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Rockhounding 101 (ReRelease) · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

0:02
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
0:13
SPEAKER_00: Today we've got the second part of our Rocks and Minerals holiday re-release theme, and we are covering rock hounding.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: Chris and I have done a ton of this over the years and think it's a great hobby and pastime.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: In this episode, we cover kind of the basics, things you should think about, things you should consider, resources, but we obviously can't cover it all.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: Always check your local rules and regulations before you head out there, but you should definitely head out there.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: It's so fun.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: You can follow us on all the social medias.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: We are at Planet GeoCast.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: Shoot us a message via our contact us link on our website, Planetgeocast.com.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: You can download the Camp Geo Mobile app and learn all the basics of geoscience plus a ton more.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: That's our mobile platform for visual podcast series, the Camp Geo Mobile app.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: First link in your show notes.
0:53
SPEAKER_00: And during our kind of transition we're going through here at Planet Geo in the new year, we're definitely looking for feedback and listener questions that Rachel Phillips and I will begin to tackle in the new year.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: So please reach out.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: All right, let's go rock on it.
1:07
SPEAKER_01: Guys, you are a funny guy.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: You know, like you're not ahead of me.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: You're talking mad game over there today, aren't you?
1:14
SPEAKER_00: You're coming in spicy.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: I got spicy bull heights.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: You do, but that's always the case.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: But why is it that we always have our funniest conversations before we start recording?
1:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't know.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: It just gets us primed up, I think.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: You know?
1:27
SPEAKER_00: You're right though.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: We always hit the we're always like legitimately laughing, and then we're like, oh, we should be recording.
1:33
SPEAKER_01: Let's go ahead.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: And it's uh sometimes a little bit more colorful than we want after we hit recording.
1:39
SPEAKER_01: We try to keep it clean.
1:40
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: But Chris, today is one that's near and dear to our hearts, and I think really interesting.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: I think again, in the theme of like a lot of people probably wonder about this and don't really know how to get into it, how to plug into it, and it's rock hounding.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: And this is one of my favorite terms to teach people.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: You know, my wife's a doctor.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: I interact with a lot of doctors, uh, many of them are outdoors people, but they don't know the term rock hounding.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: And so when you tell them rock hounding, it just gets a laugh every time.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: I get great pleasure.
2:09
SPEAKER_00: Is it really?
2:10
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: It's so fun because it's one of those words like to me, it's just another word, like it means nothing.
2:16
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't register as funny anymore.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: But to other people, it registers as very funny.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: And so, how would you define rock hounding, Chris?
2:24
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we could just start there.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: How would you explain it to you know Tess's colleagues who don't know what rock hounding is?
2:30
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, I used to have a bloodhound, and his name was Sherman.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: You did Sherman Sherman was the bomb.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: He was amazing.
2:38
SPEAKER_01: This dog was absolutely amazing.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: His nose was unbelievable.
2:42
SPEAKER_01: In fact, Jesse, I'm gonna this side story.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: I used to take him for walks in the gravel pit, you know.
2:48
SPEAKER_01: We have all kinds of gravel pits around us here in Hudsonville, Michigan, and Michigan has tons of them, okay?
2:54
SPEAKER_01: And uh, you made me aware that not everybody knows what a gravel pit is, you know, like it's pretty self-explanatory.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: It's a pit with gravel in it, but it's where gravel is mined out of.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: It's a glacial deposit that is being mined.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: So you're walking around gravel pits with Sherman.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
3:07
SPEAKER_00: That dog was awesome.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: His nose is amazing, and so I would throw a rock, and the game was he had to come back with the same rock, right?
3:13
SPEAKER_01: Well, so when you throw a little rock in a gravel pit full of rocks, that's kind of impressive.
3:18
SPEAKER_01: And so I upped the ante as I always do, and I started to throw them in ponds, you know, and it was amazing.
3:24
SPEAKER_01: He could smell it.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
3:26
SPEAKER_01: He's in like a foot of water, and he knew that rock was he was right there, right?
3:30
SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: And then finding the exact same rock.
3:38
SPEAKER_01: He took a snoop full of water, and that really pissed him off.
3:42
SPEAKER_01: So then he finally just came back with another rock, and he came back with this glacially strided cobble that was enormous.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: I couldn't believe he fit it in his mouth, but I still use that rock as a demonstration in my classroom today, actually, because it shows like faceting and polishing and striations, and it's amazing.
4:00
SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, what what were we talking about?
4:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, let's get back on track here.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: Rock hound to find rock hounding.
4:08
SPEAKER_01: Well, Sherman's a hound, so it's just like going after rocks, man.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it it's that's about it.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: That's that's about it.
4:15
SPEAKER_01: That's really it.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: Like, what do you want?
4:18
SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's go find it.
