June 08, 2010

Diamonds are a girls best friend!

I really liked the shutterfly site. It was so nice for uploading tons of pictures. And I am going to continue forward with posting our photos there. But I have received many comments from people saying they were missing our updates, how boring they might be, I guess they were still worth reading? So you can consider us back in the blogging world.

Instead of updating everything we've done in the past two months, I am going to leave that over on the other site and just continue on here. The most recent event was our mini trip to Herkimer/Utica, NY over memorial day. We drove NW for 2 hours and ended up in the most po-dunk town. We stayed at a small hotel surrounded by a few small chain restaurants. But really there was nothing exciting going on. So why did we go there you ask? DIAMONDS, duh...

KC and I were watching the travel channel awhile ago and saw this special (you don't have to watch, just thought I would post if you were curious):







Basically, for those of you who skipped the video. There is a "diamond" mine in Herkimer, more rather it is a crystal mine. But they call these crystals "Herkimer Diamonds" They are the hardest crystal in the world and also are rare because of their 18 facets.

So we rented a day pass and hammer and headed out to the mine. Now before I show you pictures, you can't judge our appearances. We had to go grungy, and believe me, we were the best looking people there. So now that you aren't going to look us up and down. Here is the mine:


Wow, a bunch of rocks. Big deal!

Neither of us knew where to start so we just started picking up the porous rocks and hitting them until they broke into two. Nothing. Then more nothing. Eventually,  I started eavesdropping on the other people to see how they were finding things. One lady was just sifting through the dirt. So I found a spot and just started moving around the dirt. And hello! diamond! And then another and another. So I enlist KC and we find a few really good, but mini diamonds, just lying in the dirt.





After hitting some more rocks and sifting through more dirt, we get tired. It was fun, but a lot of work. It reminded me of being a kid and you would go outside to build a snow house, and you would make brick after brick, stacking them, but it is fun...even though it is work. You just know the end result is worth it. K, so we made houses of snow, not igloos, but full houses with bathrooms, bedrooms, and a kitchen. The wall was only 3 bricks high, but it was cool. So now I am off track...

KC declared that at that point that we each need to find one last "good" diamond and then we should go. I find one I am happy with in 5 minutes. And in the at 5 minutes, KC decides that he is going to hit a very large rock. And after the first few hits the corner of the rock falls off and...


Gold mine! Okay, so crystal mine! In that hold you can see 2 of the 5 diamonds that were sitting there, just waiting for us to take home. It took probably a half hour of chiseling away, but eventually we got them out and were HAPPILY on our way.

Our best find, thanks to KC...this was in that rock!



My stash only. Not bad for sifting through dirt!


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On another note, some quick, but big updates:

- KC is now working as an intern at an Intellectual Property firm in Connecticut. And he is loving it! It is so nice to see him leave each morning knowing that he is happy at his job, I hope that it continues forever!

-My brother Dano received his mission call to the El Salvador, San Salvador/West Belize Mission. We are really excited for him and send our congratulations his way. He leaves September 8th.

4 comments:

  1. Those are sooo cool. I wanna go! :) And congratulations to your brother!

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  2. Oh, I'm glad you're back here. I forget to check the other place. In fact, I haven't. This one reminds me to check.

    Look how industrious you two are! GEEZ! You need to make something awesome with all your diamonds!!

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  3. I so, SO, SOOOOoo want to go there! That looks so fun and awesome and exciting. Ya, I'm jealous! That is totally my cup of tea.
    Good job on finding such awesome finds!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Missed your updates, couldn't figure out the other one. Your discovery looks like it was alot of fun.

    ReplyDelete

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