Mountain Trip, Part 1

Months ago, when we first started planning this trip, it began with the boys watching a show on "Gem Mining in North Carolina." With that one hour show on PBS, their facination grew, and if you asked them what we were going to do on our mountain trip, we were going to gem mine. They had no interest in the actual mountains, they might mention going inside of a cave, their their sole destination might have just as well be to gem mine all day for two days.

Much to their dismay, we held off on gem mining until the 2nd day, but I had to put their photos as the first ones on the blog, since it was certainly the highlight to them.

We first went to the Linville Gem Store and got a small bucked for mixed rocks. They were in heaven, and they found some nice gems.

Here they are with daddy.

Here is Jackson, who considers himself to be the all-knowing treasure and gem collector. I'm sure he was explaining this one to daddy, with every minute detail pointed out.

Here are a few of Ryan's favorite finds.

I love the look on Collin's face in this photo. He wasn't sure about the process, as he surely thought we were going to go into a cave with a pick and axe to carve out gems. I think he's gem mined one too many time on his Webkinz! LOL

But, he was happy when he found one.

Jackson's favorite treasure: a Crystal Quartz.

Collin shows off one of his discvories.

After our first stop, we moved on to Grandfather Mountain, but we had to make one more stop at another gem mining location on our way home. As it turns out, it wasn't anywhere near our way home, but that's another story that involved an extra 50 mines, a 1.5 hour stop to gem mine, four cups of ice cream, 30 painful minutes in the stores there, and a lot of winding roads.

Alas, we did find Gem Mountain, and we got a big bucket of mixed rocks for the boys to work their way through. Here is daddy and Ryan sorting though one of his pans full.

I took noticably less photos at Gem Mountain because, frankly, they all looked the same. LOL But, they ended up with a bag full of gems each, and they were happy.