4:19
SPEAKER_01: That's really what it is.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: And I think Chris, it yeah, I agree completely.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: It's going after rocks, that's it.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: And uh there's mineral collecting is a part of that.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: I would say that's kind of rock hounding as well.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: But rock hounding, you and I are uh we've done a lot of this together.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: We're both pretty passionate about it.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: You have an amazing rock garden outside of your house full of all of the rocks that you have hounded throughout your life, and it's just good fun, I think.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: You know, going out there, it's informative.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: You learn about the planet, you appreciate the beauty of rocks, you learn the story that the rocks tell you, and it's just good fun.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: It's like one of my friends describes this as it's like geode hunting for adults, is really what rock hounding is, right?
5:05
SPEAKER_00: You're just looking for cool rocks out there, and so a lot of people have a passion for this.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: All you gotta do is go onto Facebook or Google and type in your rock hounding, and you can find there's a rock hounds of Pennsylvania, there's a rock hounds of York County, there's like all of these rock hound groups, right?
5:20
SPEAKER_00: And people are really passionate about it.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of people who do it, you know, once a week or once every year.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter, but like there's people who are interested in going out there and finding stuff.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna cover today kind of how to rock hounding 101, how to, how to get into it, the do's and don'ts, because the don'ts are almost as important as the do's here.
5:39
SPEAKER_01: I would agree with everything you just said, but I want to add to that I don't think you and I would be doing what we're doing now.
5:45
SPEAKER_01: We would not be as close, as friends as we are now if we didn't engage in these rock hounding activities.
5:51
SPEAKER_01: Like we were doing this every year, we would take a week point and go rock hounding.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: That's all we did.
5:57
SPEAKER_01: But we always took one day to not rock hound and just go climb or hike.
6:03
SPEAKER_01: We just we we would run the mountains.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: That's a really good point, Chris.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: And so I think we could probably frame it there, talking about what these trips kind of looked like.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: Because we went to Maine, like upstate New York, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: We went to the Black Hills.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: We both love the Black Hills of South Dakota.
6:20
SPEAKER_01: A few times.
6:21
SPEAKER_01: A few times.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: We went to Colorado, and we've done several other trips in there, the upper peninsula, Michigan.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: But basically, you know, you had your old F-250, which I think your son now has, uh, F-250 pickup truck, pack up the trailer, sometimes not the trailer, little trailer, big trailer, and we just drive and we take a week, and as you said, we'd kind of camp our way out there.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: We'd camp while we're at the Black Hills, for instance.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: So we take a day and do a big hike, usually, and then the rest of the time we're out there banging around looking for cool rocks and mineral specimens.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: We come back with a trailer full or a truck bed full of rocks, usually, and it's no small task, right?
6:59
SPEAKER_00: Like that's a big trip.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: It took us a lot of planning.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: It was great fun.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: We had so much fun doing this, and we bonded over cool discoveries, cool rocks, just great time out in nature.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: And deep campfire talks.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: That's true.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: Don't forget, that's right.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: Don't forget about the campfire talks.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: Definitely great campfire talks.
7:18
SPEAKER_01: Sitting in the back of my truck bed with a beer in hand, um, just just looking at the rocks that we collected that day.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: I must say, we there, you know, there's casual rock hounding and there's not casual rock hounding, and this was not casual rock hounding.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: We were exhausted the vast majority of the time.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: It's hard work and it's fun work, but you know, it's we went to a bunch of old mine tailings piles, which you're kind of walking up these scree slopes and digging around looking for cool minerals and stuff.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: So I guess maybe we should start from like the planning stages.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: How if somebody's like, hey, I want to rock hound, they move to a new area, or they're planning on going on a trip and they want to rock hound for a day, look for stuff.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: How do you enter into that?
7:58
SPEAKER_00: How do you determine what to do, how you're gonna spend your time?
8:02
SPEAKER_00: What would you say, Chris?
8:03
SPEAKER_01: What do you want to get?
8:05
SPEAKER_01: I think it determines where you want to go.
8:07
SPEAKER_01: You know, I think that's the thing.
8:09
SPEAKER_01: Like if you're into obsidian or you're into Ripple Mark sandstone, or you're into these things, uh the unk Papa Sandstone in this in the black.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness, amazing.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: That determines where you go.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: But I I also want to say this too, that hopefully you're gonna go with somebody else, and hopefully maybe multiple people, right?
8:29
SPEAKER_01: And there's a way to do this that I think that worked so well for us.
8:33
SPEAKER_01: All right, we took my truck because it was a you know a heavy-duty truck, and we just put money in an envelope.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: We said, All right, let's everybody pitch in 200 bucks and we just put it in there and we used it for all of the common expenses, right?
8:48
SPEAKER_01: And then when it was done, we're like, okay, put in another 100 bucks, you know.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: And by the time it was all said and done, it was really affordable.
