Rockhounding 101
Dr. Jesse Reimink: [00:00:00] Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. You are a funny guy. You know,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: are not ahead of me. you're talking mad game over there today, aren't you? You're coming in
Chris Bolhuis: why is it
Dr. Jesse Reimink: spicy Bull. Hes.
Chris Bolhuis: you? Do but that's always the case. But why is it that we always have our funniest conversations before we start recording?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. I don't know. It just gets us [00:00:30] primed up. I think, you know,
You're right though. We always hit
Chris Bolhuis: We do. We're always like legitimately laughing, and then we're like, oh, we should be recording. Let's go ahead and,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: it's, uh, sometimes a little bit more colorful than we want after
Chris Bolhuis: true. We try to keep it clean. That's right.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: But Chris today is one that's near and dear to our hearts, and I think really interesting.
I think, again, in the theme of like A lot of people probably wonder about this and don't really know how to get into it, how to plug into it, and it's rock [00:01:00] hounding, and this is one of my favorite terms to teach people. you know, my wife's a doctor. I interact with a lot of doctors.
Uh, many of them are outdoors people, but, they don't know the term rock hounding. And so when you tell them rock hounding it, Just gets a laugh every time I get. Great pleasure. Oh yeah, absolutely. It's so fun because it's one of those words, like, to me it's just another word, like it means nothing.
It doesn't register as funny anymore, but to other people it registers as very funny. And so how would you define rock [00:01:30] hounding? Chris? Maybe we could just start there. How would you explain it to, you know, Tessa's colleagues who don't know what rock hounding is?
Chris Bolhuis: Okay, well, I used to have a bloodhound and his name was Sherman.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Sherman. Sherman was the bomb.
Chris Bolhuis: He was amazing. This dog was absolutely amazing. His nose was unbelievable. In fact, Jesse, I'm gonna side story. I used to take him for walks in the gravel pit. You know, we have all kinds of gravel pits around us here in Hudsonville, Michigan, and Michigan has tons of 'em.
[00:02:00] Okay? And, uh, you, Made me aware that not everybody knows what a gravel pit is. You know,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: right. It's pretty self-explanatory. It's a pit with gravel in it, but it's where gravel is mined out of, it's a glacial deposit that is being mined. So you're walking around gravel pits with Sherman. Gosh, that dog was awesome.
Chris Bolhuis: his nose is amazing and so I would throw a rock and the game was he had to come back with the same rock. Right. Well, so when you throw a little rock, In a gravel pit full of rocks. That's kind of impressive. And so I upped the ante as I always do, and I started to throw 'em in ponds, you know, and [00:02:30] it was amazing. He could smell it.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Wow.
Chris Bolhuis: in like a foot of water. And he knew that rock was, he was right there, right? And then, so, yeah, it's absolute amazing. But yeah, but then he couldn't figure it out because he would put his snout down in the water and try to, Inhale and he took a snoop full of water and that really pissed him off.
so then he finally just came back with another rock, and he came back with this glacially, strided cobble. That was enormous. I couldn't believe he fit it in his mouth, but I still use that rock as a [00:03:00] demonstration in my classroom today actually, because it shows like faceting and polishing and striations and it's amazing.
So, anyway, what, what were we talking about?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. I mean, let's get back on track here. Define rock hounding.
Chris Bolhuis: Well, Sherman's a hound. so it's just like going after rocks, man. I
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's
Chris Bolhuis: it. That's really it. Like, what do you want? Okay, let's go find it. That's really what it is,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: And I think Chris, it, yeah, I agree [00:03:30] completely. It's going after rocks, that's it. And uh, there's, mineral collecting is a part of that. I would say that's kind of rock hounding as well. But rock counting, you and I are. Uh, we've done a lot of this together. We're both pretty passionate about it. You have an amazing rock garden outside of your house, full of all of the rocks that you have hounded throughout your life, and it's just good fun.
I think, you know, going out there. It's informative. You learn about the planet, you appreciate the beauty of rocks. You [00:04:00] learn the story that the rocks tell you, and it's just good fun. It's like one of my friends describes this as, it's like geode hunting for adults is really what rock counting is, right?
