Fieldtrip Report:
Fieldtrip Report:
Tom’s
Mica Dig
Morefield Mine,
Wayne’s Amethyst Dig,
Amelia County & Other Locations in Virginia
November 9 th, 10th, and 11th, 2007
photos
by: Lee Fleming,
text: Lee Fleming
The MAGMA field trip to several mine locations began on Friday afternoon. We arrived at the Amelia Family Campgrounds at about 12:00 Noon. Upon arrival, we found that our site from last year was available to us so we began to setup camp on the same campsites. The campsites were provided with tables, electrical and water hookups, and enough area so that we could setup out camp for the weekend.
Once we had our tents setup, we traveled to our first collecting site. This site was located north of the campgrounds adjacent to a beautiful stream. At first, it seemed that we were only going to have two people show up for this dig, but in a few minutes, several other MAGMA members showed up. The group was willing to stand still until I could get pictures of those who were there.
After following Tom through the woods for a few hundred yards, we came upon a creek bank with stone and sand gravel covering. Tom explained that we were to dig in the loose material and into the exposed creek bank and look for books of mica and for quartz crystal. The pictures below show this activity.
(Richard and group)
Tom & Wayne
Shirley
Richard
Assembled group
(Mike) (Mike is from New Hampshire)
After digging for a while, Mike found a great quartz crystal for this area according to Tom. This crystal contained an inclusion and looked a lot better in person that in this picture.
Meanwhile, we all continued to dig in the creek bank with the hope of finding mica books and quartz crystals? The following pictures continue to show our digging operations:
Nick
(Jim & Shirley) (Jim is from Texas)
Sam & Nick
Mike & Jim
Lee
While digging, someone found this little but whole double terminated quartz crystal. Before we left, we took a picture of some of the quartz that was found. Note that the smallest one has a tip, which is amethyst. Tom said this find was very rare for this site.
As we left the site, I took one last picture of the site to capture the beauty of the digging site. This waterfall was located immediately upstream of our digging site and it afforded us with a sample of the Virginia back country beauty.
