Rocks and Minerals

 Wally recently discovered a new store, GTC Rock Shop, that he was totally fascinated with. He told Ward and me that we needed to visit, and he and Theo gave me a gift card to the store for my birthday.

We did visit, and what an experience. The store is advertised as a science education center, and they hope that someday they can sell enough to become an educational non-profit. They have case after case of crystals and rocks, educational toys, jewelry, a panning activity, and a classroom with a museum. I expected a few rocks and crystals for sale, but got much more. One could spend hours just studying everything that was there.

I didn't choose anything to get on this trip. This visit was more of an overview of what the store was like. And as I told my sons, I had to figure out what we had in all of those boxes of rocks we have in our basement. Did I mention that I have a degree in geology and Ward has one in geophysics?

Here are a few pictures from our visit.

Amethyst (purple quartz)

Citrine (orange quartz)

The minerals were identified with name, chemical formula, and place of origin. I thought it was a nice touch that they added the country's flag in the description. If you look closely, you can see them.

The classroom.

The classroom had display cases of various things, including this one of minerals and how they are used in our everyday life.

As I said, I wasn't sure what was in all of the boxes of rocks in the basement. I know we had gotten rid of some, but it seemed like every time we did that, we would find another one. I unboxed them last week and did a first-order sort of fossils, crystals, ores, and rocks (unspecified). We're not sure what we're going to do with them now, but Ward may build a coffee table with a glass top to display some of them. Unfortunately, we don't know where many of them came from, what they are, or why we collected them. Eventually, some of them will find new homes. We certainly don't want to put them all back in boxes to hide in the basement for more years. Here's what I found.

Fossils, both plants and sea creatures.

Ores and some specific rock types.

Crystals

There was no obvious reason why we kept these rocks.

And we had a few other things with the rocks, like arrowheads and these Civil War cannonballs.

Sorting this all out is going to be a big job, but we will figure it out eventually.

Until next time...