As much fun as it can be to visit and explore, I'm so glad I don't live in the desert anymore. I like greenery, and non-dessicated sinuses.

Oh gosh yes! I used to get such nasty, unexpected nosebleeds when I lived close to the Mojave. I guess the dryness of the air in the high desert had to do something with it.

you should have let me know.. that is basically my back yard.. i was out there the week before that for the tierra del sol 4x4 event, a few miles away near salton city.. where some flower gazers nearly ran my motor home and trailer off the road :P i could have showed you many local waterfalls in the san diego area if you had returned home that direction.

=^.^=

I thought you lived closer to the city of San Diego. Anyway, it might have been more fun to have someone there who knew his way around the country, and we might have been able to discuss things like building desert driving vehicles and the model building aspects of such things

Oh the tourists can be such a bother, can't they? Along the stretches of the freeways where the California Poppies were growing in patches people were parking their cars on the roadside and tramping up into the hills to pick and stomp the flowers flat solely for the purpose of taking pictures and selfies of themselves amid "Nature's Glory."

I get down near there in Riverside and San Diego mineral collecting every once in a while.

The desert is quite beautiful, especially when things are in bloom...

Oh! When we stopped at Santa Ysabel on the way, the big thing in the gift shops were rocks and minerals. So I guess rock collecting is the big thing out there? I must say that every time I had driven South on the I-15 into San Diego to the Comicon International, I have been curious about that area of the state where the hills were covered with boulders from refrigerator to apartment house size, and all of a sudden I was in the middle of the area.

There are a lot of granite pegmatites in the area, which can bear fine specimen and gem minerals such as quartz, tourmaline and beryl (Aquamarine and Morganite [Pink]). Pegmatites are zones in which the grains of granite become larger (The quartz, mica and feldspar which make up typical granite.) and can form pockets with large, well-formed crystals, as well as the rarer and gem minerals.

You can see pictures of amazing specimens if you search for gem pegmatites and San Diego or Riverside.

One of the areas I frequent is Cahuilla Mountain, from which you can see the Anza-Borrego, and I have a couple of friends with mining claims. Another is the Oceanview mine, which is a commercial enterprise where they collect specimen and gem material as well as having an operation for people to come and sift through tailings for a fee. A friend of mine works there as a miner and mining engineer. It's a lot of fun, and there's a chance of finding world-class specimens.

It reads like you really know your stuff when it comes to rock hunting. I've had a fascination for gold prospecting since my teenage years, but I had heard tell that occasionally a gold panner might find a garnet in amongst the gold bearing sands. It almost makes me want to take up a new hobby in prospecting.

California's a great place to hunt for gold, there's a lot to be found. And you're pretty close to some top mineral collecting.

Anything heavy will tend to collect in the pan along with the gold. I've been places where you'd end up with pyrite crystals, arsenopyrite crystals, or garnet crystals. There have even been a smattering of diamond crystals found with the alluvial gold here. I actually have a diamond crystal found by someone panning for gold in North Carolina, so they're rare, but they're out there. I don't think I've ever actually seen a California diamond.

My main interest is to collect Crystallized mineral specimens, and ends up being mostly quartz and associations.

I find it a really fun hobby, because it gets you out in nature and exploring, you meet a lot of interesting people with amazing knowledge and collections, and I've always just liked digging, so if occasionally I find something really cool, it's all gravy...!

The closest place I can think of to you with something really cool is the Felix mine in Azusa, where there are really nice green fluorite crystals. https://www.mindat.org/loc-11149.html
-Note the picture at the header of that page; That's one of the famous pink tourmalines from San Diego, which are an amazing story all to themselves...

Mineral collecting, like gold prospecting or any other such hobby, is best approached by hooking up with people or local clubs. There just happens to be a pretty well established club where you live, BTW.

Between connections, educating yourself on what to look for and how to collect, and some legwork and serious moving of rock and dirt, there are still a lot of really cool things to be found...

There is a little boarded-up uranium mine in the desert near Glamis, i have got a few pounds of uranium and autonite in sandstone there.. ( unfortunately.. thanks to a recent administration, the mine belongs to Russia )

and speaking of gold.. i know of a tiny little gold mine on BLM land that was still producing gold when the person was forcefully evicted by BLM for building a house on BLM land. Julian area..