You're just looking for cool rocks out there, and so. A lot of people have a passion for this. All you gotta do is go onto Facebook or Google and type in, you know, rock counting. And you can find, there's a Rock Hounds of Pennsylvania, there's a Rock Hounds of York County. There's like all of these rock hound groups, right?
And people are really passionate about it. There's a lot of people who do it you know, [00:04:30] once a week or once every year doesn't matter. But like there's people who are interested in going out there and finding stuff. So we're gonna cover today kind of how to Rock counting 1 0 1, how to, how to get into it.
The do's and don'ts cuz the don'ts are almost as important as the do's here.
Chris Bolhuis: I would agree with everything you just said, but I want to add to that. I don't think you and I would be doing what we're doing now, we would not be as close. friends as we are now, if we didn't engage in these rock hounding activities, like we were doing this every year, we would [00:05:00] take a week
Dr. Jesse Reimink: great point.
Chris Bolhuis: and go rock hounding.
That's all we did. but we always took one day to not rock hound and just go climb or hike we just, we, we would run the mountains
Dr. Jesse Reimink: a really good point Chris. And so I think we could probably frame it there talking about what these trips kinda looked like. Cuz we went to Maine, like upstate New York, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire. We went to the Black Hills. We both love the Black Hills of South Dakota. A few times we went to Colorado [00:05:30] and we've done several other trips in there, the upper peninsula of Michigan. But basically, you know, you had your old F two 50, which I think your son now has, uh, F two 50 pickup truck pack up the trailer, sometimes not the trailer, little trailer, big trailer. And we'd just drive and we'd take a week and as you said, we'd kind of camp our way out there. We'd camp while we're at the Black Hills, for instance. So we'd take a day and do a, a big hike usually. And then the rest of the time we're out there banging around looking for cool rocks and minerals specimens. We'd come back with a [00:06:00] trailer full or a truck bed full of rocks usually. And it's no small task, right? Like that's a big trip. It took us a lot of planning. It was great fun. We had so much fun doing this and we, bonded over. Cool discoveries, cool rocks, just great time out in nature.
Chris Bolhuis: And deep campfire talks.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: true. Don't forget. That's right. Don't forget about the campfire talks. Definitely great campfire talks.
Chris Bolhuis: sitting in the back of my truck bed with a beer in hand. Um, just, just [00:06:30] looking at the rocks that we collected
Dr. Jesse Reimink: after, I must say we, there, you know, there's casual rock hounding and there's not casual rock hounding, and this was not casual rock hounding. we were exhausted the vast majority of the time. It's hard work and it's fun work, but you know, it's, we went to a bunch of old mine tailings piles, which you're kind of walking up these scree slopes and digging around looking for cool minerals and stuff.
So I guess maybe we should start from like the planning stages. How if somebody's like, Hey, I want to rock hound. They move to a new area, [00:07:00] or they're planning on going on a trip and they wanna rock hound for a day, look for stuff. how do you enter into that? How do you determine what to do, how you're gonna spend your time?
What would you say, Chris?
Chris Bolhuis: what do you want to get? I think it determines where you want to go, you know? I think that's the thing, like if you're into obsidian or you're into Ripple, mark sandstone, or you're into these things, uh, the unc papa sandstone in, in the Black
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh my goodness. Amazing.
Chris Bolhuis: that determines where you go.
But I, I also wanna say this too, that [00:07:30] hopefully. you're gonna go with somebody else and hopefully maybe multiple people. Right. And there's a way to do this that I think that worked so well for us or we took my truck because it was a, you know, a heavy duty truck and we just put money in an envelope.
We said, all right, let's everybody pitch in 200 bucks. And we just put it in there and we used it for all of the common expenses. Right. And then when it was done, we're like, okay, put it another a hundred bucks. You know? And by the time it was all said and [00:08:00] done, it was really affordable. These were not expensive trips we took.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: No, that's right. I mean, we were camping in state forest camp grounds. Driving gas was probably the vast majority expense. I mean, we were, we were not eating high cuisine, but, uh, yeah, no, no. So that was, that was relatively cheap. so that's, that's one, you know, kind of part of the planning is to go about structuring this and, and we did these big, you know, expansive excursions, right?
Where we'd go for a week or a week and a half and drive with
Chris Bolhuis: We're
Dr. Jesse Reimink: guys. Yeah, I mean [00:08:30] these were, these were big excursions, which was mostly camping and rock collecting, some hiking on the side.
