The first official field trip of the rock hound season was to Grave yard Point. Which is in far eastern Oregon almost in Idaho about 2 or 3 miles from Homedale Idaho. The material that we were after was of coarse the famous Graveyard Point Plume Agate. The day started off very early as my friend Tony was coming to pick me up at 6:15 so we could be at the Ion truck stop just outside of Marsing Idaho by 7:30. The group was very large, I would have to say that there must have been at least 40 vehicles in the convoy. The first trip of the Rockhounding season always has a huge turnout.
 

The group finally left and headed out to Graveyard Point. The trip took about 45 minutes on a not so bad dirt road. I would not take a car up there as you most likely would not make it. When the group stopped this was the view of the Owyhee Mountains that I had. Man oh Man do I love the Owyhee’s, they have to be one of the most interesting places around here. Well the first thing I did when we stopped was grab my backpack and my trusty Estwing Rock Pick and headed the opposite direction than everybody else. I tend to do this when we go on club field trips as I don’t like being around a lot of people. Also if you find some good material you will not have 20 people digging 6 inches from your spot. “Trust me it has happened before”. I have gone to lunch and left my tools in my hole only to come back to find somebody digging in my hole with my tools.
 
 
We spent the better part of the day searching for plume agate only to find little pieces. By about 12 about 90% of the group had either left or headed up the road. By the time Tony and I decided to head up the road it was pushing 1:30 and we were the last people at this very disappointing location. I think that I collected about 5 pounds of little pieces for my 5 hours of effort. Tony did find a very large piece of plume agate on top of the hill about a half mile from the truck which he hauled back.
 
 
After heading up the road we met up with the remaining group of people which was about 6 others. First thing I noticed was that there was more Seam Agate in the first 10 feet I walked than I had seen the previous 5 hours. After walking around for about 5 minutes I walked over to this little rock ledge which was about 12 feet tall. Low and behold there was a small agate seam that started at the top of the ledge which was about 1/2 inch thick. I started digging the dirt along the rock face and followed the seam down to the bottom. At the bottom the seam was a good 5 inches thick Woohoo! By this time I am yelling to Tony to get his butt over and see what I just found. What we found was a very nice seam of Graveyard Point Plume Agate. This stuff was solid with clear agate that had white, red, and pink plumes. Tony and I took turns digging out this seam for about 1 hour and pulled out quite a bit of plume agate. This made the day and by far was one of the most exciting field trips.
 
 
On the way out I made Tony stop everywhere that there was signs of past digging. Well if you have never been out to Grave Yard Point that’s about every half mile if that. At one of the places we stopped I happened to find a little bit of gold moss agate which I had never seen in this area new find for me, but I’m sure others know about it. Farther down the road I found this material which is identical to the Snake River Dendritic Agate. So I am going to assume that this material is mined somewhere close to where we were at. If you have never seen Snake River Dendritic Agate it is beautiful. Since sometimes Snake River Agate can look just like Amethyst Sage or as it is known by the old timers Denio Dendritic.
 
 
By the time we got back to the main road it was pushing 4 pm. We were quite tired or at least I was since I had only slept about 3 hour the night before. So even though the trip to graveyard point started out slow it ended up to be one of the best trips I’ve been on. Below are a few more pictures of the trip. Enjoy and happy Rockhounding.
 
 

Graveyard Point Agate Seam
 

 
 
Digging out Seam