime that suffocates flora and fauna. One such incident in 1971 killed over three million fish when 2 million US gallons (7,600 m³) of phosphate waste swept into the river, causing an estimated 5-foot-tall (1.5 m) tide of slime that spread into adjacent pastures and wetlands. Since the 1971 spill, clay settling areas are now constructed as engineered dams. No such spills have occurred from any settling areas built to these standards. The current dams withstood three hurricanes which crossed the Bone Valley in 2004.

In 2004, during Hurricane Frances, a phosphogypsum stack was overwhelmed by hurricane rains and the levees were breached, sending over 18,000 US gal (68,137 L) of acidic process water into Tampa Bay. Cargill Crop Nutrition, who owned the stack, added lime into the affected areas in an attempt to neutralize the highly-acidic runoff. Due to the extraordinary amount of runoff created by the hurricane, the spill was quickly diluted and environmental damage was minimal. In a consent agreement with the Department of Environmental Protection, Cargill greatly increased its water treatment capacity at the facility. The facility is a no discharge facility and was overwhelmed by the above normal rainfall in 2004, in addition to being affected by three hurricanes.

On occasion, clay slime spills have prevented the Peace River Manasota Water Supply Authority from using river flows for drinking water, forcing municipalities to seek water supplies elsewhere, or rely on stored supplies. On several occasions, the effects of heavy rainfall have created sinkholes beneath the settling ponds.

Most recently, in August 2016, a sinkhole opened up under a gypsum stack at the Mosaic’s New Wales fertilizer plant in Mulberry, Florida. 215 million gallons of containment water dumped into the Florida Aquifer.^[3]

Checking Out New Neighborhoods

Nobody's going to tell me where to fossil hunt

on the Peace River.

Those newbie days are gone and to be fair, I'm rather withholding when it comes to divulging good digging spots as well.  

The prospecting continues.

I said I wasn't going to look at FaceBook anymore but of course, I did.

I saw a post that said, "Yesterday the river was handing out megs like candy."

Candy is one of my favorite things...

but apparently I am on the river's sh*t list.

I spent a day poking around last week

but my heart wasn't in it and several times I considered just heading home, but

fossils only come to those who dig,

so I stopped in a shallow area and started digging.

For a day that was almost a wash, I managed to find a couple of cool things.

Maybe the biggest tiger shark tooth I've found:

A super sweet little mako:

Giant armadillo scute:

Pristine shark teeth:

Two interesting shark teeth:

 

Assorted fish and shotgun shell parts:

Turtle and tortoise:

This and that:

And, of course, old whiskey bottles:

There's never an end to the alcohol related detritus on the Peace River.

Next weekend, camping!

Here's some reading info regarding collecting old whiskey or "whisky" bottles from Collectors Weekly.  Maybe if I dig deeper, I'll find the good ones.

Strictly speaking, there’s no such thing as a "whiskey" bottle in Scotland. There you will find only "whisky" bottles, hopefully filled with a single-malt Scotch by Speyside distillers such as Macallan, Balvenie, or Glenfiddich. For some, collecting such rare whisky bottles is its own reward; for others, the virtues of these bottles are best appreciated by savoring their contents. In Ireland and the United States, the word "whiskey" generally gets an “e,” while in the U.S. the term itself most commonly refers to Bourbon and rye. Bourbon is made from about 70% corn and is aged in oak barrels. Most of the biggest distillers, from Jim Beam to Maker’s Mark, are in Kentucky. Tennessee is also a center for whiskey, although its best-selling export is not labeled as Bourbon; Jack Daniel’s makes Tennessee whiskey. As for the bottles themselves, some of the earliest ones produced in the U.S. date from the beginning of the 19th century and have squat, cylindrical shapes. Less symmetrical were the so-called chestnut flasks, whose bulbous bodies tapered abruptly to a slender neck. Numerous other types of spirits bottles were produced throughout the 19th century and into the 20th (Jack Daniel’s went to its famous square bottle in 1895), but serious bottle collectors look for the figured flasks made from about 1815 until 1870. These flat-sided bottles, which were often pear-shaped or oval, featured relief portraits of U.S. presidents and patriotic symbols such as eagles on their sides. Other celebrities immortalized on antique whiskey bottles included the French General Lafayette (a hero of the revolutionary War), Jenny Lind (a famous singer of the day, who was known as the Swedish Nightingale), and DeWitt Clinton (as governor of New York, he presided over the construction of the Erie Canal).