DMC/FIELD TRIP COMMITTEE
FIELD TRIP FOR DECEMBER 2002 
[Pictures from this field trip!]

Fee: There will be a small fee to offset the cost of this event. The fee will include free primitive camping Friday and Saturday nights, rock-swap, tailgating and a Bar-B-Q dinner Saturday. Children under 13 are free.  A supplier for the port-o-pottys will have to be found before the actual fee can be fixed, but it will be for the whole weekend and will be less than the normal daily charge of $10 for this event.

Announcing the Grand Re-Opening of the Diamond Hill Mine Thanksgiving Day Weekend! Plan to spend Thanksgiving Day with your family and then come on out Friday for three days of digging, rock-swapping and comradery. Jack and Ruth Browning will be joining us Saturday afternoon for Bar-B-Q and will be
helping point folks in the direction of some of the more productive digging areas. Jim Haege, field trip leader and new owner of the Diamond Hill Mine, will be doing the cooking Saturday. Please bring your own beverages for dinner.  Alcoholic beverages are discouraged but if you behave and partake
discretely from paper or plastic cups, we will not be inspecting their contents. 

The Diamond Hill Mine has been producing skeletal, amethyst and smoky quartz crystals as well as quartz scepters and an assortment of pegmatite minerals for many years. You will need to bring a pick and shovel as well as hard rock tools and safety glasses. Be sure and bring plenty of newspaper to wrap your finds in. A lot of the quartz has iron-staining on it. There will be oxalic acid on hand for sale along with directions for those who wish to remove the stain, but frequently the stains vary in color
from face to face on the crystals and make for very attractive specimens AS LONG AS YOU DON"T DING THEM UP! (See newspaper note above) If you knock the tip off a crystal it will show bright white and stick out like a sore thumb. Yup, I learned the hard way. 

Special Considerations: It is the intention of the new owner to carry on the Browning's tradition of having a nice, quiet place in the woods where everyone has a chance to dig fine quartz crystals. The fee will not change, nor the availability of the mine. However, everyone visiting the property will be required to obtain a signed liability release before digging. This release also includes some hazard training as now required by the nice folks at MSHA, should they ever come by and decide that we are "mining".

Y'all Come!

Jim Haege