So after watching a Travel channel show called Finding Cash & Treasures all winter my friend Klari (She's a Shiny Rock girl) & I decided we absolutely *Had* to take a trip out to eastern Oregon looking for Sunstone & Opals. After school let out for the summer I had all the time in the world, but she has a Real Job thus had to take time off.

We finally figured out the dates we could go & one thursday nite she drove down from Portland. By the time she got here it was almost 9 pm.. The plan was to drive until we got tired then get a hotel & we took off toward Medford. We made Medford in about 4 hours.. I wasn't tired so we decided to head for Klamath Falls.
We headed out of town on the 62 and apparently I wasn't watching very well or something as we missed the right turn onto the 140. Instead & unknowingly we were headed toward Union Creek & Crater lake National Park. Didn't really realize the mistake until we reached Union Creek... Meanwhile I had neglected to gas up in Medford and the gauge was sneaking toward 1/4th of a tank. Sigh. So now it's about 2am.. We're on a little tiny 2 lane road and we're climbing... Climbing... We climbed s'more. I kept looking at the size of the road markers- They were about 8' tall. Reminded me of the back roads around Tahoe. FINALLY we reached the top & were headed toward Fort Klamath where we prayed there was gas.. We figured no place would be open as by then it was about 3 Am.. We decided if we found a gas station we would just sleep there in the parking lot until the place opened. Passed through Fort Klamath.. No gas. Since we'd been going down hill & I was going easy on the pedal we weren't in too dire of straights, but we hoped for a station in Algoma. Nothing, so we headed for K Falls. NOt much choice.. And not much gas either. Finally came up on a place outside of K Falls- I don't remember the price of gas, but I gave the pump-monkey a $20 figuring that would get us by until we could find some cheaper stuff. Surprisingly I still felt fairly awake as we rolled into town to look for a hotel.

I'll be damned if every place we checked was full. Have to admit I felt a little foolish at the prospect of paying for a room just to get a few hours sleep.. But at that point I really didn't care. Couldsn't find any vacancy however.. So we headed off toward Lakeview, figuring maybe we could find someplace to sleep on the way out of town, or in one of the little bergs along the way.
Well we ended up making it to Bly where we passed a rest area on the way into town. Hit the gas station.. Which was being built or something. All they had was pumps & the register. Nothing else. I was hoping for some coffee at least.. No such luck. No hotels either. By that time it was about 7 Am & we decided to go back to the rest area. I came up with the idea of extending the lift, throwing the "bed" on the floor & simply sleeping there rather than try to reconfigure everything so we could use the back seat (it folds down) as the bed, so that's what we did.
Happened to find out at that rest area that Bly, Oregon was the site of the only conus fatalities of WW2 when a Japanese baloon bomb landed, several folks went to check it out & it ticked off.

We woke about 10.. And continued the journey toward Lakeview. Took the left up 395, then turned off onto the 140 again headed toward Plush. Definately in the high desert after that little group of houses at an intersection.. Shortly we found the dirt road leading us into the sunstone mines. We had gone about 10 miles & juuuuust gotten to the right turn when several mobile mansions passed us in the other direction- And not 5 minutes later I heard the tell-tale Pshiew-pshiew-pshiew of a tire going flat. Damn. So I found a good spot right there at the T & the guy in a wheelchair & the asmatic city-girl proceeded to change the tire. Took us about 1/2 an hour.. During which time 2 vehicles passed us. I kindof hoped they'd stop as it was rather obvious what we were doing, but I suppose we must have looked like we'd done it 100's of times before & had things well in hand (or something) because they didn't. As we were about 5 minutes from Done a rancher towing a a huge stock trailer passed on the road into town. We were all in & almost ready to go when he arrived beside us- Apparently he'd taken the time to turn around somewhere & come back to help. We thanked him profusely.. But no longer needed any assistance.
Not knowing how far to the mines it was & with one wounded soldier.. We decided to head back to Lakeview to the local Les Schwab. The guys there hooked us up- Repairing the flat & balancing the spare.. It had a harmonic in it I'd found. Being that it was now about 2 in the afternoon we decided to give the sunstones the shine & head for the opals. So back out the 140 we went, this time heading for Denio Junction & the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge.

