The boys and I went to visit my folks this week. Dear hubby stayed at home to tend the garden, work, and take care of the sweet Basil. We headed up to Little Switzerland to go gem mining. There are several places you can pan for gems on the way but we were headed for the Emerald Village. We toured the old feldspar mine, and I learned feldspar was used to make porcelain (toilets), a scrubbing agent called Bon- Ami, and the coolest of all Wedgewood porcelain china. They had examples of these set up as we made our way through the tour.
We then went down the road to go panning. We picked our buckets and headed for the trough. It took us a good 45 minutes to go through our buckets. We found lots of goodies. Sprat found a couple emeralds and we found a lot of pink quartz. Big T found Hyalite Opal which is black and fluoresces under certain light. It is beautiful. We also found some amethyst, garnet, and rubby. This was a cool trip. I think we will be taking some more mining trips around to different areas.
No comments:
Post a Comment