[meteorite-list] First Meteorite Hunt

From: wahlperry at aol.com <wahlperry_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2010 20:45:03 -0500 (EST)
Message-ID: <8CD566BAF085667-10A8-360B_at_webmail-d056.sysops.aol.com>

Hi Abe,

Great find. You need to go find the rest of them : )

Sonny


-----Original Message-----
From: Guenther <abe.guenther at mnsi.net>
To: meteorite-list <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Fri, Nov 19, 2010 10:26 am
Subject: [meteorite-list] First Meteorite Hunt


Here is a short story about a first time meteorite hunting experience.I
live in an area of Canada that has not yielded any meteorites to speak
ofso I knew I needed to look at hotter, dryer areas for the best chance
at asuccessful first trip. I did over a year of research and planning
before Ifinally made my decision where to go. I read countless success
stories andwatched a lot of meteorite hunting shows and videos on
YouTube beforenarrowing my search. Almost overwhelmed at all the places
I could try, a fewweeks before the much awaited trip I decided on
Nevada. Besides the cheapairfare to Vegas, there were lots of success
stories near Vegas. I had a fewplaces mapped out in Nevada, Arizona and
California that I wanted to huntover the 9 day trip. After finding
nothing in 5 days of my lone journey itwas time to pick up my son who
flew in to join me for the final 4 days.Considering this was his first
time too, I am sure he wasn't too confidentsince his dad hadn't found
anything yet. But he and I both knew we weresaving the best place for
last! This was the part of the trip we were bothanticipating because
our destination several hours away would be to a drylake bed that we
knew had yielded some meteorites just recently. Since itwas supposed to
be a secret location, we were confident that if there werestill any
meteorites left, we would find some.It rained a lot on the way so we
were concerned about how bad it might be onthe lake bed. We arrived at
the dry lake area near dark so all we wanted todo the first day was
figure out how to get to the lake since there were noclear roads to
access it. We could hardly wait to get out there the nextmorning bright
and early. We finally made it to the lake bed at about 9:00amafter a
muddy trek and nearly 2 hours travel from the motel. The rain
haddefinitely made it slippery but we were surprises that it wasn't
actuallytoo bad on the lake bed itself. The first day didn't yield
anything specialexcept a really fun time. My son found a complete dried
out coyote skullthat he kept and an arrow head. We also found a several
rocks that drew ourmagnets but they were obviously not meteorites
because of deep, sharpcavities and what we would soon discover over the
next couple of days, thiswas a common rock in the area. We usually
parked and then walked for a fewhours at a time and when we started to
get tired, we would just drive thetruck during our rests. It was during
one of these drives that I happen tolook to my left and noticed what I
thought was another cow patty. I stoppedand the first thing I did when
I got out was kick it. It didn't move. Idon't remember what I said but
my son knew that I was excited aboutsomething. I picked it up and it
felt like 5 pounds. It was unusually heavycompared to the other rocks.
I had no doubt it would draw the magnet but itwas surprising to see it
stick so hard. This was the last hour of the lastday of the trip and
all we could think is how lucky we had been to find ourfirst meteorite
and to top it off, one so big!When we got home I still thought that we
had been on the right lake bed. Ijust couldn't wait to tell everyone
about our success! I looked up someonewho has excellent knowledge of
meteorites and emailed him the pictures. Hewasn't quite convinced and
so he had me take some more pictures. To mydelight, he emailed me back
a "congratulations". It was only after doingsome more research about
the lake bed that I realized we were 100 miles awayfrom the lake bed we
had researched. In a way I am sort of glad we went tothe wrong lake bed
but I'm happy we didn't know at the time. I don't know ifwe discovered
a new meteorite fall but it is fun to think we did. Ignoranceis bliss.A
few pictures:
http://aguenthe.mnsi.net/NM1.jpg,http://aguenthe.mnsi.net/NM2.jpg,
http://aguenthe.mnsi.net/NM3.jpg,http://aguenthe.mnsi.net/NM4.jpg.Abe
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Received on Fri 19 Nov 2010 08:45:03 PM PST