We rolled into the parking lot of the Royal Peacock Opal Mine at about 6pm & were met by a fairly well dressed lady walking out of the ranch house there. "Can I help you?" She asked. We told her of our wish to dig opals in the morning & she directed us to the 'tent camping' zone on the other side of the trees where there was an old wooden spool & a battered fire pit for our use. $5 gathered us the privelidge for the nite.

The accomidations were actually very good, for the middle of nowhere. A flush toilet & shower were provided for the use of all- Plus even washing machines. I don't know if the machine was coin-op but the bathroom / shower wasn't. I never saw much of a line- But I didn't watch very closely either. As we sat there that evening looking around hopes were high.. Many Mobile Mansions were in the campground- We figured of folks with (obviously) that much money were here then the digging must be good.. I mean jeez, $145 & you get to keep anything / all you've found? What a Deal!

We missed the Grand Rush up to the mine at 8.30 the next morning, making it into the store at about 8.45. It's a small place, not really much bigger than my living room & for the shining example of what can be found at an opal mine... There really wasn't much. I think there were 5 or so wrist thick by 6" to a foot long examples of black opal "logs".. A couple hundred arrow heads on the wall, and various "globes" (stubby test-tubes) containing opal in water. There were some 50ml test tubes of opal for... $40 I think, and 2 500ml (I believe, but don't quote me, they could have been 250's) tubes full of opal chunks for $200 each.

There were 2 very well dressed ladies in there- Hair all done up, jewlerey all over.. Make-up on.. It was almost as if they expected a film crew to pop through the door (again) at any moment. I almost felt like I was in the mall rather than in some little building 20 miles from the nearest paved road. Had the rest of the patrons been better dressed & not so grubby the "are we in the mall?" feeling would have been complete.

We filled out our paperwork, handed over our $145 each & proceded up to the mine which was prolly 3 miles distant from the camp. I s'pose it was that far to dissuade folks from "getting lost" in the middle of the night & "falling into a hole" where they hoped to find some opal for free. Hey it's what I would have done.

We finally got to the dig site where the mine helper guy asked for our receipts- Don't loose that thing or no digging for you. He directed us toward the top of the cut where "the digging was easier" (as opposed to trying to beat your way through cinder-blocks I suppose) where we parked & set about staking out our zone. With High Hopes we "claimed" about 20' of wall- Leaving some tools at either end. Mine Guy came buy a few minutes later to educate us in what to look for & where to dig- Anything that looks like glass, he said from about here (draws an imaginary line along the wall avout 3' up from the base) on down. Which left about 4' of chaff on top. Now there's no undermining, so if we got too far into the wall we were to go up on top with the bar & break off the extra. Ya right, I thought seeing as I could barely get around in the chair anyway. But I figured I'd deal with that when I came to it.

Now supposedly this area was a forest waaaay back in the day that was covered by an ash fall. Well, volcanic ash can get pretty goddamn hard when it's been under pressure for X million years... I could swing my rock hammer at it with everything I had & only make a dent about 2cm deep while causing little shards of rock-like ash to fly at my face. So I took my screwdriver(s) & started working at the cracks to open them up. Chipping.. Digging.. Trying to remove the face while at the same time being afraid of breaking something that might be a millimeter under the surface.. And trying to be sure I didn't bring a Huge piece of that wall down on myself. Rather tedious. Took me about an hour before I found my first thumbnail sized piece of a glassy something sticking out of the wall.. In a part I hadn't even been working.
I kept looking at the wall & it looked like I hadn't gotten anywhere.. Then I looked at the pile of rubble covering my feet.. It had to come from somewhere so I had to be doing something. I kept finding 'likelies' which I'd put into my bucket to examine later- I figured I had limited tome at the wall so I'd dig now & examine later. Only found 3 little teeny 'glasslike' things tho. I did find a big 'ol (comparitively) piece of white opal- WHich I don't have a pic of as I had it on my dashboard on the way home.. Then gave it to a girl before it found it's way before the camera. Not sure how good it was, as I couldn't see a whole lot of fire in it.. But sure got a smile from that girl, so it was all worth it.

Mine Guy kept mentioning everyone seemed to think he knew where to find the opal.. I almost said "Well, you work here. We don't have a clue. Hell I'm not even sure what it is exactly that I'm looking for! Sure black opal is obvious, but this wall is pretty damn big!" I was hoping for at least some sort of a clue- Different color or texture or height or Something to look out for. You know, if you see the wall turn a _____ color, you're close to the right spot. To this day I still don't know if there's anything to look for or if it's just total dumb luck.