I think a lot of people kind of invert that though, right? They'll go on a camping, hiking trip or they'll go on a family vacation somewhere new and they'll have a day and they'll wanna maybe explore that area. And so I tend to think of it, and Tess and I do this now. When we go out, we usually go travel somewhere.
Let's say we're going up to New Hampshire or something and we got a day out. We want to go explore and we wanna find a C creek and explore and collect some rocks or go rock counting a [00:09:00] bit. You kind of gotta understand the Geology of the region first. Like what are you dealing with? What kinds of rocks are there?
What. Maybe interesting mineral collecting sites are there in the region. what's, what's kind of around, within like a day's drive or a couple hours drive of where you are, where you're going. Right. That's kind of the general Geology, the high level Geology is kind of the first entry point. And Chris, we talk a lot about the roadside Geology books, the the roadside Geology series of books cuz they're [00:09:30] spectacular.
And we use these all the time.
Chris Bolhuis: We do. And We're also though putting, you know, lots of miles on the vehicle because rock counting is, is hard. It's hard work At least that was our experience. I thought we did a lot of research, but we struggled to find certain things.
Not that's a part of rock counting is you have to be willing to struggle and drive and. Not get to the right spot or you get to the right spot and you don't have [00:10:00] permission. you know, I think of when we were in the Black Hills and we wanted to go get spa Jamin. Do you remember this? We, we went to this mine.
I, it's the m mine actually. and we get there and there's a, a tunnel blasted through a wall of rock, right? And there's a fence across the
Dr. Jesse Reimink: This is an abandoned mine site. An old mine that's, no, not currently, mined anymore. So it's a quarry, you know, filled quarry lake kind of thing, right?
Chris Bolhuis: Spa mean is a lithium ore, and it's, it's this kind of really like [00:10:30] white it looks like bone, actually, like fossilized bone, you know, and it's a very, like, it's an awesome mineral. I love it. And this mine is just known for really spectacular spamy and crystals. And so we go there and there's a fence across it, and there's a sign that.
says, do not trespass and if you do, a lot of really horrible things are gonna
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Yes, that's right. Absolutely.
Chris Bolhuis: but then there was a phone number at the bottom of it with a name and [00:11:00] we just whipped out our phones and called the phone number. And it's this guy that owns the mine. He owns a shop in Keystone, South Dakota.
And you know, we just explain who we are. We're these Geology nerds and, we just want to can we go into your mind and collect some spa? Mean, do we have your permission? He's like, well, I really wanna meet you. And so we drove into Keystone, met the guy. The guy was friendly as like, he was awesome, you know?
He's like, you know what, guys? Take whatever you want. I don't think he knew what he was really saying when he said that, but.[00:11:30]
Dr. Jesse Reimink: no. Cuz I have a huge chunk of spa Jamin that took probably two or three of us to lift into your truck. Uh, sitting in my front yard right
Chris Bolhuis: mean, this stuff is dense, you know, it's got a, it's got a high specific gravity and this stuff is awesome. But,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I think that that story there, we have so many of stories like that. we have one like that from the famous Gore Mountain Locality in upstate New York, right, where we're kind of going up to the entrance and there's clearly, you know, there's no trespassing signs anywhere.
We're kind of thinking, all right, what do we do here? Like, how there's no [00:12:00] number. Where's a phone number? Who we call, what are we looking for? And then all of a sudden, I think it was a Merc, um, it wasn't a
Chris Bolhuis: No, it was at,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: 300, right? Chrysler 300 comes ripping up the road right to us and stops in front of us.
We're like, oh boy, we're in trouble. I know. We're like, we can't be in trouble. We're, we're on the right side of the no trespassing signs. Like, we haven't done anything wrong here, but. Sounds like we're in trouble by the way, this car's pulling out and the guy, same thing. He's like, oh, your geologist. Yeah, come on down, I'll open the gate for you.
Take whatever you want. Like [00:12:30] poke around. It's totally fun.
Chris Bolhuis: the heart of the mind. That's
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So good. But I think there's a couple lessons in here, right? Like the first one is don't ever trespass, you know, there are people who will slip things into their pocket, especially in national parks, and that really.
