[meteorite-list] First Meteorite Hunt
From: Rob Wesel <nakhladog_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2010 22:11:02 -0800 Message-ID: <97F36CB74589487CA1D4C5B97FC3A22B_at_windows9bb74fe> Thank you Abe for the wonderful report Absolutely amazing to catch a cold find. On many hunts I have had to remind myself that "meteorites fell here" or "meteorites were found here" and that mindset keeps me going, keeps my eyes on the ground. I trust you had a similar mantra...and it manifested a five pounder in the middle of nowhere! What a great story, Rob Wesel www.nakhladogmeteorites.com www.facebook.com/Nakhla.Dog.Meteorites www.facebook.com/Rob.Wesel ------------------ We are the music makers... and we are the dreamers of the dreams. Willy Wonka, 1971 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Guenther" <abe.guenther at mnsi.net> To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com> Sent: Friday, November 19, 2010 3:26 PM 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 ______________________________________________ Visit the Archives at http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list Received on Sat 20 Nov 2010 01:11:02 AM PST |
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