Every restaurant, park, tourist attraction, store, and any other place people walk into has a 'rack'. In the rack are all the places you can spend money, look at, ride on, canoe down, hike over, eat at, attend, or stay. Examples are: the mall outlets at Conway, Franconia Notch State Park, Six Gun City, Whale Tail Water Park, The Cheese Store, The Saco River, and "Bob and Betty's B & B". (Those poor souls who thought it would be 'fun' to own a B & B. Can you imagine anything worse than having to clean up after and put up with whining people on vacation? I always imagine that Bob and Betty tipple quite a bit in the evening.) Anyway, back to the 'rack'. It's filled with brochures and pamphlets as well as glossy magazines and newspapers. Well, a few days ago, I spotted a brochure entitled "Ruggles Mine - Pick up and KEEP any rocks you find!"
Everyone knows I like rocks. I take a lot of behind my back snickering because of this hobby. How many people have been to my house and seen the pile of rocks on the teak board next to the fireplace? Only about 500 of you. And at least 50 of you have dabbled with rearranging those rocks into patterns or sculptures. If there's one thing I learned yesterday at the obsessive collection known as the Fairbanks Museum, it's that collections need additions. I always pick up rocks wherever we go, and you know, that makes Drake so very, very HAPPY. He just loves lugging them around. Can you believe he actually rolls his eyes when he sees another rock in my hand?
When I saw there was a place where you could actually go pick up interesting rocks and keep them, I just had to go. I didn't expect we would have to drive 150 miles (as least that was round trip), or that the last 5 miles would be straight up a mountain at 15 mph (at least it was a short mountain), or that it would cost a lot of money for both of us to get into the mine to get the rocks (at least they were free), or that I would fall off a rock while trying to sit down on it and scrape my hand so it was bleeding for the last 15 minutes of the rock collection time.
It was just WONDERFUL. When we arrived and started walking into the mine, the ground was glittering. It was so bright when you looked down, you needed sunglasses. The reason for all this shining is this was primarily a mica mine. The deposits were discovered by the farmer whose land it was on in 1803. He started mining it secretly, consigning it to English agents and sending it to England to sell. He kept the mine a secret for several years because he didn't want to have to fight off his neighbors. Apparently in the 19th century mica was a prized mineral - it was used in whale oil lamps and stove windows. In addition to mica, there is beryl, quartz, and a bunch of other minerals including garnets and tourmaline. The mine was in continuous operation from 1803 until 1959.
Now it's this terrific attraction. You can even get mineral hammers and bang around on the walls and on any rock lying around. You get to keep anything you find. I was very modest. I only brought out about 25 very small rocks. According to Drake, I brought out 25 huge boulders. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG - he's just exaggerating.
I guess some people would have found me funny walking around with my nose to the ground and butt in the air, but how else are you going to spot the good ones? I really did fall off a rock when I tried to sit on it next to a little stream. It was a really small rock - only about 10 inches high, and I just missed it when I tried to sit down on it. Of course, I managed to fall into one of the few wet and muddy spots in the whole mine. My hand only bled a little bit for the last part of my collection time, and at least I only got my shorts dirty and didn't tear them. This is a real happy outcome - since I'm usually really clutzy and wind up with small disasters worse than this one routinely happening to me. Even this little hiccup couldn't dim my happiness during this outing.
This was so much fun. You couldn't believe how many interesting rocks there were. So many of them have been compressed together into interesting forms - mica sprouting out of white quartz, or two toned quartz, and slabs of shiny mica - pure and mixed together with other stones everywhere. The gift shop was fun too. I got a new necklace - a piece of rose quartz polished, cut and faceted. This came out of the mine. Isn't that great! To top it off, the weather was perfect - warm and sunny without being hot.
Drake's perspective is somewhat different: $100 to get in. 150 miles of driving. $40 worth of gas. $15 for another piece of jewelry. An afternoon sitting around looking at my butt as I picked up rocks. He calculates that my free rocks only cost $8.20 each. My answer: What a bargain. I got a refreshed collection, and everyone knows that's PRICELESS.
Look at the pix and see if you agree: https://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/2011NewHampshireTour4RugglesMine?authkey=Gv1sRgCOjz95KBxavKqAE#
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