Really pisses you and me off. Like, don't ever take anything from national parks. Don't ever trespass. but the other important point here is that usually just calling people opens doors to you, right?
don't be afraid to call and say, Hey, I'm super interested in [00:13:00] these rocks, or I'm looking around, can I get access? Some people might say no, sure. But some people might say yes, right? And so it never hurts to reach out and make that call and,
Chris Bolhuis: That's a really good point. I'm gonna interrupt you here. That's a really good point. we have not found many people that have said no. We have found some people that said, yes, we'll let you in for a charge. And, and usually we're willing to, okay, a hundred bucks, you know, that's like 30 bucks a person, let's go.
we've had that. but. Yeah, the takeaway is like, you, you, you [00:13:30] just don't wanna ever put yourself in a position where you're doing something wrong and then you get caught doing something wrong. You know, you have to know, you know, what the rules are, don't ever trespass.
And, the other thing is too, I think this is along the, the same line is, don't wreck an outcrop either.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yes, absolutely.
Chris Bolhuis: You know, you want to collect away from certain, away from the view of the public view. You What you're doing should not ruin anybody else's view.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: We had this exact [00:14:00] same conversation with Andrew Alden and, you know, he brought this up about geologists going to outcrops and you know, you're young, you're full of enthusiasm, you got a rock hammer in your hand, like of course you wanna hit stuff, right? Don't hit the beautiful outcrops, The beautiful outcrops that are stunning to look at.
Just leave them because you don't need to hit 'em usually if you just poke around, if you're at a road cut. Somebody cut a road through there and blasted a road through there, and there's rock rubble laying around, you can find the little piece you wanna take home without bashing the outcrop. Right? that exists all over the place.
[00:14:30] Like a lot of these, mineral locations or locations that are kind of known as good spots to collect minerals, they'll have a lot of tailings around. They'll have broken rock in a big pile somewhere that you can go dig through and. I think for me, Chris, the key to rock hunting, and really frankly, the most fun of it is that it takes time.
you don't expect to just rock up to an outcrop and grab the first rock you find and have it be a great one. Right? Part of the fun of it, the real pleasure is that it's like a fishing [00:15:00] expedition. You fail a lot, right? And so it just makes those cool discoveries that much sweeter, I think, when you actually find what you're looking for.
I think we were looking for, Well, the unc Papa Sandstone was one that we were after for a long time. And so to set the stage, this sandstone, well, Chris, you described this sandstone, uh, you can probably do, uh, more justice than I can.
Chris Bolhuis: well first of all, we didn't really know that we wanted the UNC papa sandstone until we went to a museum in Rapid City, South Dakota, and, and we saw
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Day one of [00:15:30] our trip,
we didn't, we had driven, what, 24 hours across the country reading
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. 16 hours. Yep. Yep. That's right. That's right. Oh, oh my gosh. Yeah, we were reading on the way, you know, like we were just writing stuff down.
you know, phone recordings.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: We hadn't come across this. And then we rock up, to the museum. We're like, oh, we gotta find that outcrop, cuz that rock's amazing.
Chris Bolhuis: You really had it in for this rock, right? When you saw it, you were, it was you and I and [00:16:00] Andy. Andy. Andy was with us and he hates it. We're gonna call him that.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Andy. Andy.
Chris Bolhuis: Anyway, you were the one that drove the, the ship on this. You're like, we have to find this rocket. I think it took us two days, literally, like we drove, a few hundred miles, you know, and we're using the, we knew the Geology of the black hills, right?
And, and so it's a dome, the Geology of this, this region is a, you know, geologic dome. So we kind of knew. The vicinity of where it was [00:16:30] gonna be. And then we, we came upon where we thought it would outcrop and then it was private property. We couldn't get to it, you know, we didn't have a phone number, no permission.
So we went somewhere else and it took us probably two days and we finally got this, you know,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: And this rock is, it's a finely layered sandstone with all sorts of incredible colors in it. Yellows, purples, pinks, whites, grays. It is beautiful. And then not only the colors, not only the layers. But it has a ton of all these little micro faults [00:17:00] running through it. So this thing is a faulted gem of a rock.
I mean, this is just a beautiful rock and it's exposed in a lot of places in the Western us. called different names in different regions, but this is a beautiful rock and that I think the discovery, our discovery of that was, Made all the sweeter because we spent so much time, you know, looking for it.
and it was fun. You know, it's fun. It is really, the sense of discovery is, is great in rock counting.
