Field Trip Report: Bargers
Quarry Photos by: Rick Jacquot, Lee Fleming, Jerry Fortenberry Hello all, we had 20 members from M.A.G.M.A. and the Henderson County Gem and Mineral Society show up for our trip to Virginia this past weekend. We had members from Florida, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and more. Some of us started out here in WNC at our meeting place at 7:00 a.m. Saturday morning and proceeded on the four hour drive to the quarry. Collecting is allowed on weekends after 12:00 noon on Saturday. We arrived just in time to begin collecting.
The early morning trip to Virginia.
Bargers Quarry is a huge limestone pit in Lexington Va.. Found within the limestone are a variety of nice mineral and fossil specimens: orthocerous, pyrite, calcite in many forms, quartz crystals, purple fluorite etc.
Jerry on the hunt.
Bob and Sharon, our New Jersey members.
Orthocerous found by Sharon.
Brian Taylor
Shirley
David
Luther
David, Darrell, and Andrea on the hunt.
Mark G. and his wife Tracy and daughter found a nice vein of pyrite cubes.
Drew
Vein of calcite running through the limestone.
Andrea on the hill. Andrea found what I think was the best orthocerous fossil of the day. It was a complete fossil still in matrix replaced by pyrite, very nice:
Cindi
David and Darrell taking a break. Darrell is holding up a nice twin pyrite cube.
Lee and Shirley
Hard to tell from the pic, this is a pocket of clear calcite and small quartz crystals.
Plate of large calcite crystals that Lee collected.
Roesanna and Ed
Me hunting for treasure.
Me and Lee having fun.
Largest find of the day, this 4' x 4' plate is covered with large calcite crystals and quartz.
Shirley, Brian, Cindi, Drew, Andrea, Ed, Tena, Jerry, Roseanna, Luther, Sharon, Rick, Bob, Lee, not in pic, Mark G, his Wife, Son, and Daughter, David and Darrell. After 5 hours of searching the quarry and finding many nice specimens, we headed to a hotel in the area for the night. We all met and had dinner at Shoneys, then back to the hotel for a round of rock talk and then sleep for our next adventure. |
