What is it?

When a rock hound dies, what does he leave behind? A lot of rocks. A lot of big rocks and a lot of little rocks.
Fortunately or unfortunately my misguided brother sold out from under us a huge specimen collection of rocks. He told me later as a wise guy about it. He actually did me a favor as I would be trying to get rid of some of them right now. The good thing that he did, besides lining his own pockets and sharing a little of it with my mom, was to sell it to a man who was the husband of my first cousin. So it went to a rock fanatic guy, equipment and all. The bad thing was I would have taken a few pieces from that large amount, just for memory's sake.

This is agatized wood. It is in agate form which is much harder than petrified wood. My dad had a rock hound friend and he and his wife and my parents would travel all over the west picking this stuff up. NO it didn't come from a National Park. Mr. White was his name and he would read about places in Wyoming out in the desert where you could dig for it.
I went once with them to find fossils in rocks and a blue agatized wood rock. It was buried about six inches below the surface of the desert sand, laying in rows like fallen trees. I have one piece of that which I can share another day. It is one tenth the size of this big thing.

A standing tree, right?

This piece was out on the back sun patio area and it was so dirty and gray that I thought I had petrified wood. When I dipped it into a bucket of water, I was so pleasantly surprised. I am glad it wasn't out in the garage when the mother lode was sold.
I keep saying I am done bringing things home, but this was a beauty. There is a homemade glass shelving unit that displayed all of his finished, polished rocks that is still down there. I just don't know where that is going to go in this house.

A late night of blogging for me for Friday so I had better shut this down. I hope the weekend is going to be a good one for everyone. I am thinking about a friend John today and hope things go well. Thanks for stopping by..........