8:55
SPEAKER_01: These were not expensive trips we took.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: No, that's right.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we were camping in state forest campgrounds, driving, gas was probably the vast majority expense.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we were we were not eating high cuisine, but it was not no we were not so that was that was relatively cheap.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: So that's that's one you know kind of part of the planning is how to go about structuring this.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: And and we did these big, you know, expansive excursions, right?
9:18
SPEAKER_00: Where we'd go for a week or a week and a half and drive with a couple of times.
9:21
SPEAKER_01: Or going over a thousand miles one way.
9:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, these were these were big excursions, which was mostly camping and rock collecting, some hiking on the side.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people kind of invert that though, right?
9:31
SPEAKER_00: They'll go on a camping hiking trip or they'll go on a family vacation somewhere new and they'll have a day and they'll want to maybe explore that area.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: And so I tend to think of it, and Tess and I do this now when we go out, we usually go travel somewhere.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: Let's say we're going up to New Hampshire or something, and we got a day out we want to go explore, and we want to find a creek and explore and collect some rocks or go rock hounting a bit.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: You kind of got to understand the geology of the region first.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: Like, what are you dealing with?
9:58
SPEAKER_00: What kinds of rocks are there?
10:00
SPEAKER_00: What maybe interesting mineral collecting sites are there in the region?
10:04
SPEAKER_00: What's what's kind of around within like a day's drive or a couple hours' drive of where you are, where you're going, right?
10:10
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of the general geology, the high-level geology is kind of the first entry point.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: And Chris, we talk a lot about the roadside geology books, the the roadside geology series of books, because they're spectacular, and we use these all the time.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: We do.
10:28
SPEAKER_01: And we're also though putting you know lots of miles on the vehicle because rock hounding is is hard, it's hard work.
10:35
SPEAKER_01: At least that was our experience.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: I I thought we did a lot of research, but we we struggled to find certain things that that's a part of rock hounding, is you have to be willing to struggle and drive and uh not get to the right spot, or you get to the right spot and you don't have permission.
10:54
SPEAKER_01: You know, I think of when we were in the Black Hills and we wanted to go get spodgmin.
11:00
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember this?
11:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I do.
11:01
SPEAKER_01: We went to this mine, uh, it's the Eta mine, actually, and we get there and there's a a tunnel blasted through a wall of rock, right?
11:10
SPEAKER_01: And there's a fence across the rock.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: This is an abandoned mine site, an old mine that's not currently mined anymore.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: So it's a quarry, you know, filled quarry lake kind of thing, right?
11:18
SPEAKER_01: And spodjamine is a lithium ore, and it's it's this kind of really like white, it looks like bone, actually, like fossilized bone.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's a good description.
11:29
SPEAKER_01: And it's a very like it's an awesome mineral.
11:31
SPEAKER_01: I love it.
11:32
SPEAKER_01: And this mine is just known for really spectacular spodgmine crystals.
11:37
SPEAKER_01: And so we go there and there's a fence across it, and there's a sign that says, do not trespass.
11:43
SPEAKER_01: And if you do, a lot of really horrible things are gonna happen to you.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
11:50
SPEAKER_01: But then there was a phone number at the bottom of it with a name, and we just whipped out our phones and called the phone number, and it's this guy that owns the mine.
11:59
SPEAKER_01: He owns a shop in Keystone, South Dakota.
12:01
SPEAKER_01: And you know, we just explain who we are.
12:04
SPEAKER_01: We're these geology nerds, and we just wanna can we go into your mine and collect some spogamine?
12:09
SPEAKER_01: Do we have your permission?
12:10
SPEAKER_01: He's like, Well, I really want to meet you.
12:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and so we drove into Keystone, met the guy.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: The guy was friendly as like he was awesome, you know.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: He's like, you know what, guys, take whatever you want.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: I don't think he knew what he was really saying when he said that, but no, because I have a huge chunk of spodgamine that took probably two or three of us to lift into your truck, uh sitting in my front yard right now.
12:32
SPEAKER_01: This stuff is dense, you know, it's got it's got a high specific gravity, and this stuff is awesome.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: But I think uh that's that story there.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: We have so many of stories like that.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: We have one like that from the famous Gore Mountain locality in upstate New York, right?
12:46
SPEAKER_00: Where we're kind of going up to the entrance, and there's clearly, you know, there's no trespassing signs anywhere.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: We're kind of thinking, all right, what do we do here?
12:52
SPEAKER_00: Like uh how there's no number.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: There's a phone number, who can we call?
12:56
SPEAKER_00: What are we looking for?
12:57
SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, I think it was a Merced Um, it wasn't a Mercedes.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: It was a Chrysler 300, right?
13:02
SPEAKER_01: 300, yes.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: Chrysler 300 comes ripping up the road right to us and stops in front of us.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: We're like, oh boy, we're in trouble.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: And you know, we're like, we can't be in trouble.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: We're we're on the right side of the no trespassing signs.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: Like, we haven't done anything wrong here, but it sounds like we're in trouble, by the way.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: This car's pulling up.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: And the guy's same thing.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: He's like, Oh, you're a geologist, yeah, come on down, I'll open the gate for you, take whatever you want, like poke around.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: She took us down into the heart of the mind.