Chris Bolhuis: and then it was protected [00:17:30] by rattlesnakes.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Chris, Chris and the, uh, the, the, the illusion of rattlesnakes in your
Chris Bolhuis: No, no, no, no. There was, this was no illusion. No, the other one was an illusion. This was no illusion. These things were out on the ground. They were little baby rattlesnakes, like all over the place. I'm deathly afraid of snakes.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Chris has no love for snakes,
Chris Bolhuis: no,
I do
Dr. Jesse Reimink: not when they're getting in the way of his outcrops. Oh man, that was a good one.
Chris Bolhuis: brave them.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So, okay. [00:18:00] Knowing a bit about the region is great. So first of all, patience, right? Patience. Don't trespass, obey the rules and have patience. You're gonna not find what you're looking for many times.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. Let me interject here. most often, if you're gonna go rock hounding, then there have been books written about it outside of the roadside Geology, book. And so you really need to look into anything that was written about this area and, and then you're just digging for clues on
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So, Chris, where are places that you look? What are a [00:18:30] couple resources? If you're going to a new place, what are you gonna look for at first?
Chris Bolhuis: I don't have a canned answer for this. Like I, there's nothing I remember, you weren't on this trip that I went, but I, went with our other friend, Brian, and we went to North Carolina and were looking around. As we were driving, we were reading roadside Geology and we knew what we wanted to go get and we knew roughly where to go, but we had to just.
We had to buy a book, but we didn't know what book we had to buy, and so [00:19:00] we ended up in this city and we went to a bookstore and we found what we needed. So it's like, I don't know, it's just persistence. because, I'll tell you this too, There is a very tight-lipped community around rock hounding.
Right. you know, people that own rock shops, right? Right. People that own rock shops, they, they're not gonna share with you. you can't go in there and say, oh, where did you find this beautiful rose quartz? They're gonna tell you to get outta their shop. You know, they're like, they're not gonna tell you where to go to get that.
They [00:19:30] wanna sell you the stuff. So, you and I have been. A part of that kind of environment as well, where people are very tightlipped. They don't want to tell you because they think, oh, you're just gonna rack it, or whatever. they're trying to make a living, selling that stuff. So, It's creativity.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I think I, I have a bit of a canned answer for this cuz this is what I do a little bit more and I, I don't think I'll kind of flip it because what I do now most often is there's a planned vacation or a planned trip somewhere and I [00:20:00] want to go look for rocks for half a day.
As a part of this trip. So I can't really say, oh, I want to go to upstate New York to look at Gore Mountain Garnets like that. I can't make that decision, right. It's more like, Hey, we're going to New Hampshire. What's on the way to New Hampshire or what's in New Hampshire? That's cool. And luckily there's beautiful rocks up in New Hampshire in great Geology.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, that's,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: it's, it's beautiful. Lots of pegmatites, lithium, pegmatites, lots of cool stuff. or, you know, we're gonna go to the Grand Canyon. Okay. What's near the Grand Canyon around that region? Oh, [00:20:30] Sedona. There's really cool rocks in Sedona. Okay. So I use the US Geological surveys maps, first of all, Like I know what good rocks kind of are, what categories of rocks look cool and are interesting to try and find? So looking at the map first, if I looked at the map of Michigan, I would realize, wow, the lower peninsula is not great for rock hounding unless I'm sitting in a, a gravel pit, frankly. Uh, I gotta go to the up to find cool rocks.
Right? So just, just looking at the geologic map first and foremost, then the internet. The internet is full of [00:21:00] amazing resources because there's a lot of people who have. Searched in these regions, And there's a lot of little historical societies. there's a lot of just little weird niche resources that can help you find cool little areas to go rock hounding in.
Whether it's a little creek bed somewhere, or it's an old mine site that is open and you can call the owner and everybody knows you can call the owner and get permission. Like those little gems, you just gotta search for 'em. It, like you said, it takes persistence to even, get that [00:21:30] resource.
