You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘rock hunt’ category.
It has become something of a tradition for us to go rock hunting on Thanksgiving day. This year we managed to sneak out a few days before Thanksgiving because that’s when Grandma volunteered to watch the kids.
Since we were in Delaware, we decided to take a little car ride and visit Cape May, NJ. Cape May is the southern-most part of New Jersey. It’s a pretty town and we enjoyed wandering the near-vacant streets of the tourist district. We especially enjoyed eating at the locally-famous Lobster House near the edge of town. It’s a pricey restaurant, but there is a diner portion that the locals frequent (same food, somewhat smaller portions and much smaller prices). I’m not sure I would like to be in the town or the restaurant during the “on” season when the town is packed with tourists.
A little online research told me that the place to find Cape May diamonds is on Sunset Beach. The signs for it are not very good, so a local map was helpful. Fortunately, these are freely available at the Ferry station.
Sunset Beach has two claims to fame. The abundant Cape May quartz and the wreckage of a WWI concrete boat just off shore. The wreck of the Atlantis and it’s place in naval history is pretty well documented online, so I’ll leave you to Google that for yourself. One website I read suggested that the wreckage was responsible for redirecting the “diamonds” to shore on Sunset beach.
The day we visited the beach, it was cold and blustery. We were eager to hunt “diamonds”, so we braved the wind hit the beach. Fortunately, we didn’t wait — when we left Cape May the next day, it was about 35 degrees and driving rain!
The beach is a combination of sand and pebble. The great majority of the quartz is pretty typical for the northeast, mostly opaque to translucent white pebbles. Mixed in are orange and occasionally purple pebbles of quartz, but these are always opaque. The colorless “diamonds” are hard to miss once you see them, they have a high translucency when they’re wet. The crystal quartz gives them a distinct sheen or glow, even in the gray diffused light we had that day. The “diamonds” are abundant enough that we took to high-grading pretty quickly after we started finding them.
Sunset Beach would be a great place for kids who are into rocks. The “diamonds” are just hard enough to find that you have to look for them, but abundant enough that everyone will find some. We came home with a healthy zip-lock bag full — though some were not “diamonds,” but pretty rocks to add to our kids’ collection. When our little guys are old enough, we’ll certainly head back to Cape May and let them collect some.
The largest “diamond” we found was an elongated tear-drop shape measuring 28x15x9mm (not pictured). It would have been a wonderful piece to facet except for the large white feathers and healed fractures. Unfortunately, the great majority of the colorless quartz pebbles you’ll find have such inclusions; pretty much what you’d associate with low grade colorless quartz from the Northeast.
The best stones we found are the four pictures here. As you can see, none of them are large. All of these are internally perfect and will likely cut flawless stones. The best of the lot is the triangular shaped one, measuring 9x9x5mm. I doubt anyone but a hobbist would cut quartz this size (though someone is cutting it: the souvenir shops advertise “Cape May Diamond jewelry”). I’ll likely cut one just for the sake of having a cut piece to put in my display with the rough.
I could not find information online regarding how large Cape May “diamonds” form. But after having hunted the beach, I would be very surprised if the facet-grade ones come any larger than the ones we found. Still, the souvenir shops were mostly closed during our visit, so I didn’t get to view any of the commercial jewelry they offer to know how large their finished stones were. (We did visit some of the estate jewelry shops in town, none of which had Cape May “diamond” jewelry.)
If you’re looking for facet rough that you can find on your own in the Northeast, I’d head to Herkimer. If you’re looking for a fun day on the beach with some easy rockhounding, Cape May is perfect.
On Saturday I was sore, headachy, more than a bit tired and needed two cups of coffee to get going. But it felt great — Friday was a good, hard day. Our first real rock hunt in about 2 years.
Grandma R volunteered to watch the kids and Karen took the day off. We escaped to the Louisville, KY area to meet a new friend, Steve Garza. Steve is a long-time rock hound, prospector and mineral dealer. He knows his stuff and knows just where to look. He agreed to take us to some of his special spots if we paid the gas. Pretty cheap price for a personal tour guide, especially one who will help you break the rocks and let you keep what you find.
We hit two road side deposits. One was an old iron ore site with great little pyrite rosettes (Steve called them pineapples). The little crystals are a secondary formation from chemical reactions leaching the iron out of the local fossil rock. The reaction that formed the crystals also breaks down the host rock into a nice sticky clay. The upshot is that rain exposes the burgundy red crystals when the clay is washed away — easy pickings. We picked up a couple pocket fulls of these little guys. If nothing else, they’ll be great give-aways for interested kids, etc.
Next stop was a roadcut we ended up spending the day on. The subject was a base of an ancient coral reef gone to dolomitic limestone. In the remains of the coral are vugs containing various forms of calcite, Mg minerals, pyrites, aragonite, and varied sundry other little treats. This wasn’t easy pickings — it was all hammer & pry bar work. Even when the rocks were released from the wall, it was a good bit of work to get the specimens out. But the fact is, there is nothing in the world like uncovering a vug of crystals no one has seen since God Himself put it there aeons ago.
Of course, I’ve now added to two decent sized boxes of minerals that need to be cleaned, trimmed, and (maybe) cataloged. Good thing I’m a stay at home Dad with nothing to do all day… 
I’m really looking forward to the day when the kids, Lord willing, will be big enough to go on these kinds of trips.