13:26
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: So good, you know.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: But I think there's a couple lessons in here, right?
13:30
SPEAKER_00: Like the first one is don't ever trespass.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, there are people who will slip things into their pocket, especially in national parks, and that really, really pisses you and me off.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: Like, don't ever take anything from national parks, don't ever trespass.
13:45
SPEAKER_00: But the other important point here is that usually just calling people opens doors to you, right?
13:51
SPEAKER_00: Don't be afraid to call and say, Hey, I'm super interested in these rocks, or I'm looking around.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: Can I get access?
13:56
SPEAKER_00: Some people might say no, sure, but some people might say yes, right.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: And so it never hurts to reach out and make that call.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: And and that's a really good point.
14:05
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna interrupt you here.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: That's a really good point.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: We have not found many people that have said no.
14:10
SPEAKER_01: We have found some people that said yes, we'll let you in for a charge.
14:13
SPEAKER_01: And and usually we're willing to, okay, a hundred bucks, you know, that's like 30 bucks a person, let's go.
14:19
SPEAKER_01: We've had that, but the yeah, the takeaway is like you you you just don't want to ever put yourself in a position where you're doing something wrong, and then you get caught doing something wrong.
14:29
SPEAKER_01: You know, you have to know you know what the rules are, don't ever trespass.
14:34
SPEAKER_01: And the other thing is too, I think this is along the same line is don't wreck an outcrop either.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes, absolutely.
14:43
SPEAKER_01: You know, you want to collect away from certain away from the view of the public view.
14:49
SPEAKER_01: You know, what you're doing should not ruin anybody else's view.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: We had this exact same conversation with Andrew Alden, and you know, he brought this up about geologists going to outcrops, and you know, you're young, you're full of enthusiasm, you've got a rock hammer in your hand.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: Like, of course you want to hit stuff, right?
15:03
SPEAKER_00: Don't hit the beautiful outcrop.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: The beautiful outcrops that are stunning to look at, just leave them because you don't need to hit them.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: Usually, if you just poke around, if you're at a road cut, somebody cut a road through there and blasted a road through there, and there's rock rubble laying around, you can find the little piece you want to take home without bashing the outcrop, right?
15:22
SPEAKER_00: That exists all over the place.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: Like a lot of these mineral locations or locations that are kind of known as good spots to collect minerals, they'll have a lot of tailings around.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: They'll have broken rock in a big pile somewhere that you can go dig through.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: And I think for me, Chris, the key to rock hunting, and really frankly, the most fun of it is that it takes time.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: You don't expect to just rock up to an outcrop and grab the first rock you find and have it be a great one, right?
15:49
SPEAKER_00: Part of the fun of it, the real pleasure, is that it's like a fishing expedition.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: You fail a lot, right?
15:55
SPEAKER_00: And so it just makes those cool discoveries that much sweeter, I think, when you actually find what you're looking for.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: I think we were looking for, well, the unk Papa sandstone was one that we were after for a long time.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: And so to set the stage, this sandstone, well, Chris, you described the sandstone.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh you can probably do it uh more justice than I can.
16:14
SPEAKER_01: Well, first of all, we didn't really know that we wanted the unk Papa sandstone until we went to a museum in Rapid City, South Dakota.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: And and we saw it.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: Day one of our trip.
16:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we didn't we had driven what 24 hours across the country reading these books.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: 16 hours, yep, yep.
16:31
SPEAKER_01: That's right, that's right.
16:32
SPEAKER_01: Oh, oh my gosh.
16:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we were reading on the way, you know, like we were just writing stuff down, you know, phone recordings.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: We hadn't come across this, and then we rock up to the museum and we're like, oh, we gotta find that outcrop because that rock's amazing.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: You really had it in for this rock right when you saw it.
16:51
SPEAKER_01: You were it was you and I and Andy, handy Andy, was with us, and he hates it.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: Our buddy, our buddy Andy Andy.
17:00
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, you were the one that drove the the ship on this.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: You're like, we have to find this rock.
17:06
SPEAKER_01: I think it took us two days, literally.
17:08
SPEAKER_01: Like, we drove a few hundred miles, you know, and we're using the we knew the geology of the Black Hills, right?
17:14
SPEAKER_01: And and so it's a dome.
17:16
SPEAKER_01: The geology of this this region is a you know geologic dome.
