New Years Dravite Discovery

Yesterday I stumbled upon a fantastic new dravite locality along with gedrite and chlorite. I was out fishing, so I was by no means ready to collect. I did get these big loose crystals:

Getting kicked out of a Locality and Scoring at Another.

Last weekend my good friends the Kimble family from Massachusetts joined me o a trip to the pillow lava zeolite locality. We were there for about 2 hours and got kicked out. Oops! (we did get some good datolite and heulandite before leaving. The next spot we visited was the Hubbard Park quartz locality, although the locality is a short distance outside the park. Jimmy Kimble spotted a copperhead right away. We examined the area for other and then determined it was safe to collect. Large quantities of drusy quartz burst forth from the ledge! It was was quite the afternoon.

 The typical basalt of the quartz locality.

 Heulandite from the pillow lava locality.

 Bi pyramidal quartz!

 A big plate with some chalcedony.

A large vein. 

 The beautiful snake.

Beryl

This past Saturday I spent the day at a small quarry in Portland, CT collecting beryl. Some good finds were unearthed from the old tailings.

 A fine, gemmy aquamarine.

Typical little heliodor fragment.

A much nicer heliodor.

Beryl In the Pocket Zone

A recent trip to the state forest #1 quarry yielded several interesting beryls within feet of the last big pocket. A small cavity with several microclines and smokey quartz was opened as well .

 This is about as gemmy as beryl gets at this locality, and most aren't even tranperent in the slightest bit.

 Like this.

Contents of a small pocket

A very fine columbite was found down the road at the Nathan Hall Quarry.

A Fine Pocket At State Forest Quarry #1 Part Two

At home all of the specimens were cleaned off, which really only required a rinse with the hose. Here are some of the pieces.

Some fine feathery albite crystal aggragates.

No, that is not a chipped termination, all of the crystals had weird skeletal growth.

Albite and fine crystalline green muscovite. On the backside some glassy crystals protrude from the same material.

 More feathery albite, this almost with a pink tone to it.

A very tiny crystal with albite on the base.

Inclusions in a larger smokey quartz crystal.

A Fine Pocket At State Forest #1 Quarry

The State Forest #1 Quarry lies in the Meshomasic State Forest very near the Nathan Hall Quarry. It has a large pocket zone high above the rest of it's workings. This area produces beryl, almandine, etched microcline, feathery albite, and fine smokey and clear quartz crystals. Yesterday I was lucky to open a decent little pocket in this zone. For those who are not familiar with the quarry, the pocket zone has been excavated by collectors to form a small adit. In the very back of the adit I pocket around at the bottom part of the wall and found a soft spot. I scraped out some material and was rewarded with this fine specimen:

Soon it became apparent that this was a good find for the locality, and a decent sized pocket.

I worked the cavity for a good hour and a half before it worked out, and was rewarded with a large amount of specimens. Interestingly, the pieces from this cavity were completely devoid of the typical iron staining that coats a lot of specimens found at this site.

This is the pocket with a hammer for scale. Some rock was removed from the surrounding area to ake work easier and less painful.

The brown rocks are specimens from the cavity laid out after removal.

And here they are at home, along with specimens from the ruble placed in the 'battle ship' board game box.

Minerals In the Great State of Connecticut

Connecticut is a very mineralogicaly rich state, with many interesting mineral deposits. We have several richly mineralized basalt ridges, two productive pegmatite districts, plenty of faulted quartz deposits, metamorphic deposits and literally tons of other interesting features that any mineralogist would enjoy. However, many localities are getting shut down, and it can be hard to gain access to some old sites. Luckily, I am here to save the day, eking out whatever remains from 'dead' localities and pursuing new ones. I am lucky to be very successful at it too!  I hope everyone enjoys my tails of mineral hunting in CT.