Datolite and other Michigan Gems of October

It was the last week of October. I decided to go up north to the copper country. Once again I marked out a spot on the map to go looking for more crystals and stopped at some old iron mines in Marquette County. In my amazement I found the nicest gold goethite crystals growing on a cluster of half inch clear smoky quartz crystals. I didn't think that such finds were capable of being found up in theses ranges. "Holly Smithsonian", I said. This is one of the most beautiful groups of crystals I've seen from these ranges.

On this day in the iron ranges there was about 3 to 6 inches of melting snow. It was a beautiful day, a mixture of fall colors, and the deer still in rut (I saw a six point buck chasing a doe in the middle of the day.) For these conditions it was a wonderful even though the temperature was around 35 degrees outside.

I found this gem of a mineral specimen on the side of a 5 foot boulder with a plate of half inch smoky quartz crystals. The plate was about 2 foot by 2 foot and if you know anything about popping a large plate of crystals off a 5 foot granite boulder it is virtually impossible, so I was able to knock off a couple of pieces and one of those pieces was a trophy. With any luck I would be able to save this specimen to take picture for people to see what’s in these old iron mines.

At night I arrived at the Delaware mine for some rest, in the morning I would set out to take some pictures and try to find some datolite. There was not as much snow on the ground as there was in the iron mines but I still had to wait for some snow to melt to dig in my datolite holes. So I looked for greenstones and found some very large ones.

Finally the snow melted in the crushed basalt holes and I found some datolite but not your ordinary colors. One looked like cotton candy and I found my first yellow datolite from the Delaware mine (after 30 years of searching) I thought I would never find this color there.

After searching the Delaware mine I went to the Connecticut mine (this is next to the Delaware mine) where I found some white datolite next to a small boulder. I broke up the small boulder and found some more pieces and some were about 2 inches across in size. After finding some more small balls of very small datolite and the Connecticut is full of very small datolite balls, I took some more pictures of the mines with their snow and fall colors.