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Midnight Owl Field Trip
By Ray Grant
Foundation members Dick and Mardy Zimmerman are the claim holders on the Midnight Owl mine, and they have invited all Foundation members to have a field trip to their mine.
Date: Saturday March 15, 2003 (The trip will be cancelled if it is raining.)
Time: meet at 9 AM
Place: The intersection of Castle Hot Springs Road and Trilby Wash. To get there, take Highway 74 (Carefree Highway, the road past Lake Pleasant) to Castle Hot Springs Road. This intersection is just east of Morristown. Go about 7 miles north on Castle Hot Springs Road to Trilby Wash. (Trilby Wash is marked with a sign, and there is a ranch house close to the road on the other side of the wash). There is lots of parking space there, and we will leave two wheel drive vehicles behind and car pool as the road to the mine requires four wheel drive.
Minerals: Over 80 different minerals are reported from the Midnight Owl. There are many of the normal lithium pegmatite minerals such as apatite, montebrasite, spodumene, beryl, lepidolite, muscovite, schorl, lithiophyllite, and triphylite. These primary minerals have been altered to form a series of secondary minerals. The most interesting of these minerals is the eucryptite which fluoresces with a magenta color. Several rare minerals such as robertsite, strengite, sicklerite, purpurite, and jahnite are also found there.
A hand out about the geology and minerals will be available at the field trip.
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Blanchard Mine Field Trip
by Ray Grant
The members of the Foundation have been invited by Ray DeMark to visit the Blanchard mine in Bingham, New Mexico on Saturday May 10, 2003.
We will meet at the Rock Shop in Bingham at 9 AM on May 10th. Bingham has a couple of houses and a Rock Shop and I recommend that we spend the night in Socorro. Socorro is about 400 miles from Phoenix if you go by Payson, Show Low, and Route 60. Socorro is 500 miles if you go by Interstate 10, Tucson, and Interstate 25, and both routes take about the same length of time to travel there from Phoenix.
Socorro has a fairly new Motel 6 at the south end of town and the cost in the winter Motel 6 book is $35.99 for Friday and Saturday night plus $6 for a second adult. Call the national number 1-800-466-8356 or the motel directly at 505-835-4300 for reservations. From Socorro to Bingham is about 38 miles. Go south on I 25 about 9 miles and then west on US 380 to Bingham.
Bring collecting tools, hard hat, and a light if you want to collect underground. Wear good shoes and long pants. There is a small fee to be paid to the rock shop for them to help keep trespassers from the locality. Ray DeMark does not get any money. He is very generously donating his time to us. The foundation will pay the fee for members.
Minerals found there include anglesite, barite, brochantite, cerussite, fluorite, galena, gypsum, linarite, and many others. See a few pictures from the Blanchard mine by Harvey Jong in this newsletter. Ray DeMark will be giving a talk about the Blanchard mine at the symposium on March 29th so plan to attend and learn more about this mine.
Please contact Ray Grant at 480-814-9086 or at raycyn@cox.net if you have questions. Also, please let Ray know by the beginning of May if you plan to attend so we can get a count of members going. We can also try to set up some car pooling if members are interested.
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