Where it all began

It all started when I was young, as early as I remember. I loved rocks and started collecting them. It quickly turned into a hobbie and was impressed in all natural beauty and the wonders of the earth, I was especially intrigued with rocks and how they form with the colors and crystals. Utah is where I live and grew up. We have some great mountains and really cool places to collect rocks. I received a rock polisher for a Birthday present when I was about 10 and started polishing some of the rocks I collected just to see what they looked like inside and learned about what I could polish and what would turn to dust in the tumbler. I was brought a cool little rock from my Grandmother that she had found from Deer Creek Reservoir about 10 miles east of where I live. I polished that rock and still have it today (see below).

Here are just a few polished rocks from my collection and its amazing to see all of the different colors that you find inside a dirty old rock off the ground!. I see this everyday in working with Granite. I'm always amazed and it's beautiful!

This is called Mica and it came out of a granite slab of a recent job I fabricated. It peels of really thin and you can see through it. Pretty cool for a rock, but hard to work with. It has a tendency to pull out in chunks when working with it, just like these chunks!

The carved elephant is one of my favorite rocks called "Malachite", I know it can be found in Utah, but I have no idea where to look. The rainbow looking thing is called "Bismuth" and is in the periodic table of elements, but this crystal is artificial. The small one in the lower left corner is a "Ruby" and it's from Brazil. A very good friend of mine (who is a Geologist), gave this to me when I lived in the south of Orem, Ut.

These are "Sun Stones" at the top of the picture and "Topaz" in the lower part. I love going out to Topaz Mountain and in recent years seeing lots of Antelope besides finding Topaz. All of the Topaz in this photo have been bleached by the sun and there is tons of it all over and the Sun Stones are poor, but I didn't have a lot of time there.

This is "Copper" in it's natural form. Not very big, but it has some weight to it!

This one is called "Fluorite" and it glows under a black light.

The green one I'm not sure about, the red is "Silver Ore", the Gold is "Pyrite" and the white one is "Calcite" that I got out of the Calcite Mine on the west side of Utah Lake, long story, but that is a big mine and deep and really cool riding through it on a motorcycle!

I have lots of "Obsidian" and "Flint" both used to make arrowheads out of by Native Americans.

The last 2 pictures are of "Beryllium" and Utah Beryllium is red and purple. These two are really good examples and I used to have more, but gave some of them away. It is very pretty, but it can be dangerous. Beryllium dusts can damage lungs, so I keep these away from everyone! No breaking or cutting these! They're also hard to get, but worth their weight in gold!!

I have arrowheads, some pottery, fossils and geodes. It's nice to go out in Utah and find these little treasures and it's fun. Next summer I'd like to go get some Trilobites and go back to visit Paul Bunyans Log Pile (cool place) and eventually to Arkansas to dig up a Diamond or two!