Saturday was the third UVM Pigfest party at Hero’s place in Lyndonville.
The pig roasting took longer then expected and wasn’t ready to consume until about 7pm
No matter there was plenty of other food and fun people to talk with!
There were SOOOO MAAAANNNNNYYYY people there, at least twice as big as last year and sooooo much bigger then the first year when it was just the friend groups plus some others.
There was lots of music and dancing and it was a big camp out. I slept in the RAV4 as in the morning I was driving to the…
Palermo Mine
…for my first rock collecting field trip with the Burlington Gem & Mineral Club! I woke up at 7am at a sleepy pigfest day 2 and drove in the rain for an hour and a half to the mine and encountered a closed road just before the entrance. I was wondering if the trip would go on in the rain and i seemed to be the only car there but as i turned around 2 other cars arrived and they were on the collecting trip too so i followed them to an alternate route and enede up at the mine parking spce along with several other cars. There were about 15 of us, older men, a few 20soemthings, an older couple and svereal men and women intheir 30’s. We all assembled under a tent for the orientatation and were then set loose on the grounds.
This being my first time I was not so sure what I was doing or what to look for and by talking to others it seemed the modus operendi was to just look for what catches your eye. The folk here were either jewelry makers or people who had cabinenets which they filled with different minerals along with others who just liked rocks. It was wet, drizzly and rainy as I walked over the piles of rock. The mine blasted stuff during the week and spreads it out on weekends for mineral hunting groups like ours to come pick over. I didn’t need my hammer or maul, just my eyes and my hands to pick through the rock. I filled one bucket and took it to the car and when i got back the owners were giving a tour and a talk of the mine site.
Palermo started out in the 1800’s as a site for mining mica. The geology of the mine was a magma intrusion into Devonian metamorphic sedimentary rock (ocean floor that got thrust and folded during the Avadian Orogeny) that as it cooled formed different minerals from it’s boundary with the “country rock” (as the Devonian rock is known) to a central core. It is a pretty well known site due to all the secondary minerals that formed during the cooling process and about 25-30 minerals were first discovered here. In the mining area there was a standing core and a deep flooded ring where the miners had followed the mica seam. It was all pretty interesting. I filled three buckets worth of interesting looking stones; i really liked the ones with sheets of mica protruding. I stayed until 1pm as I figured any more than 3 buckets would be more than Colleen could tolerate me bringing home.
My favorite rock that I found; lots of crystals and ica protruding!
CHICKENS!
