A Few Days in New Hampshire, ...

The purpose of his endeavor is to figuratively visit New Hampshire (the Granite State) for a few days and engage in studying Geology and other Earth Science-related subjects by way of posts, videos, and links.

In my 1977 travels, I went to New Hampshire to visit a high school/college classmate for a few days while he was working at the Rockywold-Deephaven Camps Resort.  

I had intended on making that trip to visit my friend Dave in New Hampshire, a year earlier.  (He was my fellow traveler during our epic 1974 Road Trip.)  In regards to that planned 1976 trip, another high school/college friend, Michael, was supposed to go with me, but he had to have knee surgery.  I am not sure how it would have worked out, as I still had my 1970 Pontiac Lemans.  

By the time the Summer of 1977 rolled around, I had made my solo move to El Paso for grad school, experiencing hundreds of miles of solitary traveling and sleeping in my truck's camper shell at various venues. 

During that first semester of grad school, I had several opportunities to sleep in the camper during field trips (something I hadn't yet done but should have, before I left Georgia in early January 1977).  From there on, sleeping in my camper shell at a KOA or other venue was preferable to setting up a tent each afternoon while traveling.  In short, I had more travel experience and confidence by summertime. 

In 1981, I am not sure if anyone I knew was still working at the resort.  I did visit with a Georgia Southern student who had migrated south from her native New Hampshire for at least a few years.  (I had intended to visit the area again in 1979, but some negative things of a "personal manner" happened and I only explored as far north as the North Carolina Blue Ridge and Piedmont Provinces that summer.) 

During my 1981 visit, I found my way back from the Squam Lakes area (the towns of Meredith and Holderness) - to the area of the Mount Mica Pegmatite Mine, near South Paris, Maine - without using a map.  I just used my instincts to find my way back to where I had been four years earlier.

Overnight stays in 1977 were in the camper of my 1976 Jeep and for the shorter 1981 trip, in the camper shell of my 1981 Datsun long bed pickup.  Of course, there was less room in the Datsun camper and the rear cab window was too small to crawl through, thus making the cab-to-camper transition was messy in the rain.  But the 30+ mpg for the 2-wheel-drive Datsun was better than the 12 mpg in the Jeep 4x4.  Tradeoffs are what they are.

Figure 1.

In the above photo is Aquamarine from the Ruggles Mine, near Grafton, New Hampshire, found during my 1977 visit.  I seem to recall giving one crystal to someone else.  It took me about 2 hours with a chisel and a 4 lb sledgehammer to create and widen fractures to remove these crystals without destroying them.  There was a small metallic crystal within this cluster of Beryl crystals when I freed them from their matrix, but I managed to misplace it before I got it ID'ed.

I probably found this locality listed in a Gems & Minerals magazine or some other gem-hunting reference.