This is the summary of the great whirlwind Oregon trip we took from the 9th through the 16th. It was a family vacation, which included some rock hounding for the Ol’ man and Jeff. Briefly we left home on the 9th, traveled to the OR coast to Gleneden and spent the night.

The following day we travel south to Newport OR in search of some fresh seafood and the 4facets rock shop. www.4facets.com As usual, we spent too much time at the rock shop and way to much money. I have ordered from them online before and for some reason we thought the shop would be bigger. It is in a large building but only has a small storefront. The rest is stock for the online business. But they have some beautiful samples and jewelry. A great shop! We continued on to Klamath Falls in south central OR for the duration of the vacation. (at least until the 15th)

I had previously contacted the Spectrum Mine and scheduled a belt run at the mine for the 12th. The morning of the 12th we didn’t get out as early as I had hoped and left at 7:45 a.m. The trip was longer than anticipated and with several stops along the way we didn’t arrive to the mine until a bit after noon. It is a good 4-hour trip from the Klamath Falls. The roads are paved most of the way. Just north of Plush, OR. it turns to gravel. Most of the gravel road is pretty good. However, just a few miles out from the mine, there is a handmade sign that says slow with a turtle on it and that says slow, go very slow!! It means it too. There are 2 miles or so that is extremely rough. You are in the middle of nowhere just sagebrush, dusty dirt roads and mines. lol

We drove in to the mining area, which isn’t huge by any means. We did see several people working screens near the sorting screen and conveyor belts plus one other group at the high grade piles (we found out later) working a pile of material. Jessica Schenk found us at the office. She was working on of the screens near the conveyor. She is a kick. Having talked on the phone and emailed back and forth about this trip and RMM material. The office is a small trailer, nothing fancy out there, but has some beautiful cut stones and specimens of the sunstones and of course other gems from their mines and other places. We paid for the belt run.



She set us up at a pile of material and a screen plus told us of several other places to dig and screen while we waited for the crews to prep for the belt run. We did putter around there and started finding stones right of the bat. Nothing huge, but we were finding sunstones. :-) Jessica found us and said they were ready for the belt run.

	Jeff and the Ol' Man digging and screening for sunstones prior to our belt run.
	Jenny hard at work searching for sunstones.
	Spectrum Mine equipment and pits.
	Spectrum mine old pits.

We walked over the belt. This is a screening plant as well. Where the over sized and fines are screened out from the material. The sized material is in a hopper. After brief safety session we lined up along the belt and they started running. The four of us were on one side and one of Spectrum mine employees Becky I believe, was the last shot person if you will was on the other side. The material trickles out of the hopper, sprayed with water and then to the sorters. We set ourselves along the belt from shortest to the tallest, which for us was the youngest eyes and fastest reaction person, Jenny my daughter. You just stare at the material as it comes by and pick up anything that is clear and put it in a bucket. By the time it got to me they wasn’t many stones left on the conveyor belt. Man they good up front, thank goodness cause I found my bifocals are not the right glasses for sorting. I just couldn’t get back quite far enough or close enough to have good focus on the belt. It was fun, but an hour standing there is just about as much as I would want to do without a good break between runs. During the run, another employee would come by and help us with the sorting. I will admit, all of the employees/folks we met at the mine were very friendly and helpful. Really a kick!

Val and Jeff working on the belt run.
Val, Jeff and the Ol' Man along with Becky (I think) on the belt run. Jenny is taking pictures.
It is all butts and elbows watching the belt. Several of the Spectrum Mine folks are supervising.
All of us working the belt run. The hopper to the left is full of ore and is trickled onto the belt, then washed off for us searchers.

Once we finished the run, Chris Rose, the owner of the mine, which I hadn’t seen until then but I came to find out ran the feed to the belt for at least 30 minutes, helped gather up the stones from all of the buckets and put them on the belt for inspection. He is a tall quiet, gentle type of man, a hard worker as he was covered with dust. He looked at the stones and picked out the good ones. Especially the reds. He liked one in particular. It has a nice red color spot but when you look at it from the side it turns green, a color changeable type of stone. I would have liked to have gotten more reds but we got some nice facetable pieces. Most of the stones were the champagne color and some schillers. The total weight of the run ended up being 1469.51 grams, nearly 1.5 kilos. I think a pretty good return on the money. I visited with Chris just for a few more minutes, he was in the loader ready to get back to work. I mentioned Ellen and yes he knows you. Those brownies must be a great hit. ;-) He is a very nice man, but I think likes to hang back a bit but when there is something to be done, he is doing it. The run finished around 2::00 p.m. We took out booty to the truck and sat and ate lunch and re-hydrated. We were lucky it was only in the high 80’s with a slight breeze. So it wasn’t too hot, but that high desert sure dries you out.
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	Jenny and our helper Becky (?) check out the finds
	Some of the larger stones and reds. I would have liked to have gotten more reds, but did get some nice shillers and facet grade clear stones.
	Our total finds. 1450+ grams, nearly 1.5 kilos or for us folks, 3.22 pounds.
	Chris Rose, owner of the Spectrum Mine in the loader taking away the tailings from our belt run.

We discussed mining some more plus filling up the 5 gallon buckets we had brought along to take material home with us. Hence we ended up buying a high-grade pile. Which is once small loader bucket. We filled 12 buckets I think, plus various sacks, Tyvek bags we had taken for this purpose. I estimate we brought home the equivalent to 18 to 20 buckets of high-grade material, 800 to 1000 pounds. We did screen about 3 buckets worth to see what were in for. With the limited sorting we did we got 393.69 grams of stones thus far. It may be months before we know how we did with the remaining high-grade material. We finished up sacking and sorting right at 5:00 p.m., closing time for the mine. Then it was the long 4+-hour trip back to Klamath Falls. Would we do it again? YES! I would do exactly what we did this time if under a time constraint. If a person has time, days that is, I would hit both the Spectrum and the Dust Devil mines plus the BLM gathering area. All within a mile or so of each other. But I think days are a must to get the full enjoyment of the place. It can be and is hard work depending on what you are going to do. There is no water so take plenty and lots of sun screen. All in all even though it was a very long day it was very well worth it and I highly recommend it to anyone wanting a little adventure and some very nice gemstones.

