New batch of rocks from this summer's trip to the UP

I began cutting some of my new rocks at home, just to get a sneak peek of what was inside.  I wanted to do a quick polish on the cut side, just to see what I would be working with.

Before and after pics of some new rocks

Love this black one - the patterns are so cool!

             

















I fell in love with this piece, which took on a free form of its own, and just kept going to the final polish.  There are a couple of larger pieces that come off of this rock, too, and I just began shape and polish, so more to come!

Another unexpected surprise was this piece that cut off the rock in a near perfect tear shape and with a little more work, should fit into the tear drop setting from an earlier post.  This piece has the translucency of calcedony in parts.  It is not banded, so it is not a proper agate.  Can hardly wait to finish this!

Core Samples from the old Ropes Mine

One of my first purchases was from a seller who had some core samples from the old Ropes Mine, located near Ishpeming.  These cores all vary in color and and each unique.  Some sparkle with little flecks of gold along the veins when held to the light.  This material is quite soft and I cut many pieces in the studio.  Being so easy to work with, I was able to trim, facet and polish at home.

One of my favorite core samples was rich with Serpentine and the pieces are a dark green with slight marbling.  While I love a good faceted square or rectangle, I let a few of these pieces guide me and ended up with some cool funky shapes.  While they dont polish up to a high sheen, I am still really happy with how they turned out and wish they photographed better because they really are prettier in person.

More information about the Ropes Mine can be found here

Kona Dolomite

Also purchased as a slab from the lapidary studio - Kona Dolomite.

These pieces were cut at the studio and faceted and polished by hand at home.  I still have work to do on some of the pieces. (the piece in the upper left is from a core sample and not kona dolomite)

The slab from the studio looks like Jupiter.  I purchased some other pieces online, which have more of a pink base with finer marbling, as shown in the cut but unpolished teardrop shapes below. Also in the teardrop is a piece of amygdaloidal basalt in the lower left.

I still have a lot of rough left and look forward to making more of these pieces in the future.

Named after the Kona Hills south of Marquette County, Michigan where it is found. Kona Dolomite is an ancient rock in which formations of fossil stromatolite (blue-green algae) occur. The stone is between 2.1 to 2.2 billion years old. These stromatolite formations are from some of the first life on earth. These fossil formations are found in the lower eras of the Middle Precambrian Period.

Because of the great age, and due to the many trace minerals present, kona dolomite can be found in a wide variety of shades including pink, brown, yellow, cream, red and orange with shades of brown, cream, gray and black mottling, banding and lacing.

Butterstone

One of the few items I purchased at the lapidary studio (rather than picking myself) was a beautiful slab of butterstone.  It is soft enough that I was able to work on the pieces at home and they polished up beautifully.

These were cut, faceted and polished by hand.  They would look beautiful on a black leather or ribbon choker.  A couple were cut to fit into sterling settings, as shown on the far left, bottom.

There are some smaller pieces, as shown on the left, that could be set into a thin rectangular setting for a pendant or earrings.  These two pieces were too fragile for a proper polishing, so they were coated with a two part epoxy for a nice shine.

In the morning light from my desk

Found this description of butterstone online

Back to the lake before returning home

Up by 6, into the car by 7.  There was no dilly-dallying around this morning.  I cranked up the bialetti, moved all of my remaining bags out onto the picnic table, pulled down the mosquito netting, gulped down my espresso and began the final half-mile hike back to the car.  It was really cold, and I could see my breath.  The steam was beautiful as it rose off the lake and I scared the large birds on the lake one final time as I lugged all of my remaining gear to the car.  Thud, thud, thud from the birds wings echoed over the silent lake.  Its pretty cool to be the only human up and about and have the whole Harlow Lake area to yourself.

There was frost on the windshield when I got to my car.  I dug around for my ice scraper, but it wasn't a very hard frost and most of it dripped down the windshield as the car was warming up.