So we dug & dug & dug s'more, neither iof us finding much of anything. Finally decided to get some water & lunch.. It was then I discovered I'd brought the pastrami for sandwiches.. But the bread was in camp, the cheese was MIA & I *thought* the tomatoes were around somewhere. Found the bag of apples.. No tomatoes. So we had pastrami sandwiches without the bread.

After lunch we went back to it.. There were prolly 20 folks there digging & all day I heard nary a "WOO HOO" or anything denoting Something Big had been found. I remembered the night before when someone had walked by & out of his pocket pulled a small vial with perhaps 5 or 6 fingernail sized chunks of black opal.. "That's what you're lookin' for" he stated with a grin. "I'm leavin' tomorrow!" and he walked off. I remembered thinking I'd hoped that was what he found in a day, or that those were just the little pieces.. But after most of a day of digging with nothing to show for it.. I was beginning to wonder how long exactly it took him to fill that vial. If his digging efforts were as fruitful as ours.. No wonder he was leaving.

I felt like a prisoner in Fort Levenworth as I beat the wall.. Potentially finding an opal as an accidental side effect. Then I remembered.. I'd given $145 for the privelidge. In the afternoon the wind started to come up. Being that we were in pretty much am open pit with gravel & sand everywhere.. We were in the middle of a sand-storm. As i sat there it was if someone was at the top of the wall above me with a gigantic flour sifter full of sand- Gleefully sifting it down on me. Lots of fun. Then as if that wasn't enough the wind would gust to prolly 30 or 40 MPH, picking up half-pinkienail sized rocks as it went & throwing them at me. Now they weren't *Incredibly* painful, but.. Painful enough. It was if a bunch of kids were over the rise with their bb-guns and I was juuuust out of range. Had that pain been caused by an actual person, I would have been over there beating some ass, wheelchair or not. But.. All I could really do was turn my head & close my eyes taking the beating till the gust was over. Then it was back to the wall.. I remember thinking several times "I don't even know where the hell to hit this thing.. But wherever I do, 99% chance I'll find nothing, 1% chance I'll break whatever I find into itty bitty little pieces." By like 2 I was ready to go, but.. I paid $145 for the privelidge of torturing myself & I wasn't gonna quit till the bell rang on the off chance I might actually find something worthwhile.

Finally about 3.30 rolled around & I was pretty much Done. Found out later that while I'd been bending over all day my pants had slipped down some & my shirt slipped up.. That spot where all the chicks get the "something for my boyfriend to look at while he ...." tats? Ya that got pretty much Nuked. Found it about 4 days later & by that time it was raw leaking meat. It's *Alnmost* all healed now (2 weeks later) but anyway.. I looked down the line And just like in the image below, everyone still digging was doing so in a hole at the base of the wall. So apparently they all knew something we didn't. Like where to find the opals.

So we drove down to the camp & I wanted to know if I'd found anything worthwhile- so we stopped at the store. I took my finds inside & showed them to the two ladies behind the counter.. "Yup, that's an opal... Oh it's an opalized stick!... Yup, that's an opal too..." was about all I got. Still haven't a clue if the paltry little pieces I have are worth anything at all. Kinda seemed like they had the attitude of "We have your money, you took your chances & we don't really care if you find anything or come back."
After the store visit we kicked around staying for about 5 minutes.. And decided to bail for the sunstone place. So we pretty much threw our stuff in the van & got the hell out of there.

In retrospect, kind of annoys me I had to pay the same price as all the Able Bodied folks to dig.. As had I been there before the injury & thus able to swing a pick & actually be effective with a shovel I would have been able to leave a *Hell* of a dent in that wall.. As it was I think I might have moved the face of thing back 4 to 6 inches. But.. I've never been & never will be that "treat me different coz I'm in a chair" guy. So if I want to be treated as "normal" all the time, then... Gotta take the good with the bad. As I look back on that "digging" expierience now, I should have spent $200 on one of those Big vials of opal that morning & got in the car & drove away. Now granted it was in water & apparently you're not s'posed to buy opal that way, but A) I would have been sure I had some and B) after the "dig in the wall" expierience I would have gladly paid that extra $55 to NOT beat that freakin' wall with a hammer all day. (nevermind avoiding the blowing sand & gravel & sunburnburn the hell out of your ass expieriences) The next day I did find a Big Toenail sized black thing in my sock.. Unfortunately it *Was* my big toenail. That's a problem when you can't feel tactile sensation(s) on 2/3rds of yourself.. Bad Things can happen that you don't find unless you notice the blood trail or happen to look in the right spot later.
Nice huh? 'Course this was like a week later:

