Rockhound State Park

We drove down to Deming, New Mexico to check out Rockhound State Park. Its in the Little Florida Mountains. I included a picture of what the mountains look like. This is the park where you can rockhound and dig for geodes -- thunder eggs -- rocks with crystal formations inside that you see when you crack them open. This is where the woman from the Travel Channel's "Cash and Treasure" show dug out some geodes. I remember seeing her with a pick axe digging them out.

I checked the web for info on the park and it said to bring a shovel, pickaxe and hammer. We stopped at the hardware store and picked up our "rockhounding" equipment and went to the park. What we weren't prepared for was the climbing involved. We climbed all over like a couple of mountain goats--me digging with the shovel and Jim swinging the pickaxe. At one point we looked down and Jim comments that he doesn't even like to fly this high. All that work and all we found was some pretty jasper but no geodes. There is also all kinds of quartz and semi-precious stones like opal that you can find here. I am showing a picture of carnelian -- its a kind of quartz that we've been finding closer to home but you can find it at this park too. You can take 15lbs of rock from the park. We saw one couple with two grocery bags full.

One scary note -- I read the notice in the bathroom after we scrambled all over the park that there might be Hanta Virus in the area. The rodents may be infected --- its the nice way to say Bubonic Plaque.

We finally had some pictures taken of us and our rig. I hope to have some of the inside to share. We love our "house". I love the fact that it doesn't take very long to clean from top to bottom.