Yesterday I was heading home from the Tucson Gem and Mineral shows, but I didn't quite feel like I had enough mineral hunting. So I fired up Mindat.org to see if there were any interesting places to hunt for minerals on the way home. I spotted an old fluorite mine in the middle of the desert so I decided to check it out.
The road in was only 4 miles around a mountain, but the road was treacherous. It was full of rocks, sand, ruts and humps which meant that 4 miles took me 30 minutes to traverse! I could have ran faster!
When I finally arrived I had to scratch around the mountain for about an hour before I noticed a small prospect on the other side of the summit. As soon as I started digging in the hole I found a good sized fluorite vein.
The fluorite was banded seam fluorite with botryoidal terminations.
The exciting part was when I cleaned off and cleaved a piece. It was blue, green and brown! Blue is a rarer color than green or purple. One edge would be blue, then it would gradient to green and finally to brown. It's really interesting material.
By this time the sun was getting low on the horizon so I loaded up a bag and my backpack and made it back to my truck.
This time of day I am always hunting for shadows or reflections because of the colors a sunset produces.
As I made it to the freeway I had given up on finding a good candidate for a Shadow Hunters post, then I came upon this big rig.
And boom! There it was. The sunset and mountains reflected on the side of the truck trailer. You never know where you're gonna find that next reflection or shadow!
It was an awesome way to finish the day. I'll post more about my Tucson adventure this week. Until then, thanks for reading!
