2022roadtrip

[2022roadtrip]

@illuminfae-ix - I don't have any very recent examples of my cutting. the ruler is in centimeters the upper right picture is of the rough sunstones from my mine

the other two pictures are of cut stones loosely placed in settings, for display purposes. I've cut everything from amethyst to zircon, but in as much as I own a sunstone mine I have mostly been cutting sunstones in recent years. (sorry this took so long) (yo, @levon76 thought you might like some of these rocks...)

save as draft

[2022roadtrip]

Driving through Nevada, which is something like 90% Federal land, if you see trail heading off the highway and climbing up into the mountains, you can just go. you don't need permission, don't need a permit. Most all of those trails go up to old, usually abandoned, mining claims.

and if per chance you stumble across some mineral you like, you are allowed to stake a claim, so long as nobody else has claimed that particular tract. (20 acres are allowed for placer claims, 80 acres for load claims.) It's just like in the olden cowboy days, in the 1800s.

[2022roadtrip]

ideas for stones

[2022roadtrip]

Part of our 2022 production at the sunstone mine! Great red, green dichroic, watermelon, and schiller material in exceptional sizes!!!

[2022roadtrip]

things have been a tad hectic

should have the final group of stone pictures for ya'll by Thanksgiving or so. we have to prepare some material, sort and clean, ahead of the December Tokyo show. (and I probably don't need to tell this, but I'm kinda getting itchy for another road trip...)

[2022roadtrip]

my half of the finds from the sapphire gravel my marketing partner for Japan and I split. he'll send me my half of his finds.

the top stones are over five carats, next are over four carats, then over three carats, two carats, one and a half carats, one carat and the ones at the bottom are over a half carat.

the pile on the left is of stones either too included or fractured to cut or under a half carat. the stones that appear brownish are actually a yellowish green.

we're pleased with our results!

[2022roadtrip]

went to the cardiologist's office yesterday

she said I wasn't heart broken rather I had an excitable heart well I could have told her that I've loved falling in love ever since I can remember

[2022roadtrip]

oooh! I LOVE these!!!

thanks, @pocketfullofpoesies

Laguna agate

[2022roadtrip]

4 months and 9,000 miles later I'm in pretty decent shape!

[2022roadtrip]

Love it! Driving from New Mexico into west Texas last week, starting just over the state line, there were windmills sometimes 2 deep, often 5 deep on the northern side of I 40 for THIRTY miles (less often on the south side). I'd never seen so many windmills in all my life.

[2022roadtrip]

“Dreamers make the best drivers, always. They are not afraid of unknown routes, they do not complain about the bumps in the road, and they like the feel of the machine roaring down the dark highways. They seldom if ever get lost because wherever they find themselves is part of what they were seeking.”

— Charles Bowden

[2022roadtrip]

Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. (Hebrews 13:2)

(remind me sometime to tell you a story)

[2022roadtrip]

10/1

View from the trilobite mine looking south.

[2022roadtrip]

Hops being grown just outside of Boise ID. never imagined they looked like this!

[2022roadtrip]

9/29

Bill from C&J Racing Frames with my Sportster chrome-moly frame. I can lift the frame and swing arm with one hand!

[2022roadtrip]

10/1

part of a herd of about 9 or 10 wld horses less than a dozen miles from the trilobite mine

[2022roadtrip]

9/21

I'll start my return to South Carolina next week, first going to Boise to pick up a chrome moly frame for my Sportster.  (it'll drop thirty or forty pounds from the bike's total weight).  Then to Montana to pick up a load of sapphire concentrated gravel, to Utah to dig a few trilobites on my partner's claim, Santa Fe to visit a dear friend, Dallas to see my sister for the first time in 5 years (we call and text routinely).  I hope to stop in Alabama to visit a poet friend, North Carolina to see my other poet friend (the only two poets I actually know in real life).  I may go through Atlanta to see the boy who wrote the music to my lyrics "Lydia and the Bad Boys" or maybe the upcountry of South Carolina to visit an old running buddy.  I may or may not get to write much, but I'll easily have better access to YOUR writing, and I will enjoy that very much. Earlier thus summer I told you of an enchantment that came over me, pulling me into all manner of stories.  I've read more books and short stories in the past four months than I have in the past ten years. The spell seems to have culminated in my finding the story I just finished: "Other Birds" by Sarah Addison Allen.  I don't know when I've enjoyed a book more and can't imagine even starting any other book right now.  The story keeps my thoughts swirling.  It's such a delightful sensation I think I'll just let it carry me through the next several days.

(9/29 couldn't post this from the mine last week. am in Boise this morning getting more of my fill of Tumblr and getting ready to go get my frame.)