Can we find the purple agate? Crystals in the tuff! Rockhounding Burro Creek

[Music] [Music] hello friends welcome to rockstar brains my name is lauren and today we are in beautiful yavapai county arizona we are in a blm site called burrow creek and we're going to be looking for some purple agates and maybe some dendritic opals we've got all these beautiful rock layers behind me here and we're gonna have to get across the water so we're going to walk around and see if we can get to the other side because i need to get into those tough layers and see if i can find some of that magnesite and white maybe opal stuff and maybe some purple agates so since i've never been here before i wanted to find out what the geology was of the area because i needed to know a little bit more about where to find the purple agate and maybe some opal so i found a u.s geological survey mineral report which i'll put in the comments i'll put the link for that in the comments but i'm just going to read the description of what it says because it kind of explains it the best so it's the area is in the structural transition zone between the colorado plateau and the basin and range physiographic province proterozoic granitic and metamorphic rocks are extensively exposed in the region the area has deposits of bentonite magnesite and occurrences occurrences of agate and they're in a section of faulted and slightly folded tertiary tefacious lecustreen rocks that's a lot to unpack okay so bent knight think betna clay volcanic ash think kitty litter this is the stuff that clay clumping kitty litter is made of and i think at some point maybe not anymore but it was also used to thicken milkshakes so you maybe have some clay in your milkshakes magnesite that is magnesium carbonate so for the chemistry nerds out there that's mgco3 and when you have that plus some silicon dioxide you get colorful agate and hopefully some opals maybe even some dendritic opals so opals with little tree looking patterns in them we're gonna see what we can find but this helps me know where to look because the other things that were in the description you have tepacious rocks so tough or volcanic ash that is compressed into rocks so we're looking for that very fine sediment volcanic ash rocks this area we're kind of in the structural boundary between the uplifted colorado plateau and the lower basin and range areas and so this area's got a lot of faulting and it exposes a lot of different kinds of rocks some volcanic rocks granite basalt and you have metamorphic rocks and some of these things are what we're going to be looking for hopefully in the creek um and because that's what has been exposed and eroded we got mr rocks for brains walking a long head here checking out the spots i think this is where we need to be this looks like the tuff or the volcanic rocks and those are pretty good layers so i think what we need to do from what i've read anyway is take the rock hammer and look for some really white spots it also looks like there's some almost like conglomerates in here so we're gonna look a little more and see what else is in here this is interesting don't really know what it is but it's kind of like a pale green and orange it's very fragile too so uh some pretty interesting chunks in here so i haven't really found exactly what we're looking for though so we're gonna keep going maybe we'll have to get the rock hammer out and start smashing it's pretty warm out today got a lot of this vegetation here where we're walking so definitely keep an eye out for some snakes i actually like those little sneaky danger noodles but yeah you know i wouldn't mind seeing one definitely don't want to get bit by one though so definitely keeping an eye well this is proving to be a little bit more challenging than expected don't really know what i'm looking for unfortunately um and it took a little longer for us to get here so we don't have a whole lot of time i think we're probably gonna walk along the edge here and then go back across the creek and maybe look in the cobbles see what we can find in there um but what we are seeing is a lot of these little green rocks which have little crystals in them um kind of look like peridot but i'm not sure they are i don't think they are we'll see i'll show you what they look like so these are really interesting green rocks they do have some crystals in there very fragile i'm not really sure what they are little spiderweb i wonder where the spider is so i think this might be the layer we want to look in i'm not sure it's really fragile i did just find this which has some really interesting green crystals in it i might try to get some of that out take that home with me because that is pretty interesting and i like the colors you well i think i think we found some this looks kind of like that milky texture i don't know if someone else put this here or if it's been washed down it looks like there's some color in there too so it's definitely too big for me to take the whole thing might break some chunks off of there and just get some samples off that side well that's a lot harder than i expected it was going to be i got a few chips off of it it's not really that impressive that's still kind of cool might shine up well we'll take them well it's not a purple legget but it's an agate and it's really cool it has a couple different bands and layers in there some peach colors that's coming home for sure hello cow's like what are you doing on my lawn i'm waiting my dinner hello mr cow huh i found some more of that green crystal stuff i think it's olivine it's usually associated with basalt rocks and this looks like basalt and some bigger pieces there still really no sign of the purple agates definitely not want to be back here after a rain this is prime for flash flooding oh yeah we've got a little baby saguaro up there though eking out his existence no arms yet well kind of got skunked this time but it was a good scouting trip and we'll be able to come back maybe camp and have a little bit more time and i really wanted to get some purple opal today it's my birthday and i want it okay well it was my birthday yesterday when i'm recording this but not when you're watching it the sentiment stands i realize i keep saying purple opal i mean purple agate agate agate even though this was tougher than i expected get it tough we did find some pieces of agate a cool little banded one so not a completely wasted day of course it's just fun being outside anyway so i hope you guys enjoyed this if you do please like and subscribe and until next time try to learn something new every day bye

Channel: Rocks For Brains

Views: 6,866

Rating: 4.8536587 out of 5

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Id: k0MwXtpkptc

Length: 13min 58sec (838 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 17 2020