[meteorite-list] First Meteorite Hunt

From: Guenther <abe.guenther_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2010 21:10:22 -0500
Message-ID: <01ba01cb8858$16777c20$43667460$_at_guenther@mnsi.net>

Thanks Ruben.

You're right. My hopes were a bit downtrodden after calling you on my way to
Franconia but like I told you that day - If Franconia wasn't a good first
place to look and since I only had so many days before I would have to pick
up my son, I wanted you to tell me the truth. And I appreciate that you did.

When you sent me that "congratulations" you have no idea how happy I was. I
mean, I was 95% sure from my research that it was a meteorite but telling my
son that you confirmed it was pretty exciting.

Abe Guenther


From: Ruben Garcia [mailto:mrmeteorite at gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, November 19, 2010 8:41 PM
To: Guenther; meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] First Meteorite Hunt

Hey Abe,
?
Thanks for sharing your story with everyone! However, you forgot to mention
that I?told you (before the hunt) that?finding a meteorite on your first
time out was near impossible. Even though I believe my advice was true I
didn't take into account that you would be there until you either fell down
from exhaustion or found a meteorite. I'm glad I was wrong and that you
persisted, and even though I painted a very bleak picture you found one
anyway!??Thanks also for sharing the location as well as photos of your
find. When you sent it to me I was sure I would be looking at another
Meteor-wrong. However, when I saw it I phoned immediately to congratulate
you on a fantastic find.
?
Nothing succeeds like persistence!? Great job!

-----Original Message-----
>From: Guenther <abe.guenther at mnsi.net>
>Sent: Nov 19, 2010 3:26 PM
>To: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
>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 of
>so I knew I needed to look at hotter, dryer areas for the best chance at a
>successful first trip. I did over a year of research and planning before I
>finally made my decision where to go. I read countless success stories and
>watched a lot of meteorite hunting shows and videos on YouTube before
>narrowing my search. Almost overwhelmed at all the places I could try, a
few
>weeks before the much awaited trip I decided on Nevada. Besides the cheap
>airfare to Vegas, there were lots of success stories near Vegas. I had a
few
>places mapped out in Nevada, Arizona and California that I wanted to hunt
>over the 9 day trip. After finding nothing in 5 days of my lone journey it
>was 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 confident
>since his dad hadn't found anything yet. But he and I both knew we were
>saving the best place for last! This was the part of the trip we were both
>anticipating because our destination several hours away would be to a dry
>lake bed that we knew had yielded some meteorites just recently. Since it
>was supposed to be a secret location, we were confident that if there were
>still any meteorites left, we would find some.
>
>It rained a lot on the way so we were concerned about how bad it might be
on
>the lake bed. We arrived at the dry lake area near dark so all we wanted to
>do the first day was figure out how to get to the lake since there were no
>clear roads to access it. We could hardly wait to get out there the next
>morning bright and early. We finally made it to the lake bed at about
9:00am
>after a muddy trek and nearly 2 hours travel from the motel. The rain had
>definitely made it slippery but we were surprises that it wasn't actually
>too bad on the lake bed itself. The first day didn't yield anything special
>except a really fun time. My son found a complete dried out coyote skull
>that he kept and an arrow head. We also found a several rocks that drew our
>magnets but they were obviously not meteorites because of deep, sharp
>cavities and what we would soon discover over the next couple of days, this
>was a common rock in the area. We usually parked and then walked for a few
>hours at a time and when we started to get tired, we would just drive the
>truck during our rests. It was during one of these drives that I happen to
>look to my left and noticed what I thought was another cow patty. I stopped
>and the first thing I did when I got out was kick it. It didn't move. I
>don't remember what I said but my son knew that I was excited about
>something. I picked it up and it felt like 5 pounds. It was unusually heavy
>compared to the other rocks. I had no doubt it would draw the magnet but it
>was surprising to see it stick so hard. This was the last hour of the last
>day of the trip and all we could think is how lucky we had been to find our
>first 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. I
>just couldn't wait to tell everyone about our success! I looked up someone
>who has excellent knowledge of meteorites and emailed him the pictures. He
>wasn't quite convinced and so he had me take some more pictures. To my
>delight, he emailed me back a "congratulations". ?It was only after doing
>some more research about the lake bed that I realized we were 100 miles
away
>from the lake bed we had researched. In a way I am sort of glad we went to
>the wrong lake bed but I'm happy we didn't know at the time. I don't know
if
>we discovered a new meteorite fall but it is fun to think we did. Ignorance
>is 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 Guenther
>
>
>
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-- 
Rock On!
Ruben Garcia 
Website: http://www.mr-meteorite.net
Articles: http://www.meteorite.com/blog/
Videos: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=meteorfright#p/u

Received on Fri 19 Nov 2010 09:10:22 PM PST