I stopped at the rock outcropping one last time for a quick pic before hitting the road.  Its amazing how much the leaves began to turn colors during my short week. This area must be stunning during peak colors in fall.

The sun was rising over Lake Superior as I approached Lakeshore Dr.

As I was heading towards Munising, There was a thick frost where the fog had hit some of the pine trees.  Unfortunately the camera just couldnt pick up how cool it actually looked.

For all of the times that we have referenced the "Seney Stretch", I didn't realize it was an official name.  

Passing over the bridge about 930am, foggy here too!..Just a beautiful morning!

Crazy puffy clouds greet me has I head further downstate towards the cottage to help my mom close up.

Heading to town / last day wrap up

Woke up early as it was really cold outside and in the cabin.  There were a few coals left in the wood burning stove, but not enough to take the chill off the morning.  Overnight I had opened a few handwarmers and stuffed them into a sock that I cuddled all night.  They helped a lot!  But now I had to get busy and begin to pack up.  I had some souveniers to pick up in Marquette, most importantly, a trip to the Ore Dock Brewery, which opened at noon, so I had plenty of time to pack up all items that wouldn't be used over the next 24 hours, get the cabin cleaned and swept up, and take a couple of trips to the car with all my gear.

 As I was leaving for town, I noticed this huge nest up in one of the trees along Harlow Lake Road.  Not sure what lives in there, but there were a lot of large crane-type birds living on the lake.  I could hear them batting their wings a couple of times early in the mornings and again, as evening fell.  It was a loud thump, thump, thump sound that took a couple of days to get used to.  At home, blue herons live up in large nests like this, but I have no idea what lived up in this nest.

Ore Dock Brewery was easy to find and had a great vibe to it.  Lots of locals were in for lunch.  I picked up a few 6 packs and made some sampler packs to take home to my beer friends and family.  It was kind of funny walking around downtown with a case of beer in my arms.  I went to a couple of other shops and used the restroom in one of the cute t-shirt stores.  This was my first time in front of a real mirror - ick!  I certainly looked like I had been in the woods for several days - hopefully I didn't smell like it too!  I tried to make a point of boiling a pot of water each morning to "bathe" with, but according to the reflection staring back at me, I missed a few spots!

I made another stop at the Picnic Rocks to check in with everyone and observe a crazy seagull party going on.  Then continued down to road, back to Presque Isle park for one last afternoon of rock hounding.

It was a beautiful, but chilly day. Due to limited time, I drove to the "sunset" side of Presque Isle to get straight to rock picking.   A local artist was working with pastels along the path.

A little further down the path I found what I considered to be the sunniest cove with rocks and climbed down.  Today was the first time I didn't put my bathing suit under my clothes - it was just too cold.  But soon, I was warm with the wind blocked, and began to peel off some layers.  I was wading in the water, up to my knees, with my butt to the lake when a huge wave crashed over me.  I was absolutely soaking wet and spent the next hour or so drying in the sun, digging in the dry rocks.

There were some small openings in the rock wall where people had lined up larger rocks like books on a shelf.

I was losing daylight and still had a lot to do, so back to the campsite.  This was the first day where the water really left me chilled, so I stripped off the damp clothes and put on several layers before lighting my last campfire.  The winds began to die down as the sun set.  It was cold enough that the butter was solid.  I made some toast over the fire and opened a packet of chicken and dumplings.  I did a final washing of all of my dishes, prepared the bialetti for a final espresso before leaving in the morning, and consolidated the water that was left to make sure the fire was put out for good, before heading to sleep.

I lit one last fire indoors.  I had checked the weather while in town earlier and it was the first night that we had a freeze warning.  I knew I wouldn't be throwing an extra log into the wood burner in the middle of the night because I needed the embers to be out before departure, so I found my last handwarmer and tucked it into bed beside me.  This came in handy at about 3:30 in the morning!  I ripped it out of the package, stuffed it into a sock and cuddled it until I finally got out of bed around 6am.