Spokane Gem and Mineral Show - Saturday

flemingfarm(80)

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Yesterday morning started clear but then got cloudy for part of it before finally letting the sun through. We got everyone up and going and managed to get out the door around 10:30 to head to the fair grounds.

The show had a pretty good number of tables in the one room and in the entry hall there were a couple long display case setups that had a lot of really amazing minerals. There was so much to look at and some really amazing samples of all of our local minerals.

One table had a load of geodes that you could break open there. The boys each got a small one and cracked them open. The geodes are from Mexico south of Juarez. They had some rather large ones nearly the size of a soccer ball all the way to the gold ball sized ones the boys got.

In the main room there was an area for the kids to go through. We purchased tickets for them and they went through the different stations. The first was a big scoop into the sifter box and shaking the sawdust out to find the tumbled stones.

Then a ring toss for a larger stone, a grab bag of stones that they then poured out onto the plate and went into the tent where the black lights where on so they could see if any of their stones glowed. There was a little bit of glow from a couple of their stones.

After spinning the wheel for stone prizes they made it to the last station which was the garnet picking. They got to tweezer through the sand and stone mix and picked out the various garnets that they could find, and any other nifty looking stones. R found it the most enjoyable of the two of them.

One table setup was covered in some amazing stuff. The azurite and malachite pieces were each $400 but the amazing colors they contained made me feel pretty sure they are worth it.

Just down the table from them sat these 2 amazing Mosasaur fossils. It was absolutely awesome to stand there and touch the teeth that are millions of years old. I stood there staring at it for a while before I had to get out of other people's way.

The Mosasaur paddle and vertebrae was also amazing, but those teeth just really struck me.

The boys needed the bathroom and I wandered some more. I found a booth that had another really large selection of minerals and they had a good amount of shungite for more reasonable prices. Shungite is able to help deal with radio frequency. If I take my RF meter and measure my cellphone it shows a reading of about 50 mW and when I set a piece of shungite on top of my phone the reading is dropped to 30 to 35 mW. I have also read that it helps bees in their hives so this year I will be pouring a line of the powder across their entrances.

Once @stryeyz and the boys got back to find me she went an browsed the table before having to stand in line for a while to wait to pay. I wandefed and found myself at the Ethiopian Opal table where I got myself a 19 gram water opal that is incredible. I was not able to get pictures of it yesterday but I will today. It is greens and blues inside of it and it largely clear. The color comes out when the light shines down on it from above or from the front. It was $2/gram and it sounded like the water opal needs to be kept moist to keep the opalescence. I have been researching to find out more but am finding limited info.

After she was done we browsed around the room a bit more before taking off. On the way out we stopped at the displays again and saw these knives that were made by students of one of the members of the rock club. He stopped and mentioned it to us as we were in the kids area so we made sure to see them. Some truly amazing craftsmanship.

The boys were starving so we headed back to the North side of town near @stryeyz work and went to Applebees for lunch. After eating we stopped at her work to print and laminate some game pieces for a game J is making for school, then we headed home.

The boys spread out their collection of stones on the table on the deck to so Grammy. I will get better pictures of the individual cooler items today.

I got stuff piled on the burn pile and it kicked itself back into gear for the evening. I tried to mount the camera but found I have to deal with the range issue between the base and camera.

@stryeyz got more jerky going in the dehydrator in the evening, then we had dinner, then soaked.

Today I will get the fire going again and try to keep it fed all day, try to figure out the camera mounting place, try to get pictures of the rocks and minerals, get trailer ready for grain tomorrow morning, practice my mandolin, and I would like to get peas planted in a couple short rows so they can get started growing.