so this weekend my Wife went to visit our mutual friend in LA and help her work on her mom's wedding. This trip was a last minute plan started last week when our friend asked for help because she was overwhelmed with the prep. This left me hanging with two teenagers and an empty weekend. A serious recipe for disaster. So I put on my super dad cape, did some mean internet research and off we went Friday night to camp in the mountains and hunt pretty rocks in eastern Oregon.
Friday night we rolled up to mount hood getting as quickly as I could out of cell service range and forcing the kids away from the phones. I took them camping like I grew up camping, drive down a service road until you find a pretty little spot with a fire ring, setup camp, forage for firewood (help the local firefighters with dead brush debris) and then plant your butt and enjoy the view.
They LOVED it. First, they were annoyed at finding wood, then it turned into a competition who could find the best pieces. Then the fire was roaring and they were bored again, until I showed them how to split rocks to see the local makeup of basalt and lava flow rocks. 2 hours later and a number of split rocks and it was time to cook, then an evening walk around the lake side, then smores and bed for tuckered out families. Perfection!
I, unfortunately, have zero pictures as my phone's camera decided to take a break from functioning... However, suffice to say I woke up excited for adventure part 2. We packed up camp, loaded up the jeep and went off at a furious pace to Richardsons ranch where the kids and I would spend 6 hours digging in the dirt to find pretty thunder eggs filled with opalite, quartz, and local petrified moss growths. First, we took the Jeep up to the opal bed, a fun, bumpy ride with some tricky but not dangerous steering. The view was worth the trip alone!
the opal bed is hard rock mining mixed with some soft clay like pockets. the return is small geodes with small pieces of non-jewelry grade opal but damn if they are not still pretty. I found a nice sky blue opal chunk to add to my collection, and maybe someday I will work it into some jewelry for my beautiful Wife. The kids both found new treasures then grew bored. Off to the blue bed we rolled.
the blue bed was like candy land, swing 5 times, hit a geode. Pull it out and have another go. Some of what we found broke open too easily due to a layer of pink opalite that was soft and permeable. I actually brought a number of these halves home with me to see what can be done with the soft pink layer because it is stunning. The quartz around the pink layers is rose colored due to the opalite and is stunning. All in all, we settled on 18 lbs of pretty rock and then I drove my now exhausted teenagers home.
We finished our adventures playing don't starve together on the ps4 eating delicious food and talking about our next rockhounding adventures... I think I won the best dad award this weekend as they both Instagrammed their adventures. Yup, satisfied with my single dad skills I am now back the office and dreaming of wide open desert views and my children's laughter and excitement.