by kenny

I have been watching and have become a fan of a Travel Channel show called "Cash and Treasures" hosted by Kirsten Gum. One of the shows was about Star Garnets and she was digging for them only a few hours away from where we are in John Day. At the end of the show, when she had the stones cut and sold, she had made $700 for a day's worth of digging. So we decided to plan a weekend of traveling, tent camping, and digging for star garnets. Garnets are the Idaho state gem as well as January's birthstone.

Star Garnets are only found in two places. India and northern Idaho. When the stones are cut they reveal a 4 or 6 pointed star. 4 pointed stars can be found in both locations, but 6 pointed stars can only be found in northern Idaho, and are more valuable.

There is a commercial mine at the Emerald Creek Garnet area (the garnets are used commerically in jewelry, sandpaper, and other things). The area is called Emerald Creek, apparently because the prospectors that discovered the gemstones in the 1800's were blind. There are no emeralds there, only garnets.

The Forest Service has set up a digging site for the public. You pay $10 per permit (each person can take 5 pounds of garnets per permit) and you can dig all day long. It used to be that you would go in the creek bed and dig 6 to 8 feet down till you reached the rock bed, but that has been declared an environmental hazard. As a solution, the Forest Service decided to do controlled digging themselves. They dig down to the rock bed and bring the rock bed layer up and dump at the "digging" site. For your $10 you are supplied with shovels, buckets, and everything you need to get the garnets. Here's how it works. You get 2 buckets. You fill one up with dirt from the huge pile (from the rock bed layer). Next you go to the sifting area. You sift your entire of bucket of dirt through a sifting box, losing the dirt and keeping the rock, which you put in your second (empty) bucket. Lastly you take both buckets to the sluice area. You dump small batches of rock into sluice boxes. The water washes away the dirt, and you sort through all the rocks to find the garnets. They are smooth and shiny, and almost black. The garnets you keep, the rocks you put in your now empty first bucket, and add to the tailings pile which, will then be put back in the rock bed by the Forest Service.

I did most of the digging and sifting and kept Laura supplied with rocks as she did most of the sluicing. The site is open for 8 hours a day and although we had a really good time, we left after 5 hours (we should have brought up a lunch). At the end of your time there, you have to get your garnets weighed. You can take as much sugar garnet you want. They don't even weigh it (it's not valuable, but still pretty). We left with 12 ounces of star garnets--a couple hundred dollars in value once we get the stones cut. We plan to tumble the small pieces and get the good size ones professionally cut. We stayed nearby at the Emerald Creek campground. It was a great campground, and only $6 a night.



We decided to leave a day early so we could check out more of northern Idaho as I had never been in the area. We took our time driving lakeside by Lake Coeur D'Alene and then started moving up farther north. We were looking for a cheap place to stay, as we were driving a friend's car, and we just had no luck and were not willing to pay so much for just a place to rest our heads. So we ended up pulling over somewhere and sleeping in the car. I really appreciated the moho every time I woke up due to being uncomfortable.

When we woke up we realized we were now close to friends we had been missing, so we decided to stop by Joseph, Oregon. Joseph is a bit of an artist town and we couldn't spend all the time we wanted there. Think Sedona before it sold out and ditched the local artists for high priced galleries with no soul. We got to see our friend Adrian, but not Rhonda, McKenzie, or Owhyee (sorry Rhonda), at his place of employment. He works in a bank covered with dead animal heads, full bodied stuffed animals (a zebra!), and even a real mammoth tusk!

After visiting with Adrian we saw some more of the town. Laura really liked beecrowbee, a spa, and soap shop started by a young guy who grew up in the area. His stuff was top quality, and some of the best handmade soaps Laura's seen. I don't really know about that stuff, so I'll take her word for it. He seems to have carved out a great little niche for himself though, epscially in a small town in eastern Oregon.We came across another shop, To Zion, that Laura liked because of the jewelry. I liked it because of one particular book, "Moonlight Chronicles" by Dan Price. I have been a fan of his for a few years now and I was taken aback when I discovered he lives in Joseph. In an effort to live more simply he lives in a 8 foot round hole in the ground and travels by bike, tryke, or foot and journals everyday. The journals contain his thoughts, pictures he has taken, and his unique drawings. He published those journals and turned them into a business. Somewhere along the line Simple shoes discovered the journals and decided to sponsor his travels. We saw some more of the town, and Wallowa Lake, but headed home with no signs of Dan. Maybe next time.