So we made it back to Lakeview about... I don't know, 8.30 or 9. Intent was to get a hotel there & head in to the sunstone mine the next day. Well... There was a hang-gliding competition, 2 funerals & a reunion in town. No rooms. At all. We asked a hotel guy where there might be some.. Next best place was down the 395 about 50 miles further away in Alturas. Great. Rather than drive down there & find out we'd struck out again we called & reserved one.
Lots of luck finding a disabled room.. Really I don't need the high-speed ADA type ones, just something with a bathroom door wider than 24" & a configuration where I can get to the toilet. I don't know why the hell, but seems that most hotels put very small doors on the bathrooms. Like they're less expensive or something. I mean think about it. Check into a hotel & you get a bed & a bathroom. Usually the bathroom is *Quite* tiny- Get out of the shower, dip your foot in the toilet & rack your knee on the sink. Why not make the room a little smaller & the bathroom a little bigger? Folks might come back if they could put their arms out & turn around in that bathroom & didn't have to turn sideways to get into the damn thing. Anyway, in the room we got we had to take the bathroom door off so I could get in there.. And not a chance of getting into the shower. Oh well, such was life. So I did my best washing the sand bar out of my hair in the sink & takin' a spit-bath.. And went to bed.

The next day we got up & left by about... 8.30 or 9. Drove back to Lakeview & gassed up (again) as we had no idea how far we'd have to go.. Drove out to Plush (again) and out Hogback/Co. Rd. 3-10. Took a right at the good place to change a tire and drove, following the signs to the sunstone mines. Drove s'more. Annnd... Drove s'more. The road is washboarded.. So couldn't do more than about 20 mph.. And anything that wasn't loose was by the time we eventually got there.
As you can see- it's kinda far out in the desert:

Finally we got into the BLM sunstone zone- Where anyone can simply wander around & pick them up off the ground. Apparently it's a feldspar that formed in lava flows.. So there's claims out there where people dig it from the ground. Now "lava flow" isn't really the softest rock.. It's Basalt.. That stuff is Hard. Not uncommon to see a buncha dudes in a hole with those big-assed construction type jackhammers. Ya better them than me.

We passed the Dust Devil mine- Where apparently one can fee-dig all day & pay about 25% to 33% of the wholesale rate for the good ones you find. WHich I s'pose can be a good thing as you know on the way out the value of the shiny rocks you've found. (Unlike my expierience at the opal place) But.. If you find a Good One & they want 25% of $4K... Well, pretty sure they're not gonna take a check & it's a Looooooong way back to the ATM.
After Dust Devil the road gets a little squirley. Turn-off's freakin' everywhere.. I could see Spectrum ahead, but at every intersection I'd try to follow the more traveled road, but kept asking myself "Ok, how the hell do I get over there?" On one corner not 5' from the edge of the road there were a bunch of clowns about 15' down in a hole with jackhammers. Said hole was big enough to completely swallow my Jetta.. Coming either way if one misses that corner- In the hole you go. These geniuses had no markers or a fence or any sort of "Lookout, there's a Big Assed Hole here!" warnings. So I wondered about 2 things. If you can pretty much dig anywhere around there & find the stones (S'wat the mine folks told me) why start digging a hole 15' from the road when you Know it might end up 20' in diameter & if you're going to be in the hole why the hell not warn the 2,000+ objects of death driving by that there's a hole there? Not the sharpest tools in the shed but then again I s'pose it doesn't take a rocket-scientist to dig a hole. Hey I'd rather not take a car to the head, but that's just me.

