Rockhounding in Western NC

[Music] so i thought i would actually touch on um a little bit about what's in the creek geology-wise what's here and what am i looking for what is beneficial to me so as a kid i was like it's all beneficial i like it all i want to keep it off it's pretty i i want it to be mine i want to take it home and that's great because i love all rocks but um not all rocks are going to be useful to me and what i'm doing there's going to be some that are more useful than others this is a really interesting rock um and it's really big it's bigger than the hood of my car for sure and it's pretty deep it goes down in their ways this is a rock that's been there probably my whole entire life i don't think it's ever moved um i used to get out get out on it in suntan or sometimes i'll bring lunch down here and i'll sit on that rock i won't do it so much in the summer because i feel like i have to compete for snakes so i am very careful as far as rocks go there's two types of rock main main rock groups that i'm finding in this creek and hear me out here i don't have a degree in geology i'm just a hobbyist really when it comes to knowledge about minerals but you find metamorphic rock so we're thinking quartz feldspar rock that has been metamorphosized into something else other than his previous state or you find rock that is definitely not sedimentary rock because we don't have a lot of sedimentary rock here really none at all so it's some kind of metamorphosized or partially metamorphosized rock but it's not a silica it's not the same kind of silicated base you don't you're not looking at a real pretty quartz like a concoidal fracture that kind of thing you're looking at more of like a shell material and it could be shell um i'm just not really sure but i know it's very soft i know that it's kind of powdered like when it's crushed there's really no cleavage it's really a um a hackly fracture it just kind of has a really rough fracture and there's not a whole lot you can do with it um it will not stand a cut or a polish you could make paint out of it you would make wonderful paint um and that for natural pigment paint but so that's not really what i'm looking for however sometimes i do look for those and if you can find some that are flat on the top you can set them upside down and i have done that before i'll put a picture so usually what i'm looking for is something really solid that i could cut and turn into a cabochon and then put in a piece of jewelry or sell in a piece of jewelry so we could just jump down into the creek here and why don't we just take a look and i'll show you some examples so you should be able to hear me over the creek i actually had an airplane going over so we'll see but anyway so like this this is um a more solid piece this is a piece of quartz um or quartz lock material but you can kind of see it's got those fractures running all through this so you might get something out of this but you might just be better off to throw it back um and then this is more of the um kind of shell-like material that i'm talking about it's really cool but um just doesn't really take a cut or a polish now something like this this is really fun you've got some really nice kind of strata in there some really nice lines but again you're not going to get to keep that if you cut this you can't really cut it and if you tumble it you're not going to tumble it for long and it would absolutely disintegrate um this rock here if i can get to it this is usually more of what i'm looking for so this is we get out here in the light this is um you can kind of see veins of quartz coming through this rock these veins are what's solid the best look i've had with solid material has been within these veins so that is what i like to look for i when i was a kid i would collect them and quartz veins running through this base material and this really is my best bet as far as getting a solid material that's not to say you can't get it from other stuff because you can it just seems to be that's the best look that i've had so i usually just go up through here looking and seeing what i can find i didn't bring my boots with me today so i'm not going to go too far because the water is still really cold which doesn't usually deter me but if i take my shoes off and get my feet wet then i'll have to walk home with no shoes so which honestly that doesn't really deter me either so if i want it bad enough i'll i'll just probably take my shoes off and get it um this is a pretty little rock here there's no guarantee with this either i mean you just kind of have to cut and see what you can find but there's lots of yeah this material cuts a little softer than quartz that seems to so it may be that it has more calcite in it um and it's funny but i kind of have recognized learned to recognize the types of rock that are found in this creek so i've kind of gotten kind of gotten to be a pro at that and you know besides actually getting rocks out of here to cut it's just a beautiful beautiful creek such a pretty place such a pretty day and i just really enjoy getting to come down here and be here um and every now and then you lift up a rock and sometimes you'll i don't know if you can see him there he is you find a little salamander you know this is what we did as kids we would have a contest who could find the most salamanders and we'd get probably 20 of them and then we would just let them loose you know we didn't do anything with them but just a pretty place and a great time so i usually will just come down here sometimes i'll spend a whole day sometimes i'll just spend an hour and collect material that seems to be promising and then i will just kind of cut it and see see if there's anything worthwhile as far as specific places in the creek certain geographical features that i'm looking for or as far as time of day or time of year the best time is when it's warm in the spring in the early fall times like that you can come and look and you're going to have more enjoyment because you're not cold or maybe you want to go when it's hot because you want to cool off and when it's hot outside i'm always in sandals and the water is cold but it feels good and as far as geographical locations i'm looking for along the creek sometimes i like to look along the flattest places so the flattest plane that i can find is where i will look um because typically not only is that the easiest place to look if i got a bug on me or something but um almost flat planes like that nature kind of does the work for you as water rolls and tumbles it spreads there's kind of a spreading action and and that just seems to be where i have the most luck um especially after it rains real big i'll come down here and it kind of washes stuff up new stuff that i've maybe not seen but that's another kind of natural spreading event for me and it just brings stuff to the surface sometimes it's good to look around a waterfall if you don't mind to go waiting or you don't mind to get in and down below that waterfall there's a lot of downward pressure from that water and stuff can get trapped under there and hang out for quite some time because of the way the water is flowing there there's not a whole lot of movement other than that downward motion of that waterfall from directly above so honestly it's just kind of like a treasure trove and i'm always looking and i'm always seeking new material and new things so you kind of just end up looking a little bit everywhere but and then i kind of have a mom like in my mind i'm like well i've been hitting this spot a lot and i'm never not really finding a lot there i'm not to say that you won't ever find something there but i would start with if i was going to look in some of these mountain creeks mountain streams