17:20
SPEAKER_01: So we kind of knew the vicinity of where it was gonna be, and then we we came upon where we thought it would outcrop, and then it was private property, we couldn't get to it, you know.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: We didn't have a phone number, no permission, so we went somewhere else, and it took us probably two days, and we finally got this, you know, and and and this rock is it's a finely layered sandstone with all sorts of incredible colors in it yellows, purples, pinks, whites, grays.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: It is beautiful, and then not only the colors, not only the layers, but it has a ton of all these little micro faults running through it.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: So this thing is a faulted gem of a rock.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is just a beautiful rock, and it's exposed in a lot of places in the Western US, called different names in different regions.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: But this is a beautiful rock, and that I think the discovery, our discovery of that, was made all the sweeter because we spent so much time, you know, looking for it.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: And it was fun, you know, it's fun.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: It is really the sense of discovery, is is great in rock hounding.
18:21
SPEAKER_01: And then it was protected by rattlesnakes.
18:26
SPEAKER_01: It was Chris and the is protected.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: Uh the the the illusion of rattlesnakes in your head.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
18:33
SPEAKER_01: This was no illusion.
18:34
SPEAKER_01: No, the other one was an illusion.
18:35
SPEAKER_01: This was no illusion.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: These things were out on the ground, they were little baby rattlesnakes like all over the place.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: I'm deathly afraid of snakes.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: Um Chris has no love for snakes.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: No, especially not when they're getting the way of his outcrops.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: Oh man, that was.
18:50
SPEAKER_01: But I did brave them.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: So I okay, knowing a bit about the region is great.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: So, first of all, patience, right?
18:56
SPEAKER_00: Patience, don't trespass, obey the rules, and have patience.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna not find what you're looking for many times.
19:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, let me interject here.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: Most often, if you're gonna go rock hounding, then there have been books written about it outside of the roadside geology book.
19:12
SPEAKER_01: And so you really need to look into anything that was written about this area, and and then you're just digging for clues on that.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: So, Chris, where are places that you look?
19:22
SPEAKER_00: What are a couple resources if you're going to a new place?
19:26
SPEAKER_00: What are you gonna look for at first?
19:28
SPEAKER_01: I don't have a canned answer for this.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: Like, uh, there's nothing.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: I remember you weren't on this trip that I went, what but I went with our other friend Brian, and we went to North Carolina, and we're looking around as we were driving, we were reading roadside geology, and we knew what we wanted to go get, and we knew roughly where to go, but we had to just we had to buy a book, but we didn't know what book we had to buy.
19:53
SPEAKER_01: And so we ended up in this city and we went to uh bookstore and we found what we needed, so it's like I don't know, it's just persistence because I'll tell you this too.
20:03
SPEAKER_01: There is a very tight-lipped community around rock hounding, right?
20:08
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like fishing.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: People that own rock shops, right?
20:11
SPEAKER_01: Right, people that own rock shops, they they're not gonna share with you.
20:14
SPEAKER_01: You can't go in there and say, Oh, where did you find this beautiful rose quartz?
20:19
SPEAKER_01: They're gonna tell you to get out of their shop, you know.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: They're like they're not gonna tell you where to go to get that, they want to sell you the stuff.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: So you and I have been a part of that kind of environment as well, where people are very tight-lipped, they don't want to tell you because they think, oh, you're just gonna wreck it or whatever, or they're trying to make a living selling that stuff.
20:37
SPEAKER_01: So it's creativity.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: I think uh I have a bit of a canned answer for this because this is what I do a little bit more, and I I don't think I'll kind of flip it because what I do now most often is there's a planned vacation or a planned trip somewhere, and I want to go look for rocks for half a day as a part of this trip.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: So I can't really say, oh, I want to go to upstate New York to look at Gore Mountain Garnets.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: Like that I can't make that decision, right?
21:03
SPEAKER_00: It's more like, hey, we're going to New Hampshire.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: What's on the way to New Hampshire or what's in New Hampshire?
21:08
SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: And luckily, there's beautiful rocks up in New Hampshire in great geology.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's beautiful.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: Lots of pegmatites, lithium pegmatites, lots of cool stuff.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, we're gonna go to the Grand Canyon.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay, what's near the Grand Canyon around that region?
21:23
SPEAKER_00: Oh, Sedona, there's really cool rocks in Sedona.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I use the U.S.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: Geological Survey's maps first of all.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: Like I know what good rocks kind of are, what categories of rocks look cool and are interesting to try and find.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: So looking at the map first, if I looked at the map of Michigan, I would realize wow, the Lower Peninsula is not great for rock hounding unless I'm sitting in a gravel pit, frankly.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I gotta go to the UP to find cool rocks, right?
21:48
SPEAKER_00: So just looking at the geologic map first and foremost, then the internet.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: The internet is full of amazing resources because there's a lot of people who have searched in these regions, and there's a lot of little historical situations.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Societies, there's a lot of just little weird niche resources that can help you find cool little areas to go rock hounding in.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: Whether it's a little creek bed somewhere or it's an old mine site that is open and you can call the owner and everybody knows you can call the owner and get permission.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: Like those little gems, you just gotta search for them.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: It like you said, it takes persistence to even get that resource.
