Fieldtrip Report:
Fieldtrip Report:
Christmas
at the Diamond Hill Mine
and More!,
December 23-25, 2005
Christmas 2005
OK, I doubt you'll see a lot of other clubs posting a trip report for the Christmas weekend!, thats because M.A.G.M.A., aside from being a little crazy, is totally dedicated to rockhounding, why else would we be digging Christmas eve and day ?. Actually it was our member Steve Barr who came up with this gem of an idea, and I could not help but join him for at least a campout and a day of digging before returning to my real life for the ritual Christmas family events. To tell the truth, I got my Christmas present early, Steve and I decided to head to Diamond Hill on Friday to setup camp for the weekend dig, on the way we stopped by to see Dave Smith at his home in Georgia and to view his mineral collection. Viewing and photographing some of his collection was great, but then I was also able to get back the huge smoky plate that we had dug together at Diamond Hill, that alone made my Christmas holiday complete. As you recall we visited Chets home about a month ago and viewed his fantastic collection, see the report "A day in Oconee Georgia", we had another great day at Daves, this guy literally has rocks in his yard that I would put in a museum!, one of the best collections of minerals I have ever seen.
JXR amethyst on matrix in the rockgarden.
JXR amethyst
More amethyst
I can remember when I first went to Graves Mountain years ago, (the thing back then was to find the rutile, I guess its still the thing today for some) my friend Bill and I dug in the main pit for a week and removed 50 - 100 rutile crystals of all sizes, I thought that was a great find until I saw the fantastic rutile collection that Dave has:
Graves Mountain Rutile
Dave pointing out some of his favorite rutile crystals to Steve.
Three rutile turtles
Giant amethyst crystal from the Ivy Farm in Georgia.
