GMS Field Trip

GMS Field Trip
4 Locations in Tennessee
Saturday, June 22, 2013

Four for the price of one! Location 1 was a cornucopia of marine fossils sprinkled all over big boulders. Small to large plates were there for the taking though breaking plates off the boulders worked pretty well too. Like Bill Waggener, I was led by a new little friend on an enthusiastic fossil tour of the site. Several people took home big plates covered with fossils and we even found some interesting material to cab. Many thanks to Mickey and Lizabeth McClain for pioneering this super site!

Location 2 was a place that Charles calls “the field of dreams”. Geode laden overburden from road construction is being piled up with chunks of shale nearby. The shale contains geodes with various minerals including calcite and dolomite. Again, collecting was abundant and easy. While everyone else cruised around eagerly harvesting ripe geodes from the field, I was on a quest for sand geodes. Though I saw many other beautiful geodes that other people found, I could not find my precious. Then Jim Haege found a broken one for me so I scooped out all of the sand to share with everyone at Sand Section! Daniel Miller found a geode that contains fluorite, calcite, and pyrite in addition to quartz crystals. There were some very nice dolomite specimens coming out of the shale too.

Location 3 was a nice cool creek with trees for shade plus geodes and suiseki for collecting. Suiseki is a Japanese word for stones that evoke images of landscapes in miniature (sui = water, seki = stone). Even though he had never even heard of these curious stones until this trip, Paul Cloutier found three beautiful suiseki! And for those of you who are following the Weiss Lake mystery, I found some of those enigmatic markings on a piece of limestone here! (See below for a photo)

Location 4 was another part of the creek behind a new member's house. She graciously invited us to cool our heels yet again in refreshingly cool water under delightfully shady trees. Many thanks to our member for opening up her yard to us! A few more geodes, some small suiseki, and a nice little coral fossil from the creek all have new homes now. Just as we were climbing out of the creek, the skies opened up briefly to let us know it was time to go, so we bid the creek a fond farewell – for now anyway.

Note: The huge geode in front of the GMS building is there courtesy of Charles and “the field of dreams”

Lori Carter, on behalf of
Charles Carter, GMS Field Trip Chair
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