With all this nice weather two days in a row, finally…I mean come on we are in the South, we couldn’t resist heading out for a second day in a row. This time we went in the opposite direction from DuPont.
John was anxious to do some rockhounding so he found a place not to far away, Ray’s Mine. It is an old mica mine. Mica was originally used for window panes before glass.
The rocks peel apart like the skin on an onion. It is pretty cool. However that is not what we were after.
Aquamarine. Garnets. Saphires. That would be awesome. The tailing pile from the old mine was huge. (tailings are what they dig up but don’t want). This picture only shows a small part. Yeah that is John way up there.
The hike into the mine was short, only about a 1/2 mile or so over a well worn, pretty walk through the woods.
That was the easiest part. The hike to the top of the pile was not so easy. John likes to take these up/down hill pictures, but they never seem so bad when I look at them compared to when I had to walk them.
The mine was in evidence in two ways. One the big hole in the ground.
Two, the sign hanging on a fence around the mine describing all the horrible things that might be present that could hurt or kill us….unstable ground, unsafe ladders, deadly gas, deep ponds of water, un-exploded explosives. Yeah, we won’t be jumping this fence.
I picked up some mica for Riesa and we headed down to the stream. Now this was more fun! We didn’t find much, but I love playing in the water! John did find a small piece of aquamarine.
So what does mica look like? Curious huh…well it looks like this “in the wild”. It is a layered rock/mineral.
The miners were looking for BIG rocks made of mica for windows.
When mica is loose from matrix (other rock) it looks very translucent and refracts the light. These are the mica rocks I collected for Riesa, under John’s direction of coarse. Beautiful isn’t it?
See how the rock comes apart in layers.
My piece isn’t very clear, probably could use some more washing but you can see how mica was first used for windows.
John can’t wait to show these to Riesa.
Yeah she is going to destroy them in a mater of minutes, but that is the fun of discovery!!! (and we can always collect more)
