Went for a walk tonight (Night of March 25th, 2025) from just after midnight to about 2 am. It was pleasantly cool in the mid 60s and slightly cloudy. The quiet air only broken by the occasional hoot from a distant owl. Similar recent outings had one or more bursts of coyotes howling and yipping amongst each other, but not tonight. Though there was still some critters to be seen, more on those later!
I went to a ridgeline that I have only visited once before, and that was during the day. My hopes as far as rocks to find obviously included jasper and any more translucent quartzes, though recently I've been more keen on finding nice epidote specimens. There was a relative abundance of epidotized opaque quartzes compared to other ridges I've hounded... except to my chagrin they were nearly all poor quality. Rather than incorporated veins of epidote, most had very thin layers on the outer faces. With my primary goal at the moment being tumbling rocks, these would not be good choices to tumble, as the epidote would be ground off leaving a mostly dull opaque quartz. One or two had a more crystalline looking epidote on the surface, thought without magnification I can't be certain.
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| The best of the epidote specimens, the one in the top left having the aforementioned semi-crystalline surface |
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| I was very lucky to find so many pieces of jasper with such rich colors, usually I'd be luck to find just one! Excited to see these ones through the tumbling process. |
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| I'm not certain what these rocks are, but my running theory after some researching is that they are Bassanite jasper, sometimes called touchstone. I only took them because they had a glassy/waxy feel that made them stand out from other black rocks. Hopefully they will take a nice polish! |
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| The remaining interesting rocks I found. The top and top right rocks appear to be some kind of porphyry of quartz in a red/orange matrix. The black rock feels denser than most and after research it may just be a piece of iron slag (manmade .-.) There is also the 3 little flesh-like jelly bean rocks, presumably just some kind of quartz with different mineral inclusions causing the colors. Lastly the center rock is very unusual and I have no idea what it may be, the surface is very uneven so I suspect parts of it are more prone to weathering. |
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| I happened to spot a little movement near the edge of my flashlight, and upon closer inspection this gorgeous Western Banded Gecko was just hanging out! Fairly uncommon sighting for me, the invasive Mediterranean House Gecko makes up the majority of the geckos around. |
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| The other notable critter was this common desert centipede only around 2-3 inches in length. Didn't handle this one for obvious reasons! It stayed very still in my presence just waiting for me to move on. |
This post was also fairly lengthy, you'd be forgiven for not reading every last word! I'm not sure if I'll continue to style these posts like this or transition to just pictures with relevant descriptions. At the moment though, I am enjoying the change of pace that arises from just sitting down to write out a few paragraphs. So expect more like this for now!
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