East Coast Gem, Mineral and Fossil Show 2012

Adam likes rocks.  And geodes. And stuff like that. And I like Adam.  So I agreed to go to the East Coast Gem, Mineral and Fossil Show this past Sunday.

Honestly, I was expecting to be super bored.  I find rocks interesting to look at for approximately 30 seconds.  But Adam has been a good sport through enough of my planned outings that I figured I could power through this one. And you know what? It was actually kinda neat.

Our first stop was at the mining station where you could sift through a bag of prepackaged dirt for treasures.  We were kind of more excited about it than the kids that were standing next to us.

Top left is native gold and the rest are like…rocks and stuff. I don’t know the names of anything.  Adam ended up getting a small version of one of those trees in the bottom right, it’s really pretty.

SPARKLY! Again, I have no idea what this actually is.  This blog is really educational and informative.

I remember what this is (aquamarine) because of its price ($96,000).

This contraption is how they cut geodes.

This was a fairly obvious choice for my souvenir – a panda carved from obsidian.

I guess I expected a bunch of rocks and geodes that you’d see at a gift shop at the beach, but it was much more than that.  There was a lot of artistry involved and a lot of really interesting jewelry.  I’d even venture to say that I’d go again next year!