RockhoundingVideos.com - From The-Vug.com

Before driving back to Pasadena, we had to film a couple more locations on the Inyo County Video. So on the loop back around we had 3 more collecting sights planned out; Saturday, collecting quartz crystal and apahce tears outside of Big Pine, and Sunday, collecting Coyote Range Garnets with Cal Graeber.

Now I don’t know about you guys, but Justin is a MOTIVATED COLLECTOR when it’s for quartz points, especially ones that are double terminated or odd shaped floaters. Both of which are plentiful at this location.

We quickly filmed what we needed for the video, and then settled down to collect some quartz crystals.

After collecting quartz crystals we decided to take a side detour and visit the Ancient Bristlecone Pine forest in Inyo National Forest. The trees in this forest are some of the oldest living things in the entire world. Many of the trees are 4,000 years old. They only grow between 10,00 and 11,00 foot elevation. So we had to drive up some steep windy roads to get to the forest.

Once we got there, the trees were crazy, twisty, tall. They are very freaky, gnarled trees. I like to refer to desert trees like this as “Halloween Trees”.

Being that this place is a National Park, there was information about Ancient Bristlecone Pines.

It turns out that some of the PINE NEEDLES on a single tree can be up to 40 years old. This conserves energy, letting the tree live to be thousands of years old. The oldest living organism on the planet is a tree called “Methuselah”, that back in an unpublicized section of the park.

But I am all about the bristlecones, themselves.


They have pointy bristles on the end of each segment.

The animals in national parks are allways so tame.

On the way out we decided to stop and have lunch at one of the roadside picnic areas we had seen on the way into the park.

As evening fell we drove out toward the apache tear location. It was great… so great that we decided to just camp there for the evening.

The best thing about this location was that we had 4 bars of internet. I stayed up late and finished some website work, and Justin got up early to do his.

At 9 o’ clock in the morning we got a call from Cal about meeting us in Bishop to collect garnets, and we were ready to go.
We got in the truck, only to find out that it wouldn’t start. Turns out the battery was drained. Apparently this morning when Justin was checking his email, he forgot to turn the car on… draining the battery. We waited, and waited all day to see if the battery would revive, but it didn’t.

At least we had apache tears to collect. We got seven bags of them.

Eventually we called out for a service truck in Bishop to give us a jump. We walked 2 miles through the open range…

Down to the canal the to show them the way back to where we were.

We decided to stay the night in Bishop and meet up with Cal in the morning. So basically, we went to sleep. It had been a long day.

After being in San Benito for two days it was time to return to Inyo County to finish filming locations. It turns out that the best way to get back to where we were was to go through Yosemite National Park, and since neither Justin nor I had ever been there before, we figured that it would be fun to make a day of it.

The park is one of the oldest National Parks in America; it was founded as a National Scenic Preserve before the Park Service was even established. Yosemite is known for its majestic mountains, spectacular waterfalls, and diverse flora and fauna, also this time of year there is still snow at many of the higher elevations. We took the Tioga Rd. out of the park. This road is seasonally closed do to the ice pack, and only opened a week ago to visitors. So without further to-do, on to the pictures.

Yosemite Falls, the fifth highest waterfall in the WORLD.

Justin filming the falls from the meadow

Me in the Meadow

Merced River

I like lizards….

and moss.

We decided to visit the least visited spot in the park, the cemetery

And then Justin decided to swim in one of the waterfalls,


as you can tell by the look on his face, it was EXTREMELY cold.

But what would one expect, it IS melted glacier?

After spending the whole day there, it was time to head out,

but not before stopping to photograph the herd of deer grazing in the meadow.

Good-bye Yosemite National Park, I hardly knew thee.

Let’s see, Wednesday and Thursday we spent in the San Benito Mountains, near the Diablo Range. This is Central California, south of San Jose, for those that aren’t in the know.

This area is not only desolate, but down right treacherous in some areas. Known primarily for the Gem Mine, where the state gemstone, Benitoite is found, San Benito also has a plethora of various other deposits.

The most plentiful is serpentine, but there is also benitoite, neptunite, garnet, vesuvianite, agate, dolomite, cinnabar, meta-realgar, fossils, quartz, asbestos, mercury, and many others of less interest to field collectors.

Today the San Benito area is a combination of public and privately held lands, and is primarily used for recreational motor sports such as 4 wheeling and dirt biking, therefore, definitely not for the faint of heart.

We rented a heavy duty truck with high clearance, and even then some of the roads were still impassable from any number of obstructions; dirt slides, mud, streams, over grown, rutted, or just plain gone.

San Benito is a really beautiful area, but one that is hard to explain to someone who has never witnessed it.

Due to the combination of elevation and climate, the landscape around here is one of surreal qualities. It is what is referred to as a “Pine Desert”, similar to a regular pine forest, but the pines here are more of the shrub variety and are growing in the arid desert climate and rocky, sandy soil.

Couple this with all the blue and green serpentine EVERYWHERE, and I you have a landscape of a fairy tale, or possibly a Mark Ryden painting. Just spectacular, and my personal favorite type of landscape.

We started out the day by going with Rick Kennedy to the Gem Mine to look for benitoites and neptunites in naturalite.

Rick is a regular at this location and quickly finds a keeper.

Some great finds from Terry at the mine.

After saying good-bye to everyone we set out to explore more of the surrounding mountains to hopefully find some great locations for the video. With help from Rick and a series of topo maps marked with “X’s” we were off in search of adventure.

Cinnabar Hill

Jade Hill

Spanish Lake

After climbing a very steep hill, we found plant fossils.

And thistles.

However our favorite location was the “plasma agate”. We just couldn’t get enough of it, and who can blame us, it’s agate included with MERCURY!


Supposedly if you bust open certain pieces a mercury blob will come out. I tried, to no avail.

And of course on our way out, we were sure to gather up some scary ass ASBESTOS, because you all just know how much we love that stuff.