Fieldtrip Report:
Fieldtrip Report:
Cunningham
Mine ,
Diamond Hill Mine,
Abbeville Co., South Carolina,
March 25th-27th, 2006
Photos
by Lee Fleming, Rick Jacquot,
and Lon Bush
There is no way for me to describe just how much fun we had this past weekend. We had record attendance at the site in Due West with approximately 160 people arriving for the dig, this would prove to be to much as we found out later, I met so many new M.A.G.M.A. members I cannot connect all the names with the faces, we were joined by several other clubs and met many fine people from their groups also.
My weekend started Friday morning, Ed Lytle (eddiel from Dirtyrockhounds) was down from Erie Pennsylvania and had been collecting locally for a couple of days before our big weekend. We headed out bright and early for Due West, once we arrived I spent a couple of hours pricing many nice specimens that Amos (the owner) had dug in the past, he wanted to offer the items for sale to the visiting club members. After leaving Amos, we headed to Abbeville to check in at our motel and meet with numerous other members for the next days dig, by midnight the parking lot at the motel was full of members from our group.
Jim and Pat Rives, Pat Cummings, and Rick Jacquot, Jim and Pat are MAGMA members who drove down from Michigan to join us on the trip.
About ten of us had dinner that night at a local restaurant, the next morning we were up and headed off to the meeting location; the Dollar General store parking lot in Due West. Not long after we arrived I realized the volume of people who were attending the dig, the parking lot was soon full of vehicles to the point where there was no place for more vehicles to park. It must have been quite a scene, the Mayor of Due West was out with his camera taking pictures of the group, and thanks again to the Mayor for allowing our members to meet at the lot and allowing some of them from out of town to camp there overnight. At just a little after 8:00 a.m. Lee Fleming led a large group who had already signed in, on to the site to help clear the parking lot.
Once we arrived at the Cunningham property, I realized that we had a parking problem there also, Amos had cleared a couple of acres for parking which quickly filled up, we had cars lining both sides of the road and into the woods as far as you could see, it was "RockStock" !, we had 38 acres to work with but only some of that land was known to produce beryl and quartz specimens, the members quickly filled the trenches that followed the beryl producing pegmatite and the quartz pit was quickly covered as well.
Drew down from Virginia.
Dylan and Jolene.
Diana, Danya and Thomas Davis.
John D. and the "Magic Rake".
Tate and Gilla, also down from Va.
Working the beryl trench.
Shirley and others in the trench.
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