Nevada Travel Log --- Rockhounding in Southern Nevada


Las Vegas Nights Hoover Dam Valley of Fire Cloud Enterprise Area 51 Little A'Le'Inn Nevada Test Site Rockhounding Shady Lady Emeril and MGM Home

Nevada Travel Log — Rockhounding in Nevada

The Adventures of Ron and Val in Las Vegas, Area 51, and Southern Nevada.

		We checked out a book from the library titled, Rockhounding Nevada. There were several sites listed that were somewhat easy to get to with our 4WD truck on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) roads. This site was a few miles from the Valley of Fire. It listed chalcedony as a likely find but we only found some dirty quartz.

		Although we didn't find much here, the view was very nice. We were 12 miles out a dirt road off a small 2-lane paved road. Yes, that is the road in the center of the picture. The cell phone said "NO SRVC".

		There were several red sandstone formations at this site.

		Lotsa red colors.

		This site, about 2 hours northwest of Vegas, was an abandoned old mine for blue quartz. Val found several HUGE chunks of white quartz that we're going to put in a display cabinet.

		Same site as above but you can see the mine entrance in the upper left.

		This is an Apache Tear. It's obsidian and usually black. At the last site we visited (Scotty's Junction, pop. 10) we found dozens of them. They need to be tumbled to bring out their brilliance, but hopefully they'll look like this one.
		"One day a party of Apache Indians was ambushed by an enemy tribe. The Apaches fought bravely but were greatly outnumbered and were driven to the top of a very high mountain. Their arrows were gone, and they could fight no longer. Refusing to be taken captive, they leaped, as one, from the cliffs to the rocks below. The Apache women, grief-stricken over the death of their brave warriors, shed torrents of tears. The tears became petrified and turned to stone." Jean Bartenbach, Rockhound Trails, Atheneum, 1977, p. 55

		When we checked our luggage at the Las Vegas airport the airline rep strained to lift our last bag and asked, "What do you have in here, rocks?" "Uh, yes." She quickly stuck this tag on the handle and we all had a good laugh. It really wasn't that heavy, really, it wasn't.