Alabama Rocks Terry with his garnets

Shark Tooth Mound before the bulldozer

Alabama Rocks

Rockford Rocks

John Martin and myself took a trip on the day of the wire wrapping class, the day before Turkey Season started. We walked out to the tin mine from the Coosa County Landfill. When we arrived, we found a member of the Birmingham club, Randy Jones, already in place pounding on a rock. After talking to him for a while, we decided to continue down into one of the mine shafts where I had previously found some cassiderite crystals, a greyish-silver colored mineral.

While John and Randy pounded on the walls, I walked around with a black light trying to find flourescent minerals. I did find some badly deformed feldspar that glowed greenish under both long and short wave UV, however it was much more interesting to see that the cave crickets or camel crickets as they are sometimes called had green glowing legs.

As I shown my light over the ceiling of the mine, I discovered that the bats also glowed a rich green color. I counted close to 15 bats in various groups on the ceiling, and our activities did disturb them enough that some of them flew around. Fortunately, there was plenty of room for them to fly and we weren't that close to the colony, so no incidents happened.

Everyone managed to get enough cassiderite to satisfy themselves although my "made in China" sledge lost it's head and almost hit John. Getting back up the rope was quite a chore, but we finally made it and walked back out. John and I then showed Randy where to collect zebra stone and jasper, and then we walked the landfill looking for pegmatite outcroppings. We found some areas with pegmatites, but did not find much worth picking up. We finally headed back just before the rain hit.

James Mallonee