John Davies

Thanks everyone for the excellent advice! I appreciate it greatly,
especially since I no longer drive a Jeep, but a Japanese product....
I still hang out here because this group is highly entertaining and a
great resource for technical advice of all sorts.

John Davies
Spokane WA USA
http://home.comcast.net/~johnedavies/page2thb.htm

John Welch

John Davies <johnedavies@comcast.net> wrote in message news:<ckc5pvstadnvhthvjj8nj1eftmin9bn531@4ax.com>. ..
> On 18 Oct 2003 20:36:11 -0700, jcwelch@hal-pc.org (John Welch) wrote:
>
> >If any of this sounds like fun let me know and I can write more.
>
> Excellent! Any more hints about gems in particular, and rocks in
> general would be greatly appreciated. We are going to purchase
> "Roadside Geology of MT" for a reference. Can you recommend a good MT
> rock hounding book or url?
>
> My wife wants gems, but we are going to try pebble mosaics, so any
> other small "pretty rocks" would also be great. We obviously can't
> haul 2000 pounds of rock on a vacation trip, but a few big buckets of
There is a road east out of Dillon that will take you up into a low
range called the Ruby mountians. There is a town there that was
contaminated by evil greedy talc robber barons (at least acording to a
book someone wrote). Anyway, the streams up there have gem quality
garnet. There be gem quality sapphire up in the the Bitterroots by
Missoula, but I am not familiar with the locality. One author of the
road atlas was I seem to remember named Alt and I think that he is
still on the faculty there at U of M. Alt is professer emeritus, call
the department (Google: University of Montana). Also, this guy
[http://www2.umt.edu/geology/faculty/...n/hyndman.htm] is really
smart about rocks, and also he knows the trout up at lake Minneopa.
There are a lot of places where the grey granite type igneous rock
intruded up against limestone. This produces a mineral assemblege
called a 'scarn' and you get some of the neatest thing you can
imagine. That part of Montana is filty with places where people have
scraped up these contacts with dozers making for great collecting.
Lots of old mines have tailings heaps that are fun to pick over -
*STAY OUT OF SHAFTS*!!!

We drove all over the place in my wife's '72 Pontiac Ventura (a Nova
clone) until we bought the ******, so just be careful and have fun.

South of Dillon on the interstate about 15 or so miles, north of Clark
Canyon dam a few miles is a public camp ground. BE WARNED: every
every afternoon a freak meterologic condition produces 90 mph winds
for about 15 minutes about an hour before sundown. This can be a real
freak-out.

If you take the road that goes past Argenta and just keep going and
going, the streams have flake in them. It may be that you can pan
enough gold to pay for your gas.

John Welch

John Davies <johnedavies@comcast.net> wrote in message news:<ckc5pvstadnvhthvjj8nj1eftmin9bn531@4ax.com>. ..
> On 18 Oct 2003 20:36:11 -0700, jcwelch@hal-pc.org (John Welch) wrote:
>
> >If any of this sounds like fun let me know and I can write more.
>
> Excellent! Any more hints about gems in particular, and rocks in
> general would be greatly appreciated. We are going to purchase
> "Roadside Geology of MT" for a reference. Can you recommend a good MT
> rock hounding book or url?
>
> My wife wants gems, but we are going to try pebble mosaics, so any
> other small "pretty rocks" would also be great. We obviously can't
> haul 2000 pounds of rock on a vacation trip, but a few big buckets of
There is a road east out of Dillon that will take you up into a low
range called the Ruby mountians. There is a town there that was
contaminated by evil greedy talc robber barons (at least acording to a
book someone wrote). Anyway, the streams up there have gem quality
garnet. There be gem quality sapphire up in the the Bitterroots by
Missoula, but I am not familiar with the locality. One author of the
road atlas was I seem to remember named Alt and I think that he is
still on the faculty there at U of M. Alt is professer emeritus, call
the department (Google: University of Montana). Also, this guy
[http://www2.umt.edu/geology/faculty/...n/hyndman.htm] is really
smart about rocks, and also he knows the trout up at lake Minneopa.
There are a lot of places where the grey granite type igneous rock
intruded up against limestone. This produces a mineral assemblege
called a 'scarn' and you get some of the neatest thing you can
imagine. That part of Montana is filty with places where people have
scraped up these contacts with dozers making for great collecting.
Lots of old mines have tailings heaps that are fun to pick over -
*STAY OUT OF SHAFTS*!!!

We drove all over the place in my wife's '72 Pontiac Ventura (a Nova
clone) until we bought the ******, so just be careful and have fun.

South of Dillon on the interstate about 15 or so miles, north of Clark
Canyon dam a few miles is a public camp ground. BE WARNED: every
every afternoon a freak meterologic condition produces 90 mph winds
for about 15 minutes about an hour before sundown. This can be a real
freak-out.

If you take the road that goes past Argenta and just keep going and
going, the streams have flake in them. It may be that you can pan
enough gold to pay for your gas.

John Welch

John Davies <johnedavies@comcast.net> wrote in message news:<ckc5pvstadnvhthvjj8nj1eftmin9bn531@4ax.com>. ..
> On 18 Oct 2003 20:36:11 -0700, jcwelch@hal-pc.org (John Welch) wrote:
>
> >If any of this sounds like fun let me know and I can write more.
>
> Excellent! Any more hints about gems in particular, and rocks in
> general would be greatly appreciated. We are going to purchase
> "Roadside Geology of MT" for a reference. Can you recommend a good MT
> rock hounding book or url?
>
> My wife wants gems, but we are going to try pebble mosaics, so any
> other small "pretty rocks" would also be great. We obviously can't
> haul 2000 pounds of rock on a vacation trip, but a few big buckets of
There is a road east out of Dillon that will take you up into a low
range called the Ruby mountians. There is a town there that was
contaminated by evil greedy talc robber barons (at least acording to a
book someone wrote). Anyway, the streams up there have gem quality
garnet. There be gem quality sapphire up in the the Bitterroots by
Missoula, but I am not familiar with the locality. One author of the
road atlas was I seem to remember named Alt and I think that he is
still on the faculty there at U of M. Alt is professer emeritus, call
the department (Google: University of Montana). Also, this guy
[http://www2.umt.edu/geology/faculty/...n/hyndman.htm] is really
smart about rocks, and also he knows the trout up at lake Minneopa.
There are a lot of places where the grey granite type igneous rock
intruded up against limestone. This produces a mineral assemblege
called a 'scarn' and you get some of the neatest thing you can
imagine. That part of Montana is filty with places where people have
scraped up these contacts with dozers making for great collecting.
Lots of old mines have tailings heaps that are fun to pick over -
*STAY OUT OF SHAFTS*!!!

We drove all over the place in my wife's '72 Pontiac Ventura (a Nova
clone) until we bought the ******, so just be careful and have fun.

South of Dillon on the interstate about 15 or so miles, north of Clark
Canyon dam a few miles is a public camp ground. BE WARNED: every
every afternoon a freak meterologic condition produces 90 mph winds
for about 15 minutes about an hour before sundown. This can be a real
freak-out.

If you take the road that goes past Argenta and just keep going and
going, the streams have flake in them. It may be that you can pan
enough gold to pay for your gas.