Chris Bolhuis: It does. Because if you go to this place where it says, Hey, there's this creek bed where you can go get ru retail crystals, um, good luck. I mean, that's really hard. Still, you know where to go. But these things are not just laying on the ground. I mean, they're, you know, they're not there just to pick up and you're not gonna go there and spend 15 minutes and walk home with a five gallon bucket full of this stuff.
It's,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's right. So managing expectations is a really, uh, important one too, right? Like, and enjoy the experience because you know what? You're in this beautiful place. You're outside, [00:22:00] you're looking for cool rocks. you find what you're after or you don't. You're gonna find some cool stuff that you didn't expect probably as well.
And so whether it's fossils or crystals or certain rock types, you and I often collect rocks, which I think is a little bit more rare. Most people are after crystals or fossils, I think, typically. which is totally fair. That's, those are really interesting, uh, interesting things. So maybe Chris, could we spend a couple minutes just maybe wrapping up here talking about equipment?
And again, for the, the basic ones, you and I, [00:22:30] we went with the big pickup truck we had and chisels and all sorts of stuff. That's not everybody. So like what, what do you think are the key things for a little day trip? Or your average person who's got a free day to go rock counting somewhere.
Chris Bolhuis: All right. I don't go small, so, I'm gonna say like a three pound little sledge, like a handheld mallet. Okay. If you will. and then if you to me, I found the best stuff at these antique shops where you're [00:23:00] looking for, chisels, but they're not really chisels. They're usually like railroad tie
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, yeah. Yep. Definitely split it like a wood splitting malls or something like that. You know, any piece of metal, old pry bars, little pieces of metal that you can get into, little cracks and you can break open little cracks with That's, that's absolutely great. I do think a hand lens, Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
I mean, the, the personal protective wear is important set of glasses. I've actually, Chris taken to, [00:23:30] especially when I'm using a hammer and chisel like metal on metal or metal on rock, especially the big sledge, I wear earmuffs just because that ringing, that like ringing noise with all the field work I done.
Bashing Granites up in the Canadian shield, uh, that it gets to me. So I usually have eye protection, ear protection, gloves, you know, your basic work gloves. And then, what's the other thing I was gonna say? Oh, hand lens. A hand lens. The geological tool. You can get these for like 10, 15 bucks and, uh, they're really useful once you [00:24:00] kind of figure out how to use them.
It's just a magnifying glass really. But they're higher. Power magnifying glasses, and they're really great for mineral identification and seeing cool features in rocks. Yeah. 10 x you can get 20, 30, 15, I think is the, the, the bulk standard one that, we use. So yeah, those are, those are good things.
What, what else? Do you have anything else that you like bring along?
Chris Bolhuis: my version of a rock hammer's a three pound hammer, the three pound hammer and a chisel. I can do what I need to do most of [00:24:30] the time with that. And like you said too, I wear, earwear. I'm all about that. I mean, even if I'm on the lawn, I wear ear protection, so,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Yeah, that's, you got to man. the only other thing I could think of is I usually end up taking a pretty old backpack that's beat up because rocks are really sharp, especially if you collect anything sizeable with a little weight to it, it'll rip up your backpack. So I usually end up having like an old fleece jacket or something like that in an old backpack that I can chuck a [00:25:00] rock into and not worry about damaging my nice.
Yeah, I, you know, the number of times I've like, had a new backpack and I go out and I find the coolest rock on this hike and I have to
Chris Bolhuis: it Yep.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: my brand new backpack.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, I know it's painful. Yeah, I know, but you do have to take the rock. Yeah. But do you remember when one of our first trips out to the Black Hills? We stopped at Cabela's in Mitchell, South Dakota because I had to buy a different backpack and I still have that same [00:25:30] backpack and there are no holes in it.
And
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's
Chris Bolhuis: backpack. Yeah, I know it's a Cabela's brand and it, it just has held up, uh, that's probably, I don't know, Jesse, that's maybe 12, 15 years
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, it must be. And it's the, I I have the, I have my field backpack, which is a Kelty, which is just a, it's a Bombproof backpack. I have carried. Thousands of pounds of rocks in that thing now over the years, and, you know, it's a beast and it's, it's beat up, but you know what, there's no holes in it yet. So, [00:26:00] um, yeah, having a beater, a beater backpack is a key one.
And I always like to have a little, you know, maybe I'm getting a little bit old, but I always like to have an old fleece jacket or something that'll pad the rock from my back a little bit. That'll have that extra layer of padding between rocks in my back the number of times. Chris, I'm sure you've had this.
