• Thursday-What'sUP August 13 - 04:22 pm

Paul & Nathalie Brandes (alias Capt. Paul and Dr. Nat), spent some time perusing the 40th annual Ishpeming Rock Show on their visit here UP North. Paul gives us a breakdown of what the pictures are all about:

The show is held on the first Saturday in August every year at the Ishpeming Elks Club. There were a lot of dealers with a great variety of specimens available. Here is a snippet of what each photo is:

1 - Looking up the aisle of vendors (there were more), along with the sign advertising the show.
2 - Agate Booth: A friend of mine who offers some of the most beautiful agates from around the world.
3 - Silent Auction: In addition to outside, there are also vendors inside including the Rock Club Silent Auction, featured here.
4 - The usual variety of mineral specimens in a box called a “flat” which is typically how they are displayed at such shows.
5 - Copper Agate: These are the copper included agates that folks have been finding up here around Laurium and Wolverine. The biggest one in the photo is ~ 2 inches across.
6 - Petoskey Stone: The Michigan State Stone! It was ~ 9 inches across.
7 - Baker Agate: A typical example of a Baker Agate from New Mexico; size ~5 inches across.
8 - Brazil Agate: This was a very thinly cut agate where the light could shine through it; very pretty!
9 - Datolite: A beautiful example of datolite from the Pewabic Lode (likely Quincy); size ~6 inches across.
10 - Pudding Stone: A slab of puddingstone, which is a metaconglomerate that originates in Canada, but was deposited by the glaciers along the eastern UP and NE LP. This slab was ~ 10 inches across.

Greetings:

Thank you Paul and Nathalie for sharing your photos.

Hopefully, you had plenty of time to leave no stone unturned at the show.

JT

Beautiful rocks + stones.

Very interesting pix and the weather looks perfect, too.
BTW...Did you run into A Rock Obama? :-)

WOW! What fun that must have been. I wish we
could have gone. Ron would have had a ball. I
have to be sure he sees these pictures. I wish we
had enough time to go and do everything we want to
do when we're there, but there's always something
that needs to be done. And since I'm still
blessed to have my mom around, I guess we'll just
keep doing what we can for her. Thanks for
sharing these, though.

Just knew these shots had to be from Capt. Paul and Dr. Nat! Fascinating specimens ~ the Baker's Agate is amazing!

Nice photos, Capt. Paul and Dr. Nat.

I have a Petoskey stone that my husband bought for me when we lived in Charlevoix. I also found one on the shore of Lake Michigan.

AWESOME!!

Anyone who is interested in the minerals shown on this page would also enjoy spending a few hours at Michigan Tech's A. E. Seaman Mineral Museum, which has one of the truly outstanding collections in the U.S.

http://www.museum.mtu.edu/

It's in a new off-campus location on Sharon Avenue, which I have not yet visited, but the collection is well worth the time spent. According to the web site, the new location is both larger and easier to get to.

Rock on!

Rock on, indeed!!

The weather was absolutely gorgeous for the event, and there were a lot more vendors than what is featured in the photos. Also thanks for the compliments on the quality of the photos; those little @#%&! are hard to get the colours right especially with the changing conditions.

And yes, we did spend some $$$ while there, but I did manage to get a specimen of silver I have been wanting for quite some time.......

Here's the Pasty photo album I took at the A.E. Seaman Mineral Museum last year.

http://gallery.pasty.com/thumbnails.php?album=3664