22:24
SPEAKER_01: It does because if you go to this place where it says, hey, there's this creek bed where you can go get rootal crystals, um, good luck.
22:30
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's really hard still.
22:33
SPEAKER_01: You know where to go, but these things are not just laying on the ground.
22:39
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're you know, they're not there just to pick up, and you're not gonna go there and spend 15 minutes and walk home with a five-gallon bucket full of this stuff.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: It's that's right.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: So managing expectations is a really uh important one too, right?
22:50
SPEAKER_00: Like, and enjoy the experience because you know what, you're in this beautiful place, you're outside, you're looking for cool rocks, you find what you're after, or you don't, you're gonna find some cool stuff that you didn't expect, probably as well.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: And so, whether it's fossils or crystals or certain rock types, you and I often collect rocks, which I think is a little bit more rare.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: Most people are after crystals or fossils, I think, typically, which is totally fair.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: That's those are really interesting, uh, interesting things.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: So maybe Chris, could we spend a couple minutes just maybe wrapping up here talking about equipment?
23:21
SPEAKER_00: And again, for the the basic ones, you and I we went with the big pickup truck, we had sledgehammers and chisels and all sorts of stuff.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: That's not everybody.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: So, like, what what do you think are the key things for a little day trip or your average person who's got a free day to go rock hounting somewhere?
23:39
SPEAKER_01: All right, I don't go small, so I'm gonna say like a three-pound little sledge, like a handheld mallet, okay, if you will.
23:48
SPEAKER_01: And then if you to me, I found the best stuff at these antique shops where you're looking for chisels, but they're not really chisels, they're usually like railroad tie kind of stuff, you know.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: Definitely those things you can pick up wood splitting malls or something like that, you know, any piece of metal, old pry bars, little pieces of metal that you can get into little cracks and you can break open little cracks with.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: That's that's absolutely great.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: I do think it's a set of glasses.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, oh absolutely.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the personal protective wear is important.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: Set of glasses.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: I've actually, Chris, taken to especially when I'm using a hammer and chisel like metal on metal or metal on rock, especially with a big sledge, I wear earmuffs just because that ringing, that like ringing noise with all the field work I've done bashing granites up in the Canadian shield, uh that it gets to me.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: So I usually have eye protection, ear protection, gloves, you know, your basic work gloves.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: And then what's the other thing I was gonna say?
24:46
SPEAKER_00: Oh, a hand lens.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: A hand lens is the geological tool, you can get these for like 10-15 bucks, and uh they're really useful.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: Once you kind of figure out how to use them, it's just a magnifying glass, really, but they're higher power magnifying glasses, and they're really great for mineral identification and cool features in rocks.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 10x you can get 20, 30, 15, I think is the the the bulk standard one that we use.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, those are those are good things.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: What what else?
25:13
SPEAKER_00: Do you have anything else that you like bring along?
25:16
SPEAKER_01: No, my version of a rock hammer is a three-pound hammer, the three-pound hammer and a chisel, I can do what I need to do most of the time with that.
25:24
SPEAKER_01: And like you said, too, eyewear, ear wear, I'm all about that.
25:27
SPEAKER_01: I mean, even if I'm on the lawn, I wear ear protection.
25:30
SPEAKER_01: So you know, yeah.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: You got to, man.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: The only other thing I could think of is I usually end up taking a pretty old backpack that's beat up because rocks are really sharp, especially if you collect anything sizable with a little weight to it, it'll rip up your backpack.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: So I usually end up having like an old fleece jacket or something like that in an old backpack that I can chuck a rock into and not worry about damaging my nice.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: I can't believe I forgot that.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I you know, the number of times I've like had a new backpack and I go out and I find the coolest rock on this hike, and I have to put it into my brand new backpack.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: But you gotta take the rock.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: But you gotta you keep it.
26:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, but you do have to take the rock.
26:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but do you remember when uh one of our first trips out to the Black Hills, we stopped at Cabela's in Mitchell, South Dakota because I had to buy a different backpack, and I still have that same backpack, and there are no holes in it.
26:25
SPEAKER_01: And that's a that backpack, yeah.
26:27
SPEAKER_01: I know it's a Cabela's brand, and it it just has held up.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: Uh that's probably, I don't know, Jesse, it's maybe 12-15 years old.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, it's and it's the I I have the I have my field backpack, which is a Kelty, which is just a it's a bomb-proof backpack.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: I have carried thousands of pounds of rocks in that thing now over the years, and you know, it's a beat, and it's it's beat up, but you know what?
26:52
SPEAKER_00: There's no holes in it yet.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: So that's right.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, having a beater, a beater backpack is a key one.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: And I always like to have a little, you know, maybe I'm getting a little bit old, but I always like to have an old fleece jacket or something that'll pad the rock from my back a little bit.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: That'll have that extra layer of padding between rocks and my back.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: The number of times, Chris, I'm sure you've had this as well.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: My thighs have some scars on them from putting rocks in my front pockets and then falling on them.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: Have you done this?