As well. My thighs have some scars on them from putting rocks in my front pockets and then falling on them. Have you done this? You surely. I know how clumsy you are. You must have done this a couple times.
Chris Bolhuis: okay. Uh, I have a scar on my [00:26:30] cheek, actually from a chunk of quartz.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. Yeah. I was trying to knock a chunk of rose quartz off and a big sh just flew right into my cheek, I have a scar there, literally from it still, so, yeah. I mean, Always go with eyewear for sure. I mean, that's, that's number one, but I don't, I don't think I've fallen though like you have, but you know,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, I think that
Chris Bolhuis: athletic.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, oh really? Yeah. Okay. Famously, [00:27:00] famously more athletic. ask him. He's the most athletic man that's ever existed. You just gotta ask him.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, just ask me. Yeah, that's right.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh man. And you know, like we were talking about before with the rock identification thing, we gotta go out and do this again sometime soon.
It's uh, it's been too long, man. This, this would be fun. You got, you know what you gotta do? All right. You gotta come to Pennsylvania. There's some amazing Geology. Uh, Western Pennsylvania is okay, but Eastern Pennsylvania's got some totally cool Geology and we'll go, we'll go bash around looking for [00:27:30] some rocks.
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. We'll take a couple days. Do
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That sounds good, man. Totally. Great. Sweet. Hey, well, I mean, what else are we missing? Anything else here on rock counting 1 0 1?
Chris Bolhuis: I don't know. The, key to the game is, well, two research, research, research. Okay. And then be persistent because it's not easy. It, it's directions are often obscure and sometimes they're obscure on purpose. you just have to like get after it.
It's, I mean, not to bring in another story, but do you remember our quest for tufa?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, [00:28:00] tufa. Yes. Oh man. This was the Black Hills Tufa. Yeah, right. The Black Hills. Yeah. Oh man. That was another epic. We were just for some, I think you were the one who really wanted Tufa, right? This was,
Chris Bolhuis: do you know what did it,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: tufa.
Chris Bolhuis: we were in the city of Custer. We went into this building. It was like, um, it was a shop and this guy had a fireplace that was made of Tufa,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's right. Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah, he had a whole fireplace made of tufa [00:28:30] and tu. So tufa is, basically it's precipitated, uh, calcium carbonate. It's like travertine. It's in this category of like travertine type stuff. It's things that are precipitated.
Chris Bolhuis: petrified forest floor. It's like petrified moss,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. right. Exactly. It is really cool, really crazy looking and uh, like kind of wormy textured, but lots of gaps in it, lots of air pockets and things like this. it's really amazing stuff. Yeah. That was an epic, epic.
Chris Bolhuis: that was another two day [00:29:00] journey.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Yeah. Another two days down the
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. But how, but no, but when you find it and you're like, oh my gosh, all right. Our knowledge of Geology led us to this point,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Totally. Totally. And you know what? Our knowledge of Geology leveled up along the way because the amount of time, just understanding how the world works from a geological perspective is so cool. Rock counting really, I think accentuates that. It's rare that you just stumble upon something.
Luckily. You usually have to sort of [00:29:30] use your reasoning, use your intuition while you're out there. Let's say, you know, I like to do a lot of the stuff along streams now because streams are great aggregators of all the stuff that's up in the drainage basin. So all the rocks in the drainage basin. Area that are exposed will kind of end up downstream in the stream.
And so I like these cobby streams in the mountains and you kind of have to work out like, okay, I'm seeing a lot of this Granite over here, but I'm really after the shift. And so, is that shift more downstream or upstream? Is there a little offshoot of the [00:30:00] shift that's exposed up to the left and not to the right?
Like you kind of are working through this reasoning thing all the way through it. And so, It just takes effort and you get an appreciation for the world around you just by doing this. So
Chris Bolhuis: I agree a hundred percent. My mind was going a thousand miles an hour. Thinking about like how this is really, rock hounding is a informal field camp.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: that is an, an amazing way to describe it. Informal field camp, informal geologic mapping. You're just doing it for yourself, right? You're just trying to work out the [00:30:30] problem. By yourself. And that's good enough. And it's so fun. So fun. So get out there in rock hound, no matter where you are.
