Bucket O' Rocks

We went sluicing for gemstones today at the Enerald Hollow Mines in the small town of Hiddenite, located at the foothills of Brushy Mountains. We have been told that this place offers buckets that are unprocessed and has not been worked on. Sluicing is a process of taking a seat on a sluiceway and washing buckets of ore to find gemstones. We went sluicing before at two other locations in the mountains but their buckets of rocks were mostly "processed". It's always more exciting to know that what's inside your bucket is a mystery and you either find something good in it or you don't. We then took our loot to the lapidary to see if we found anything of value. The gemologist (Steve) walked us through patiently and explained every single rock to us. It was certainly an interesting lesson. I didn't even know there was such a thing as a potato agate!! I think we did pretty well today. My dad had a good piece of garnet in his loot. The rest of us found various agates, a moonstone, some calcites, citrine, amethyst and quartz.
Maybe next spring, we will try and do some creeking. And after we graduate from that, we will try digging!!! Yowza!