Traviscounty Posted July 30, 2009 Share Posted July 30, 2009 Going out west tomorrow. Haven't seen a lot posted on here about the area. Anyone have some fossil/mineral hunting tips? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seldom Posted July 30, 2009 Share Posted July 30, 2009 Llanite or Llanolite From the small town of Llano, Texas. This is a dark brownish stone with rust color patches and spots of opal like iridescent blue. See if you can find some makes cool cabs have not had any in years. Galveston Island 32 miles long 2 miles wide 134 bars 23 liquor stores any questions? Evolution is Chimp Change. Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass; it's about learning to dance in the rain! "I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen." Ernest Hemingway Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnJ Posted July 30, 2009 Share Posted July 30, 2009 A couple of ranches north of Mason will let you pick up rocks of all kinds for a small fee, including Blue Topaz (if you're lucky). There's always the Hoover Overlook rest stop, near Marble Falls, where occasional trilobite fragments can be found in the glauconite bluff across the highway. Other than that you can take that uplift for granite.... The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true. - JJ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracer Posted July 30, 2009 Share Posted July 30, 2009 man, i could talk about that area for a long time. very, very interesting area if you like minerals. just explore roadcuts and dry creekbeds you cross - you'll find some pretty cool rocks. take a sledgehammer and safety glasses if you want to try to get your own samples of llanite. that stuff is unbelievably hard, and when you do knock a piece off, exploding shards of it will cut your arms no matter what you do. great fun. rumor has it that there's an exposure of llanite on the east side of the road 9.5 miles north of town. there is a rockshop in llano, and also a monument company that has an unbelievable assortment of beautiful polished granite. there's a park in town on the river, and it's worth going to, if nothing else that just to stand there on bedrock and gaze around at the coolness of it all. if you do go over toward mason, those dry creek bridges in that vicinity are pretty insterstin. back over towards austin though, on the more northerly route from llano, there's a little town called kingsland, and just west of it, there's a 4-digit county road that goes south and crosses the llano river and that's my favoritist rock-throwing place on the planet. locals call it "the slab". it's their equivalent of the beach, except the sand ain't been created yet - it's still bedrock in a lot of places there. really cool place, that some people sluice for flour gold. that road between marble falls and llano goes right by that giant granite quarry too, where the town mountain granite that galveston seawall (and a bunch of other things) were quarried from. there's also a big pass and a view high up over the colorado river. stop there, and take it in, and glance back at the roadcut behind you, and note that the bottom of that cut is bright green. used to be the bottom of the ocean. the llano uplift area is way cool. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Traviscounty Posted July 30, 2009 Author Share Posted July 30, 2009 Thanks guys. I haven't driven out there in about 3 years. I found an old college field trip guide on the web. I'm not sure if all the spots are still there, but I guess it will work as an outline. It mentions a few of those spots that Tracer suggested. Now we just have to decide on which BBQ place to eat at. I'm kinda partial to Coopers, except as I recall, the one in Llano plays second fiddle to the one in Mason.IMO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracer Posted July 30, 2009 Share Posted July 30, 2009 one of my earliest attempts at cabochon-making and silversmithing was done with a piece of llanite that i beat into submission from off a boulder of it. there seem to be little stress fractures in it that wouldn't be there if it hadn't been for a road builder's dynamite and/or my sledge hammer, but what the heck - i like it. the little blue crystals are supposedly from a trace amount of ilmenite in the quartz, and they're referred to as "llano blue diamonds". yeah. love that stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnJ Posted July 30, 2009 Share Posted July 30, 2009 ... there's also a big pass and a view high up over the colorado river. stop there, and take it in, and glance back at the roadcut behind you, and note that the bottom of that cut is bright green. used to be the bottom of the ocean... That spot is Hoover Overlook. It's a very cool spot. The green is the Cambrian glauconitic sand and trilobite hash. Heck Travis, take a 5 gallon bucket of the greensand for your garden! The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true. - JJ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Traviscounty Posted July 30, 2009 Author Share Posted July 30, 2009 Thanks for pic of the pendant. That stuff polishes up nice. And John, my garden consists of a few potted plants, but I bet couldn't hurt. If anyone wants some samples of the Llanolite, let me know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracer Posted July 30, 2009 Share Posted July 30, 2009 travis - if you go to get llanite, try to knock off pieces that are fresh, where the background matrix is dark grey. old stuff laying around or crumbling off boulders may look like easy pickings, but much of it will be aged, "rotten" granite, in which the feldspar in it has been exposed over the ages and has chemically changed into kaolinite, which we all know and love as "clay". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grandpa Posted July 30, 2009 Share Posted July 30, 2009 one of my earliest attempts at cabochon-making and silversmithing was done with a piece of llanite . . . Very nice Tracer. Have fun tomorrow TC. Wish I could join you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seldom Posted July 31, 2009 Share Posted July 31, 2009 Travis if you get a bunch I want a piece or 2 will get it when ever we meet up. I still got that book and stuff for you if you want I can mail it Galveston Island 32 miles long 2 miles wide 134 bars 23 liquor stores any questions? Evolution is Chimp Change. Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass; it's about learning to dance in the rain! "I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen." Ernest Hemingway Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaleoRon Posted July 31, 2009 Share Posted July 31, 2009 http://geology.uprm.edu/Morelock/thcgeol.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Traviscounty Posted July 31, 2009 Author Share Posted July 31, 2009 http://geology.uprm.edu/Morelock/thcgeol.htm Thanks Ron, but that site is one of several that looked interesting to me. However, when I click on the sites (all .html) my computer shuts down----------"Firefox not responding". Anyone have an idea why? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron E. Posted July 31, 2009 Share Posted July 31, 2009 Thanks Ron, but that site is one of several that looked interesting to me. However, when I click on the sites (all .html) my computer shuts down----------"Firefox not responding". Anyone have an idea why? They have some ugly java graphics rotation thing going on. You might temporarily disable java. That little thing really eats up the resources, especially on Windoze. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobC Posted July 31, 2009 Share Posted July 31, 2009 Llano uplift--very bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CreekCrawler Posted July 31, 2009 Share Posted July 31, 2009 ...the little blue crystals are supposedly from a trace amount of ilmenite in the quartz, and they're referred to as "llano blue diamonds". yeah. love that stuff. Tracer,that is very nice.I think you did a great job. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Traviscounty Posted August 1, 2009 Author Share Posted August 1, 2009 OK, the whole area is really cool. I have been through there many times, but I wasn't wearing geological glasses! We gathered the Llanolite, and found a few other things. Definitely going back to hit some more spots. I think we got a few pics, I'll post them later. Thanks John and Tracer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest solius symbiosus Posted August 1, 2009 Share Posted August 1, 2009 http://geology.uprm.edu/Morelock/thcgeol.htm Now, that thar is some goood stuff! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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