Agh! I can't believe I almost forgot to write a blog post about my recent trip crystal hunting for amethyst gemstones! I guess I have just been too busy lately and it slipped my mind. But I remembered this morning and figured I had better do it right now!
Last month my daughters and I had the amazing opportunity to go on a field trip to a private farm to search for quartz amethyst crystals. We only had a few hours to do so, so it was a very early Saturday morning for us to get up and quickly get ready to hit the road for a few hour drive to our destination. It was a cold and very rainy October morning but nothing was going to keep us away from hunting for gemstones!
Being a rockhound my entire life and always searching for that elusive, unique or unusual stone, I knew this just might be a once in a lifetime opportunity so nothing was going to hold us back! Soon we arrived at our destination, in the middle of a huge stretch of farm country, thank goodness for GPS or I don't think we would have ever found it. We unloaded our supplies and headed out into the rain and mud, so excited and happy! We weren't there for two minutes when my daughter looked down and found her first amethyst crystal. Soon the rain turned into a slow drizzle and then stopped completely, and we even had a few moments of sunlight. One by one we found the crystals, clear quartz, purple amethyst, gray smoky quartz, and golden citrine, but mostly purple amethyst.
We weren't even there for two minutes and my daughter found her first amethyst crystal! That smile says it all!
Essential tools: Your oldest sneakers or mud boots, warm, old clothes that you can get muddy, a warm rain jacket with a hood, rubber-coated gardening gloves, a bucket, the longest screwdriver you have, a garden tool or two for digging in the dirt, a large plastic baggie to keep your finds safe, and a clean wet washcloth in another baggie to clean your hands with. I also had a couple old towels and two old gallon milk containers filled with tap water in my truck for washing up if needed.
Crystals just lying there in the mud.
See the dark tip on that crystal above? That's a purple amethyst crystal!
Crystal points of all shapes and sizes and shades of purple.
That folks, is one large beautiful crystal cluster peeking out through the mud! (see what it looks like cleaned up at the end of this post!) You have to look very closely! It's so easy to walk right past them. You have to train your eyes to look for colors and shapes - same as if you are looking for arrowheads.
We each came home with a gallon-sized bag full of mud covered crystals!
Looks can be deceiving! These muddy crystals need a good cleaning.
Sorting by sizes and cleaning them up - this is the way my kids did theirs.
Here are a few of the larger clusters that I found. The one in the back center (photo above) is the one I show in the ground a few photos back. This photo is dark, but they still need a good cleaning with Iron Out to remove all the brown and rust colored staining.
What do you think?
Have you ever been crystal hunting?
Have a great week!
Laura
Laura
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