So we finally roll into the mine proper. It's about... 11.30 or so. I spent some time trying to find a spot to park- You're kind of on your own for that as there's no real parkin' zone. Looked like everyone had simply found a blank spot in the sage-brush & abandoned their vehicle. Got one eventually- With plenty of sand for easy wheelchair accessibility. (Not- Think of trying to ride a unicycle on the dunes & you get the idea pretty much) There's not a wild tree for prolly... 100 miles around that place. Or for that matter any domestic (planted) trees that I saw for that matter. During the day I was talkin' to Mike the machine Operator.. He says they're the only mine with a well. Had to go 650' down to hit water.
We went up to the store / office- Passing the Machine & several folks screening high-grade. Got the scoop on the prices- There's a pile of unprocessed ore one can screen all day for free. You get to keep whatever you find, but apparently it's full of boulders & other fun stuff. The next day the same expierience will cost you $50. But hey, the first day's free so if it's Crap you're only out whatever effort you've put in. (unlike the opal place) Then there's piles of hi-grade you can screen for $150. The ones I saw were about... Base of 4' by ... 2' to 3' by about.. I don't know 2.5' to 3' high. I don't know if the piles get refilled should you finish or if you have to pay again, but that's where most people were. Then you could dig in one of the holes. I don't know how many $$'s that was, but we went & looked down in one of them. There was a guy digging in the wall & one of the mine folks was there with him. SHe'd crawled about 1/2 way into his hole & was pointing at the wall... "So you want to take all this out, then look in here & here." She scraped out a bunch of dirt & rocks.. "Have you screened this?" She then picked up a couple stones & said "Where's your bucket? Here's a couple more." Awesome. Not only are the mine folks very cool (And Miss Jessica is *Quite* easy on the eyes) they Want you to find as many stones as you possibly can.. And they'll even help you do it. Don't know where to dig? Ask. They'll crawl down in there & show you. Then there's the (in my mind) best option- For $200 they'll run their Machine for you for an hour. Apparently 4 to 6 tons of ore are processed- Depending on how fast they run the thing. Keep anything & everything you find. They'll even help you find it. So that's what I decided to do.
Here's the machine:

Pretty much what happens is they take a couple scoops of ore with the tractor & pour it in 1 end. Turn it on & with a Great ammount of noise & dust it sorts out all the boulders & sand, rocks flying from one end & sand ending up in a pile on the other.. With all the Good Stuff ending up in a bin. Then everyone gathers along the 'picking belt' & they turn on a different part. Up the belt travels the high-grade after being sprayed with a little water. Now sunstones look like pieces of broken glass (not as sharp tho) & the matrix rock is fairly dark, so most of the time the answer to "Is this a sunstone?" is completely obvious. I rolled right up to the belt & Mike chocked my wheels w/ a couple rocks. I had a bucket on each side... And I was pissed off because I couldn't use both hands. NOt really angry, but it was a bit frustrating. I had to lean forward over the belt & thus had to support myself with one hand & pick with the other. So many were going by I could only get like maybe 1/4th of them. I commented that the next time I was going to bring some sort of 'forehead crutch' contraption I could lean on with my head thus having both hands free. Good thing Klari was further up the belt & another mine dude was at the end gathering whatever we missed. At the end of the hour here's what we found:

Mine Dudes helped us sort out the good ones:

Mike grabbed one in particular which is now with Klari & I don't have a pic of.. He held it up & said "Dude! You just paid for your Whole Trip!" But I found a pic of one that's close:

After that first run we decided to do another- But the hours were full until the 5 to 6 stretch. So we paid up, got our ticket & trolled around for a bit. Thought about setting up our shaker-box & looking through the free pile, but we left some pieces here at home. Sigh. Here it is anyway:

I even made a top for it so it became a table (should we need one) for camp.

So prety much that's it. We're back now obviously.. half the sunstones are with me, half are with Klari up in Portland. She's looking for a cutter / appraiser for our good ones, but as of yet we haven't found anyone.
I'm up for going back looking for opals someday.. But not to the Royal Peacock, and this time I'm digging in the tailing pile rather than the wall. Said pile was $50 if I remember right for the day.. And being 'tailings' it's a pile of sand / gravel.. MUCH easier to dig in than the wall.
Sunstones? Heck I'd go back tomorrow if I had an extra $200 for the machine & the time / gas money to go. I'm Damn Sure going again before the end of the summer- Hopefully with enough time to hit up U-DIG Fossils out in Delta, Utah Yup, it's Quite a ways from the sunstones and if I find a place that's apparently just as cool & closer I'll prolly go there, but.. So it's a drive. So what. It's what summers are for- Get to get outta the house, get some sun, meet some (I hope) cool people & hopefully bring back some cool stuff. Added bonus if I find enough cool stuff to pay for the trip.