After leaving Joseph, we came across an Airstream motor home for sale in Elgin. This is the only other Airstream motorhome we've seen and it was huge compared to our little 28 footer.

by laura beth

Each year, my mom says, "I'm going camping, and if anyone else wants to come they can." This year my older sister Melissa planned the campout. It was at Magone Lake, only about 20 or so miles from John Day. Everyone camped-Mom, Dad, Melissa, Melanie, her friend Rachelle, Hannah, her friend Alea, Olivia, Kenny, and I. Due to scheduling conflicts, Kenny and I could only spend one night (a day and a half) but it was well worth it. Beautiful, peaceful, and just nice to spend time with the family in the woods. We are thankful to the Janssens for giving us a wonderful old tent that we absolutely love.

by kenny

I was introduced to morel mushrooms while living in John Day and at the time had no idea they were a delicacy. But besides being really tasty, I learned they are a pretty big deal. A pound of morels on Ebay can easily fetch $100 dollars. There are tales, most of them tall, about people protecting their secret morel locations with gunfire. Every time we find them, we toss around the idea of selling them, but somehow they all end up in our bellies rather than packaged and sent to a corner of the earth sadly deprived of these God-designed mushrooms.

I think we went three times this year and got over 5 pounds each time. And I wish we had the time to get more. There are many others like me who have caught the mushroom fever. In Michigan and Wisconsin their are morel clubs where people gather to hunt for the mushrooms together. There are morel festivals with contests to see who can catch the most, find the largest morel, and so on. I hope as we travel we get hunt for morels in different states where they are available. This fall, shaggy manes.

by kenny

Our friend, Ben Willis, turned 25 on Tuesday and yesterday we celebrated at his house with a StreetFighter II (or any video game) theme. Ben was E. Honda. Jen was Dhalsim. Brandon was M. Bison. Jayme was Mario. Laura was the game Pong. I was Ken. Kevan was Chun Li. Brian was Vault Dweller from Fallout. StreetFighter II was played and watched (the movie). Food was eaten. Good times were had.

by laura beth

My niece, Melanie, is a 13-year-old 7th grader. Her science teacher planned a 3 day field trip, but was short one female chaperon. No chaperon, no trip. My sister Melissa (Melanie's mom) would have gone, but she had to work (she's a nurse and it was too late to change her schedule). So with the sacrifice of a long-planned girls trip out of town, I said I would do it. I couldn't stand the thought of those kids missing out on a fun field trip at the end of the school year.

The trip was to Malheur Field Station and surrounding area. Michael Cummings, a professor at Portland State University and geologist, not only spearheaded the grant that enabled the kids to go, but he came with us. He organized the whole thing. Some of the main areas of study included using a GPS device, geology, and wildlife. I got on the bus around 8:30 AM. By 9:00 I was ready to go home. We met Michael in nearby Seneca for some GPS activities. During the 45 minutes we were there, the extremely patient and mild-mannered professor threatened to send the entire busload of kids back home. Twice. So started 3 days of hell.

It wasn't the typical 13-year-old kid behavior. It was the complete and total lack of disrespect and manners, the open defiance, the flippant vulgarity. They talked over the professor, turned their backs on him while he was talking, took off without telling anyone. They broke all the rules and didn't care about consequences. There is only so much you can do as a chaperon. You can talk, guide, instruct, but when the kids are indifferent, you can't beat them. And the thing was, it was actually interesting stuff. Michael talked about water systems, volcanoes, geographical changes, plant life. We visited a wildlife refuge with hundreds of amazing bird species. We explored lava flows and caves.

The kids were concerned with their cell phone service ("I only have 2 bars!") and members of the of the opposite sex, but not much else. The girls opened the windows in the dorm bathroom so the boys could watch them shower. They complained about wanting to go home from hour one, yet they drug out every activity by not showing up on time or by goofing off way too much. I am very much into kids being kids and having a good time, but come on! I have been around kids of all ages my entire life. I've been a Young Life leader and even worked with inner-city homeless youth and predatory gang members. I have never seen such terrible creatures as these kids. I am actually afraid of the adults they will become. Utter self-centeredness and manipulation.

I held it together until I got home, and then I lost it, crying for an hour. I told my mom to pull my 11-year-old sister, who will be in the 6th grade this year, out of public school solely because of the horrific peer groups at the Jr. High. I wasn't even angry so much as sad at the idea that it will take nothing short of miracles for these kids to change their altitudes and habits in order to become anything resembling endearing adults. Take it or leave it-my advice as a non-parent: Instill in your offspring, in any way you can, the basics of decency. Or don't get pregnant. Believe me, I am far from perfect, but I find the Fruit of the Holy Spirit in the Bible, Galatians 5:22 & 23 to be a great place to start. Wikipedia actually has a good explanation here. And it wouldn't hurt to throw in some lessons on mercy, grace, and wisdom to boot.

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law."

On the bright side I love owls and other various birds, so I was super excited to see a great horned owl in the tree above me in broad daylight. We also toured a museum of dead birds and although I dislike taxidermied (is that a word) animals, It was great to see some of my favorites close up.