Our sunstone mining trip actually began many months before we set off down the road in our trusty pickup. The story begins at the Snyder Ranch Rock Show in Valley Springs, California. My girlfriend, Shasta, and I had journeyed there to visit a friend at his nearby mining claim and to take part in the rock show. Of the many booths, the one that captured our attention was the sunstone booth. Run by Dave Wheatley and Tammy Moreau, who own a claim in Oregon, the booth was filled to the brim with sunstones! This was the first time we had seen these amazing stones. For those who are not familiar with them, sunstones come from three main locations: Tvedestrand in southern Norway, Tanzania, Africa, and Oregon. They are a type of feldspar containing red hematite and copper, which produce schiller! Tanzanian sunstones have what is called "confetti" schiller, which looks exactly the way it sounds. Oregon sunstones have a wispier, copper-hued schiller that runs in parallel planes, creating a shimmer in the stone, as if it glowed within. These Oregon sunstones had us glued to this booth for the better part of an hour.
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