rivers i would start with flat plains a good flat place where some natural spreading action is happening making the work easy for you if i getting in i would look under the waterfalls i would go after a big rain wait till the water's safe to get in you know another thing metal detecting i get asked a lot but what about metal detecting so we have a metal detector and i have metal detected before metal detected and a lot of what we find here in the creek and on our property is shells casings empty brass casings but you find a lot of just old scrap pieces of iron because in the creek and following the creek there was a lot of roads logging roads old home places my great great grandpa lived up here so you just find scrap car parts just kind of pieces and bits you never know i mean you may you could find totally fine more than that you might find some old plow points um one time i found a double bedded axe that was really cool that was probably my great grandpa's we found it at his house site um so it really just depends on where you're looking but you're never out anything even if you don't find the treasure or the rock or what you're looking for if you get outside you're not out anything folks so it's probably really loud on the camera but this is one of my favorite spots it is probably approximately i don't know like 50 feet from my house and i can hear it really well for my house and i go here a lot not necessarily to look in the nooks and crannies of the waterfall which would be fun i just go here to set to listen in the summer when it gets really hot i usually go for a swim um there's not very many deep places in this creek deep enough to swim in but usually under your waterfalls here that's your best bet i will say as far as metal detecting goes the best place that you can do that is go where you think people might have been go on a road go next to an old home place think about where you would travel and what you would do if you were there now and the metal detecting for us is more about finding pieces of my family where my family live just more about that there's not a whole lot of money to be had and metal detecting up this creek there's not really any gold deposits here i wouldn't think of finding any rare coins or anything like that but i'm finding pieces of my family stories that these pieces can tell me about what my family did um one time i found my great i guess it'd be my great great uncle frank's hood ornament in the creek i noticed it was a lip an edge of some metal hanging up and i could see it and i thought man i don't know what that is but i want it so i got in and i started digging and i pulled it out and immediately i thought that's got to be a hood ornament because it had a real scoop to it like a concave and i thought that's going to sit on the hood of a car so i looked at it and i actually found serial numbers on some paint just flaking off and i thought oh my gosh so i took it to my grandpa he was still alive at the time and i said this is a hood ornament is it not what does it fit and he said well that's a pontiac and the only person that owned a pontiac that lived up that creek was frank so that has to be his nobody else owned one frank this man i've heard all about and never met yet oh golly 70 80 years later i found the hood ornament to his car that he drove up here something he looked over every day when he drove and never thought anything about another thing that i get asked about a lot is tools do you have any tools that you use that you take with you to digs and the answer is yes and no um sometimes i'll take a shovel a small shovel it has a pick on the other end and if there's something really stuck in there that i want i'll flip that shovel up and use the pick it's actually an old military issue um army shovel it's like a little short knee high shovel works great it's dug a lot of rocks out for me um it's even hunter green so if you lose it in the woods don't you won't find it um and then you could totally get your metal detector out and look for it since you lost it but anyway we don't live anywhere where we would be doing some serious extraction work as far as extracting small pieces from bedrock so i don't have a pry bar or anything like that a lot of times i just use my hands i don't i'm not you know i have like no fingernails i usually just go with a bucket and i go on a day where i feel like carrying a bucket or i go with someone who will carry the bucket but as far as this area goes i'm not picking anything out of any base rock nothing too extensive so your hands are just fine for surface collecting if you want to go deeper than surface collecting you're going to need a shovel you're going to need a pick you're going to need the works i'm just doing surface stuff now there are some spots over the years that i've picked out that i think to myself i think there's a potentially an outcrop mirror maybe there's an outcrop under here and i could use that as a indicator to locate more material if i wanted and i could probably dig some more through there and and really maybe find something underneath if you look close you can see footprints this is me i've been here at some point um this is one of those flatter areas that i'm talking about so it's good and flat and we kind of have a natural sandbar here where the water has pushed and displaced the rock on the edge of the bank here and then this is just a flat spot to kind of take observation from before i go out there and look and it's nice and you know it's nice and sunny and i see a little critter here he's hiding from me do you see him there he went yeah really is more about the experience for me this day and age honestly and then we have a rock here that's kind of trapped under this tree root now this is a bigger rock and it probably is bigger than what i have the capability of cutting right now i don't actually have a slab saw i just have pretty much a glorified trim saw but you'd be surprised with that thing will cut this could be potentially promising sometimes i like to pick up rocks and look under them you know other promising material could be hiding under there this is a really pretty view because the sun is shining on this water and you can see straight to the bottom um below this waterfall here usually what would collect in a spot like this would be what we call stick bait it's little worms little critters that wiggle their way in between like sticks and branches and seal themselves in and make a little home and they're great to fish with i actually saw a piece floating down there so this was actually the stick bait that i was talking about you can see a little hidey hole there what we would call it and our little buddy is in there it's kind of heavy so he's probably home yeah i can see here's another little piece so this is stick bait it would be really good to fish with if you are looking to explore your local creek or local river maybe this would be um of help to you or maybe you just enjoyed the ride because this place is absolutely beautiful i mean look at it it doesn't even look real and sometimes i ask myself what did i do to deserve to you know how do i deserve to even live at this place and be a caretaker and enjoy it and it's beside me i don't know but i love it it's beautiful um i'm a very spiritual person so this is where i go to kind of pray to kind of talk to god to just enjoy god's creation anyway i hope any of this information was helpful and i'll catch you on the next one

Channel: thepressleygirls

Views: 12,258

Keywords: Geology WNC, Rockhounding in WNC, Rocks in WNC, Rocks in NC, Rocks in North Carolina, North Carolina Geology, The Pressley Girls, Quartz in NC

Id: cBqXQKcoNdU

Length: 17min 25sec (1045 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 16 2021