My girlfriend and I had a real wilderness trip to Cowichan River the other day, where we found a few rocks, smeared ourselves in clay, swam, threw rocks for dogs to catch and ran into a herd of elk.
Flowerstone is relatively rare on east coast Vancouver Island beaches, with just a few pieces expected to be found per trip. But I headed inland on a hunch and stumbled on a large deposit of the aptly named porphyry.
I went back to a local beach in Nanaimo, Vancouver Island, this morning for a quick rockhound before the heat got too serious. I wasn’t the only one out there, and not even the only one after rocks.
On a whim I decided to check out a local lake today, a secluded one I would hang out at before I got into rockhounding. I didn’t expect to find any good rocks, but I wanted to expand my geological knowledge of the area. It wasn’t long after my girlfriend and I arrived that I picked…
My batch of Dallasite and other beach stones from Vancouver Island is now 75% of the way finished, with just one more session in my vibratory rock tumbler to go.
Along Lower Mainland river basins I find a lot of what I assume is petrified wood, with the odd piece from the ocean. Some look perfectly like wood and are very striking, but many look quite dull and are harder to positively identify. But tumbling stones can bring out the beauty in them.
I woke up early yesterday with only a few hours of sleep. It’s summer in British Columbia and the sun’s up before 6am and it’s hot not long after, so I decided to make the most of the morning and go down to my favourite local beach for some rockhounding.
My wheels of industry are cranking – both my Lortone rotary rock tumblers and my Thumler vibratory rock tumbler are set and going to work on some of my BC rocks.