Oregon Trip, Page 3

Here are a couple more pictures of the same pile of mine run.  They said all these stones were taken in operations within the last week.  You can see by the paper plate how large the stones average.  Sadly, my little digital camera doesn't do these beautiful stones full justice!

Here are a few pictures of the Dust Devil Mine pit.  You will notice in the first picture a Grizzley in the background on the right.  Moving left in the background you will see a hopper with a conveyor belt leading to a trammel and another set of belts from the trammel to various piles.  The crew at the Dust Devil sort out the sunstone on the belt leading directly towards you in the picture.  Also note in one of the pictures the track-hoe that they use to dig up the basalt containing the sunstone.  They also have a D-9 Cat with a single tooth ripper to loosen up the caprock basalt covering the sunstone bearing basalt.

The majority of my time digging was spent in the piles of dirt at the rear of the track-hoe.  They dig up and pile the dirt for customers to search thru, then they take the remaining piles and run them thru their grizzley in case there are gems that were missed by the customers.   (Continued on page 4)

Oregon Trip, Page 4