=^.^=

Interesting. We rolled through Julian just shortly after leaving Santa Ysabel. My interests in prospecting stem from an old Huell Howser "California's Gold" episode where he visited the 10/40 mine in Northern California. He and his crew were invited to stay for the day's final tally, the melt, and the final pour. What fascinated me was at how the miner's hard and rough faces were suddenly softened by the glow of molten gold.

Since the gold ,market is so competitive, if I ever got into prospecting, I believe I'll stick to looking for gemstones or other metals.

Uranium, Eh? I heard once that during the post WWII "Atomic" age, A Hopi Elder found some stones which he'd grind for his sand paintings, and he'd never reveal where he found the rocks. Someone noticed the yellow and orange sands were radioactive by black spots showing up in the photos taken of the sand paintings. Maybe this was a good thing.

I've heard that maybe around ten percent of the gold in any of the mining areas in the U.S. has been recovered, so there's still a lot out there... I've met people with a talent for it who've found quite a bit on a regular basis. Occasionally some stunning nuggets.

I heard on the radio a few weeks ago that the recent rain and storms in Northern CA had unearthed small deposits of Gold, and prospectors, experienced and alike have been having a field day. Most I've see working the streams in the news videos are using Sluce boxes and dredges. It's a lot of long hours in cold, running water and a lot of hard work, but I figure it's worth it now for a few ounces.

Now here in the San Gabriel hills and mountains, things have been pretty well tapped out. Besides, there's just too many people. I figure if someone finds a bit of dust in a creek, the next day there'd be hundreds of "Prospectors" tearing the countryside apart, trying to make an "Easy" fortune.

I don't like crowds. Not so much for the intrusion into my "Personal time" during my hikes, but more for the piles of trash they leave everywhere they gather.

Gold gets turned up every winter. Heavy rains will turn up more...

Most of the places I collect aren't likely to attract crowds by any means.

I know what you mean about trash, it really pisses me off when I see that. I end up picking up stuff if I run across it, usually... Once again, I don't tend to see much most of the places I go.

There's another spot not too far from you in the San Gabriels where there are pink sapphires and some lapis to be found...

Oh dang, we coulda bumped into eachother and not known any better... I was there myself!

Oh well. At least the flowers were pretty. The heat was kind of strong, but hey... It's the Desert. Yeah. It's a pity we didn't meet. It's kind of a kick to actually meet someone from "On Line" at an event, and on the spur of the moment.

Oh, neat. I used to do a lil' bit of desert wandering in DHS.

I used to live in the "Wilds" of Hesperia, close to the Mojave Desert, but the Anza Boirrego area was so vastly different, and perhaps a bit more "Wild" due to it's remoteness.

Me and my roommate used to go up to the BLM land between Yucca Valley and 29 Palms to go shooting, neat place. The Marines play out there, and we'd get swept by AH-1s on maneuvers too.

I once found myself in the middle of a training exercise along the San Gabriel river, shortly after the Blackhawk helicopter was being introduced to the Army. The Pilot must have thought the "Blue Thunder" moment on his end was pretty funny, but I'll bet if the chopper was really serious, me and my little "Toy Otter" crossing the bridge would have been turned inside out pretty quick.

Damn, yeah. It was always a bit unnerving to see the CP/G in the front seat turn to look, and have that 3-barrel 20mm follow.

Ah haaaah....!

Yeah, they mostly stayed up around a thousand feet, but when they came over the ridge sometimes they'd do NOE, and get a bit closer.

Oh! I get kinda spooked even when the Sheriff's helicopters fly low through Wildcat Canyon to take a shortcut to Eagle Rock or the 134 Freeway. I realize they can't get no lower than 1.000 feet, but sometimes, especially with the LAPD Notar I swear I could put up a hand and "Scratch 'em on the belly" and the air reeks of jet fuel after they pass.

I now live about 100 feet from the Colorado River, below Davis Dam and Lake Mohave, and the Marine 'pink' teams do nav exercises at very low alt here. I can sometimes discern facial expressions of the doorgunners/flightcrews when they go by.

That's way close.

I love it. We had a couple CAF C-130 on maneuvers last month, and a few weeks ago I saw a V-22.