27:18
SPEAKER_00: You surely, I know how clumsy you are.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: You must have done this a couple times.
27:21
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I have a scar on my cheek actually from a chunk of quartz.
27:26
SPEAKER_01: Oh.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: Right.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: I was trying to knock a chunk of Rose Quartz off, and a big shard just flew right into my cheek.
27:36
SPEAKER_01: I have a scar there, literally, from it still.
27:38
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I mean, always go with eyewear for sure.
27:42
SPEAKER_01: I mean, definitely.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: That's that's number one.
27:45
SPEAKER_01: But I don't I don't think I've fallen though, like you have, but you know, yeah, I think athletic.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: Oh, oh, really?
27:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: Famously, famously more athletic.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: Just ask him.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: He's the most athletic man that's ever existed.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: You just gotta ask him.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: Just ask me.
28:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
28:04
SPEAKER_00: Oh man, and you know, like we were talking about before with the rock identification thing, we gotta go out and do this again sometime soon.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's been too long, man.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: This has been too funny.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: You got you know what you gotta do?
28:13
SPEAKER_00: All right, you gotta come to Pennsylvania.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: There's some amazing geology.
28:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh, western Pennsylvania is okay, but eastern Pennsylvania's got some totally cool geology, and we'll go we'll go bash around looking for some rocks.
28:24
SPEAKER_01: Okay, we'll take a couple days to do that.
28:26
SPEAKER_01: Sounds good.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: Totally great.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: Sweet.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: Hey, well, I mean, what else?
28:30
SPEAKER_00: Are we missing anything else here on rock hounding 101?
28:33
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
28:33
SPEAKER_01: The key to the game is well, two, research, research, research, okay, and then be persistent because it's not easy.
28:41
SPEAKER_01: It's directions are often obscure and sometimes they're obscure on purpose.
28:46
SPEAKER_01: You just have to like get after it.
28:48
SPEAKER_01: It's I mean, not to bring another story, but do you remember our quest for Tufa?
28:53
SPEAKER_00: Tufa.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
28:55
SPEAKER_00: Oh man, this was the Black Hills, Tufa.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: The Black Hills, yeah.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: Oh man, that was another epic.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: We were just for some, I think you were the one who really wanted Tufa, right?
29:05
SPEAKER_00: This was Do you know what did it have some tufa?
29:08
SPEAKER_01: We were in the city of Custer.
29:10
SPEAKER_01: We went into this building, it was like a shop, and this guy had a fireplace that was made of tufa, and I was right alone.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: Oh wait, I forgot about that.
29:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he had a whole fireplace made of tufa.
29:23
SPEAKER_00: And too, so tufa is basically it's precipitated uh calcium carbonate, and it's like travertine, it's in this category of like travertine type stuff.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: It's things that are precipitated.
29:34
SPEAKER_01: Petrified forest floor, it's like petrified moss, if you will.
29:37
SPEAKER_00: Right, exactly.
29:38
SPEAKER_00: It is really cool, really crazy looking, and uh like kind of wormy textured, but lots of gaps in it, lots of air pockets and things like this.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: It's really amazing stuff.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was an epic, epic search for two.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, another two days down the drain.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: But how but no, but when you find it and you're like, oh my gosh, all right, our knowledge of geology led us to this point.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: Totally.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: You know, totally, and you know what?
30:06
SPEAKER_00: Our knowledge of geology leveled up along the way because the amount of time, just understanding how the world works from a geological perspective is so cool.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: And rock hunting really, I think, accentuates that.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: It's rare that you just stumble upon something, luckily.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: You usually have to sort of use your reasoning, use your intuition while you're out there.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: Let's say, you know, I like to do a lot of this stuff along streams now because streams are great aggregators of all the stuff that's up in the drainage basin.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: So all the rocks in the drainage basin area that are exposed will kind of end up downstream in the stream.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: And so I like these cobbly streams in the mountains.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: And you kind of have to work out, like, okay, I'm seeing a lot of this granite over here, but I'm really after the schist.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: And so is that schist more downstream or upstream?
30:52
SPEAKER_00: Is there a little offshoot of the schist that's exposed up to the left and not to the right?
30:56
SPEAKER_00: Like, you kind of are working through this reasoning thing all the way through it, and so it just takes effort, and you get an appreciation for the world around you just by doing this.
31:04
SPEAKER_01: So I agree a hundred percent.
31:07
SPEAKER_01: My mind was going a thousand miles an hour thinking about like how this is really rock hounding is a informal field camp.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: That is an an amazing way to describe it.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: Informal field camp, informal geologic mapping.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: You're just doing it for yourself, right?
31:22
SPEAKER_00: You're just trying to work out the problem by yourself, and that's good enough.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: And it's so fun, so fun.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: So get out there and rock hound.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: No matter where you are, there's interesting stuff.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: Just search anything about rock hounding in the city you're in or the area you're in, the county you're in.
