Road trip

We took a couple of days for a road trip to Tucson, AZ for the big Gem and Rock show on Wednesday and Thursday this past week. The show is one of the largest rock shows in the country. This was the first time we had gone to the show and may be the last...lol We had a good time and glad we went. The problem.... this show is BIG and spread out all over the city. It was very hard to find the dealers that were selling what we wanted to see. There were at least 35 different venues, some wholesale only, some open to the public. Of coarse, the first ones we went to were the wholesale ones, couldn't get in to them. We finally got a map of where the "open to the public" venues were. This helped a lot, but didn't have a list of dealers or where they were located. We wonder around looking and looking and looking. Found some dealers selling what are called slabs, rock cut in 1/4" thick slabs so you can mark and cut out the pieces that you want to turn into jewelery. I bought a few slabs, ones that we can't find around here. I prefer to make my jewelery out of stuff we find, but these slabs were to pretty to pass up. I was able to find the tool sales that had everything I was looking for. After a day and a half of walking and looking, we decided it was time to head back to Deming. I as said in the beginning, had a great time, but would not drive the 3 hours to go again. If we are in the area during the show, I would go, just would not drive that far again.

Stalactite's 10 feet tall from China

Geodes from Brazil

More rocks


Dale and Shirley

We spent all most a month running around the desert hunting rocks with Dale and Shirley. They have since moved on to hunt rocks in Arizona. We had a really good time visiting and hunting with them. I hope we can meet up down the road some where to hunt some more.

Before we left for Tucson, a couple came into the rv park asking about rock hunting in this area. The boss came and got me to talk them. I told them we were going to AZ. for a couple of days but would be glad to take them out hunting when we got back. Low and behold they waited on us to get back. We spent Thursday hunting with Bob and Ada from Nebraska. They are farmers that enjoy rock hunting and Indian relic hunting. They invited us to come visit them at their farm and hunt around there. Maybe next year we can take them up on it.

I have been working on getting stones ready to mount into jewelery, Louise has been quilting. We have about 4 more weeks left here before it's off to Arizona and carving week. Looking forward to moving on and heading to CA. to see the kids there.

This is the quilt that Louise made for son Duane Jr. He lives in Texas and was my roping pardner in days past. As you can see, the quilt was done in western pattern material and quilted with Texas stars. This was the forth of 6 quilts Louise has made for our 6 kids. Louise makes one a year and is working on the last one now. The 5th will be posted on the next post. She couldn't post the pictures till they had recieved the quilts, so the 6th one won't be seen on here till after Christmas this year. Something to look forward to for all our readers.

Till next time

Duane and Louise