Cleaning up some old concentrates, precious little gold, thought I'd throw it all under the microscope and see what made up the black sand...
Above, some garnet, peridot/olivine, the dark pink might not be garnet, possibility of other gems...
the orange stones are curious, there's what appears to be a metallic piece left of center above the olivine.
More orange, long yellow crystal of interest
Perfectly framed black crystal in drop of water
Note the good triangular faces, hematite?
And finally, a tiny piece of gold...
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A few places to investigate today - first, an old mine I'd recently spotted on the side of the highway. I've driven by it at least a hundred times without spotting it, it's well sheltered by a tree, visible only for a fraction of a second - if you're looking.
I brought a flashlight but no rubber boots. Next time...
Over the side of the road, on the lakeshore, someone's building some rather interesting sculptures. I head down and check them out.
They're pretty cool, and I'd like to take more time to photograph them better, but he's a bit shy, he's out here to escape people like me, and so I take a few quickly and leave.
The hike up to Loon Lake is long. Maybe only 3 KM, 6 KM all told, but all at 30 and 45 degrees, up, up, up, and I'm not even halfway there when my fitness app on the phone tells me I've done my days walking...before I get to the end I'll have set records. It's bollocks, of course, a side-effect of having taken my pulse with it...
I have hopes for this, the old mining reports mention some possibly interesting minerals around the old mines...
An old cabin on the far side of the lake...
Swamp filled with skunk cabbage
detail of some shrubbery...
...an old mining road has become a waterfall
At the end of the track, remains of an old mine, some small stones that are clues to what might be found, nothing good, the wrecked timbers and cables suggest the mine was probably further up the mountain - along the same track that was a road, maybe in a few weeks it'll have dried out a bit...
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Flipping a lot of boulders while landscaping the garden, my most modest of contributions, when I capture a skink...had to let it go when it tried to wriggle up my sleeve, but it sat still long enough for a photo...
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