High Grade pile at the Spectrum Mine
Val working at the screening tables sorting some of the high grade pile we purchased.
Finds thus far from the high grade pile. Nearly 400 grams.

The next couple of days were hanging around Klamath Falls horseback riding and shopping for Val and Jenny, boredom for Jeff and recovery for me. ;-) We left on Klamath Falls Friday the 15th and drove to Madras OR via Crater Late for the night. We were off to the Richardson Rock Ranch the next morning.

August 16th, Richardson Rock Ranch. We are going huntin’ for T-eggs. They are open 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The temps were going to be in the 100’s (I come to find out that it was 108°F) so I tried to get everyone up and going as early as possible so we would have time to drive the 5 ½ hours to home at a reasonable time. Well, that didn’t work that well. lol After a quick breakfast at the motel we got off around 8:00 a.m. It was already hot! We headed north on highway 97 from Madras 12 miles or so to the turn off to the ranch. There is a sign about a mile before you get to the turnoff but be aware that the turn off is on a tight corner and comes up to you rather fast and there is no sign except on the road exit itself. The ranch is a couple of miles off the main road, but the roads are good. When you drive up the ranch you come into to rock hounds heaven. When they say rock shop, they meant this one! There is not only the largest indoor rock shop I have ever been in, but there must be at least an acre of material outdoors to admire and hunt in. It is absolutely amazing. (Of course you ask where are the pics. Well, when we got there we were in a hurry to get going and when we got back we were too hot to think right and forgot to take any!!! And we had 3 cameras with us!!) yeah, yeah yell at me, I know!! ;-)

After going into the shop to sign in and get instructions plus a map as to where to go you are off on the way. The folks there are real characters and are helpful and pleasant. We looked at the samples of the eggs from the different beds and decided to go to the hard rock moss bed first. This was the hardest place to work according to the older lady we talked too. It was nearly 7 mile or so to get to the beds over gravel roads, but in good shape and 3 gates. There was one group there already working, a gentleman and his son. They had found a great place for the eggs. Pulling out egg after egg. But they had to work for them. We found a think band of moss agate where we started digging. Interesting that on one side there were eggs and the other just a near 1’ thick solid band of moss agate with a few eggs above it.

	Jeff and Jenny working in the Moss pit. The Ol' Man is supervising but I was just digging and taking a break when the photo was taken.
	Jenny working the moss pit. Man she is good at digging and chipping them rocks.
	Jenny with a nice pice of Moss Agate
	Jeff working in the Moss Pit.
	It is 100° F it is all she wrote at the Moss Pit

We all got in to digging and trying to break loose the any large pieces of moss we could. Note if anyone is going be sure to have a 5 or 6 foot rock bar to help break up the plus plenty of hammers, chisels, picks and shovels. But in this case the bar was needed for breaking the rock around the agates and eggs. We worked this place until 12:30 or so and decided to go to another dig, I think the Pony Dig site, which we were told it was the easiest digging area. Well it was getting plenty hot by this time. I would say 100+. We worked in this area and found the eggs were in a clay-sand seam just under the overburden of a 3’ think seem of perlite. We did find some eggs in the perlite as well. But easy, not really. The thin seem with the eggs was limited and you had to work under an over hang of rotten perlite. Which was easily knocked down. But in the floor where they told us to dig was very hard and the eggs were rotten, fractured. and brittle. We did work long enough to fill up 1 bucket plus a little of good eggs. Nothing big, mostly fist size and smaller. We did get a couple of softball-sized eggs out of the perlite. But man it was hot, the black perlite was facing the sun and working up against it was that much hotter. We ended up getting the bucket filled fairly fast and was on the way down to the ranch. That air conditioning felt pretty good! We ended up with about 120 pounds of moss and eggs, mostly eggs and at 75 cents per pound, not to bad. Of course Val and Jenny had to go shopping for gifts while Jeff and I looked around the rock shop inside and the out side. Amazing I tell you!! Well after everyone again (except me) spent too much money on goodies, Jeff bought quite a bit of larger material from the outside piles including one near basketball-sized t-egg. He wants to test the saw. lol It should be a very nice piece and I am looking forward to opening it up. We finally got on the road at 4:00 p.m. and made the long drive home getting back at 9:30 p.m. It was a great vacation but as with most vacations it is nice to be back home. And after putting near 2000 miles on the ol’ truck, I can’t wait to see the fuel bill. ARGH!!!

Bucket of Moss agate and t-eggs
Bucket of Richardsons T-eggs and a few mudballs
Jenny's finds Moss agates and T-eggs. She wanted to keep hers seperate, I guess when I cut and polish she will get hers. lol She did great! Jen is one hard working kid!
Jeff's 40 pounder. He purchased this tegg at the Richardsons Rock Ranch. The tegg is from the Lucky Strike.

Sunday is recovery day at least for me, but a good time to type this long report. Anyway it was 104° F today, to dang hot to do anything outside.

A little update, today, the 19th, we did cut that big egg. It is nice. Pictures to follow.

	Richardson tegg cut. This is about fist size.
	Richardson mudball cut. Sort of cool in it's own way. This is about softball size.
	Jeff's 40 pounder cut. It looks much better than the picture shows.

Well that is about it folks. If you read this I hope you enjoyed and I thank you.

Paul