There's interesting stuff. just search anything about rock hounding and the city you're in, or the area you're in, the county you're in. I bet there's some cool stuff around you.
Chris Bolhuis: Good stuff, good times, good memories.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: good fricking memories. And Chris, you're right. I've had, I hadn't thought about that.
We would not be sitting here today on this podcast if it were not for rock hounding. That was well said.
Chris Bolhuis: we would.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Well said. Sir, agree with you [00:31:00] completely. Mr. Bullis, you're doing such a great job. Hey, you know, I wanna say something real quick. We, uh, a couple weekends ago, we had this session in your Honor, at the Geological Society of America Conference, the North Central Regional one, and that was a really fun session.
First of all, I was quite honored to give a talk in that, but There seemed to be a fair number of students who seem to think that you trespassed to collected a lot of rocks and [00:31:30] I. I had to defend you, I think. I have never seen you do that. I don't think I've ever seen you do that. And think what they did, I want to ask you what you thought about that while you were listening to these people kind of throwing shade away about it during their talks.
I mean, it was all in jest, right? But what I was sitting there thinking was, I know Chris Bullis, I know that you say a lot, sandstone is the same sandstone that's in the Grand Canyon. I collected it outside of the Grand Canyon though, and I think a lot of students interpreted that [00:32:00] as quote unquote, I collected it, quote unquote, outside of the Grand Canyon, meaning you did take it from the Grand Canyon and you're just saying you didn't.
that was how I interpreted that. But I know for a fact you have never taken anything from a national park, and I've never seen you collect rocks while you're trespassing at all.
Chris Bolhuis: no, actually I had a friend who, took a small piece of sulfur from Yellowstone and she, Somebody saw her do it and she put it in a little napkin and put it in her pocket. And then they were near the old faithful area and they left. And [00:32:30] um, a ranger pulled 'em over, right as they left the old faithful area.
Yeah, they got pulled over, their whole car was searched. It took like two hours. This was a massive ordeal. Finally, she said, what are you. What are you looking for? What you know, what's going on? And, and he said Somebody saw you take something from Old Faithful. And she said, do you mean this? And she reached in her pocket and it was a little like, it was, uh, about the half a size of a dime.
Okay. and she got fined I think like $500 for this. And it was, you know, it was steep. so they don't mess around and I'm not gonna mess around with that, especially if I'm with the [00:33:00] students. I'm not gonna mess around with that. So, I wouldn't do that anyway, but you're right, when I go places, like I have examples of almost everything, and I bring those with me because wanna say, well guys, this is what you're gonna see here.
If I wanna get on the front end of a lecture about, Hey, keep your eyes out. So then, then when I'm walking with eight to 10 students, I can say, what's that? You know, and they have some sort of frame of reference, so it's just planning. And they know me though, Jesse, they know that I take risks.[00:33:30]
I'm a all the time. Okay. And I think they, they look at my personality and they just assume, oh, really? He's just, BSing there. He took this rock from here. He probably took it 10 steps back. But no, I actually took that rock from Michigan. You know, I had that rock long before and it was legal and, there was no moral ramifications to that at all.
So it's just, it's just planning and I think it's just assumptions that, I don't know. Yeah, you're right. I need to, to, I need to [00:34:00] dispel those cuz
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I think there's a, there's rumors amongst the younger generation of Chris Bwe students that, uh, that, that Chris is collecting rocks illegally. But I've never known that to be true. I can't say that you've never have, but I've never seen you do that. So you've always been an upright, uh, in legal rock hound, in my opinion.
So, hey man, that's, That's a wrap on this episode. You can learn all about the basics of geoscience with our conversational textbook. For the geosciences, it is the [00:34:30] first link in your show notes, camp Geo. There we have actually photos of rocks. Chris, we have gifts of rocks that'll help you identify rocks as you're going out there.
Rock hounding around in the world. you can go to our website, plan geo cast.com. There you can subscribe, you can support us. We always appreciate that. You can see our past episodes and look at episode transcripts. You can learn more about us as well there.
And please leave us a rating and a review on your podcast platform that really helps the algorithm and helps us spread the word about the geosciences.
Chris Bolhuis: That's right.
[00:35:00] Cheers.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Cheers.
