On a recent gem/fossil excursion with Mike Mangrum (Rock Hound extraordinaire), I came home with numerous and lovely examples of Tennessee gems and fossils. One of the neat items that Mike helped me find was a limestone geode. He had found numerous sizes throughout a very large cliff of limestone, but using my now keenly, trained eye, there before me was an object of gargantuan size (okay, it was only baseball sized!). As Mike expertly removed it from the limestone, I contemplated the incredible riches and beauty that lay inside this geode. We had tried to open some smaller specimens we had found, but weren’t impressed. I knew this one, however, was special. We decided not to break it open and take it to the Rock Hound Club meeting that Mike was now attending monthly and get their expert opinion. After many weeks of tortuous waiting, I shared my geode with the wise and wonderful experts at the table we were sitting at, and it turned out I did have something special — the rare, elusive “Leaverite”. Yes, that’s right — Leaverite. If you find one like it, “leave her right” where you
found it. It was worth under $100 — way under!! Yes, my geode provided numerous seconds of entertainment. Anyway, my son Timothy and I decided to open the geode up and see what we had. He took a hammer and literally pounded away on the front porch trying to get a clean break. Finally, in all it’s glory, our geode was open and sharing her beauty for all to see. Here’s the flickr page with all the pictures of the geode:
Enjoy!