31:37
SPEAKER_00: I bet there's some cool stuff around you.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: Good stuff, good times, good memories.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: Good frickin' memories.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: And Chris, you're right.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: I've had I hadn't thought about that.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: We would not be sitting here today on this podcast if it were not for rock hounding.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: That was well said.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: I don't think we would.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: I don't think we would said, sir.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: I agree with you.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: Don't call me, sir.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: Mr.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: Bullheis, you're doing such a great job.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: Hey, you know, I want to say something real quick.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: We uh a couple weekends ago, we had this session in your honor at the Geological Society of America conference, the North Central Regional One, and that was a really fun session.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: First of all, I was quite honored to give a talk in that.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: But there seem to be a fair number of students who seem to think that you trespassed to collected a lot of rocks.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: And I I had to defend you.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: I think I have never seen you do that.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: I don't think I've ever seen you do that.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: And I think what they did, I want to ask you what you thought about that while you were listening to these people kind of throwing shady way about it during their talks.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was all in jest, right?
32:39
SPEAKER_00: But what I was sitting there thinking was I know Chris Boyce, I know that you say a lot, this sandstone is the same sandstone that's in the Grand Canyon.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: I collected it outside of the Grand Canyon, though.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of students interpreted that as quote unquote, I collected it, quote unquote, outside of the Grand Canyon, meaning you did take it from the Grand Canyon and you're just saying you didn't.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: That was how I interpreted that, but I know for a fact you have never taken anything from a national park, and I've never seen you collect rocks while you're trespassing at all.
33:09
SPEAKER_01: No, actually, I had a friend who took a small piece of sulfur from Yellowstone, and she somebody saw her do it, and she put it in a little napkin and put it in her pocket.
33:20
SPEAKER_01: And then they were near the old faithful area and they left.
33:23
SPEAKER_01: And um a ranger pulled them over right as they left the old faithful area.
33:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they got pulled over.
33:27
SPEAKER_01: Their whole car was searched, it took like two hours.
33:29
SPEAKER_01: This was a massive ordeal.
33:31
SPEAKER_01: Finally, she said, What are you what are you looking for?
33:33
SPEAKER_01: What you know, what's going on?
33:35
SPEAKER_01: And and he said, Somebody saw you take something from Old Faithful.
33:38
SPEAKER_01: And she said, Do you mean this?
33:40
SPEAKER_01: And she reached in her pocket and it was a little like it was uh about the half a size of a dime.
33:44
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
33:45
SPEAKER_01: And she got fined, I think like$500 for this, and it was, you know, it was steep.
33:49
SPEAKER_01: So they don't mess around, and I'm not gonna mess around with that, especially if I'm with the students, I'm not gonna mess around with that.
33:55
SPEAKER_01: So I wouldn't do that anyway.
33:57
SPEAKER_01: But you're right, when I go places like I have examples of almost everything, and I bring those with me because I want to say, well, guys, this is what you're gonna see here if I want to get on the front end of a lecture about hey, keep your eyes out.
34:12
SPEAKER_01: So then then when I'm walking with eight to ten students, I can say, What's that?
34:16
SPEAKER_01: you know, and they have some sort of frame of reference.
34:19
SPEAKER_01: So it's just planning, and they know me though, Jesse.
34:22
SPEAKER_01: They know that I take risks all the time.
34:25
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
34:25
SPEAKER_01: And I think they they look at my personality and they just assume, oh, really, he's just BS in there.
34:31
SPEAKER_01: He took this rock from here.
34:33
SPEAKER_01: He probably took it 10 steps back.
34:35
SPEAKER_01: But no, I actually took that rock from Michigan.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: You know, I had that rock long before, and it was legal, and there was no moral ramifications to that at all.
34:46
SPEAKER_01: So it's just it's just planning, and I think it's just assumptions that I don't know.
34:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're right.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: I need to I need to dispel those because I think there's a ru there's rumors amongst the younger generation of Chris Bullhead students that uh that that uh Chris is collecting rocks illegally, but I've never known that to be true.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: I can't say that you've never have, but I've never seen you do that.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: So you've always been an upright uh and legal rock hounder, in my opinion.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: So hey man, I appreciate that.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: That's a wrap on this episode.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: You can learn all about the basics of geoscience with our conversational textbook for the geosciences.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: It is the first link in your show notes, Camp Geo.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: There we have actually photos of rocks, Chris.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: We have gifts of rocks that'll help you identify rocks as you're going out there rock hounding around in the world.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: You can go to our website, planetgeocast.com.
35:35
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35:37
SPEAKER_00: We always appreciate that.
35:39
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35:43
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35:45
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35:49
SPEAKER_00: That really helps the algorithm and helps us spread the word about the geosciences.
35:53
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
35:53
SPEAKER_01: Cheers.
35:54
SPEAKER_01: Cheers.