This was a popular field trip with 19 attendees.  Marty & Linda rendezvoused with everyone, including two gals all the way from New York, who were passing through and saw the field trip listed on our website.  (The both joined the club and are looking forward to coming back soon for more fun in our Arizona sun).

From the McDonalds in Cordews we jumped onto I-17 heading south to exit 259.  Driving down the long, winding, dusty, washboard road we followed the Bradleys to our collecting site, a couple miles west of Cleator.

This site is known for collecting Schorl, the most common type of Tourmaline.  The massive Schorl is in a matrix of white Quartz, with the finer specimens in Rutile form, embedded in the quartz, which is mostly found in float.  Brad worked an outcrop inside a wash that was productive and several of us went to a site with tailings of malachite and chrysocolla, across the road from the Schorl site.  That site was pretty well picked over, but we all managed to find something of interest.

We also ran into three rockhounds from Minnesota, who came by to see what we were doing and they offered us advice on some interesting Minnesota sites for us to visit.

Our next scheduled field trip is to Perkinsville, May 19th, following our monthly Friday club meeting. We’ll be collecting Perkinsville agate there.