One of the places I visit to look for interesting rocks

fuss

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Jul 27, 2018
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Wisconsin
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All Treasure Hunting
These photos are from mid March not long after the first real warm up of the year. The location is on Lake Michigan in Port Washington WI where there is a nice long beach with easy access. This one of the places that I visit to look for interesting rocks and fossils and there are plenty. Its a nice beach with quartz type sand and some spots with swaths of black sand layers possibly magnetite sand? The bluff is constantly eroding and collapsing bringing down with it lots of new glacial til rocks, trees, shrubs and the occasional set of wooden steps that go up to some of the private residences. The water is extremely clear and at times it looks like the Caribbean with amazing blue and turquoise colors. Its not uncommon to see several other people collecting and metal detecting. So anyway here are some of photos of what you see here. Thx.

The first couple of images shows the large Dolostone boulders that they brought in as rip rap that is in front of a water treatment facility's path (the easier of two ways to get to the beach).

retaining wall.jpg

view from atop the retaining wall.jpg

retaining wall dolostone boulder1a.jpg

bluff 1a.jpg

view north.jpg

rock in the sand with yellow/orange oxide draining

yellow oxide.jpg

Typical selection of beach rocks

dry beach rocks.jpg

If you zoom in you can see sand details

chert and quartz sand.jpg

fossiliferous limestone

fossiliferus limestone.jpg

Shallow water view

rocks under water.jpg

just after a wave.jpg

Looking up at the bluff from the beach, you can see the water draining at the base, large clumps of mud/clay break off and eventually it get's sucked into the lake by waves.
looking up at the bluff.jpg

Red rock with quartz (football size)
red rock with quartz.jpg

banded quartz sandstone
banded quartz sandstone is my guess.jpg

Another bluff shot, you can see the the rocks funneling down the channel that will end up on the beach to get cleaned by the lakes waves.
bluff rocks heading towards the lake.jpg

Interesting boulder, either a granitoid or syenite has a section of fine grain on it to go with the coarser main body.
beach boulder syenite or granite.jpg

This is where I turned around, all the snow and ice is now long gone.
turned around here.jpg
 

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Nice place you have to hunt. Our lake is a miniature version of yours. Glacial till everywhere, eroding banks. I've waited all winter/spring for the Corps of Engineers to lower the lake level to winter pool. They've tried hard but so much rain that it has never reached close to winter pool. Oh well, there's always next year.

Here's what our lake looks like at winter pool. Old pics. It's wall to wall water right now.

IMG_0091.JPGIMG_0089.JPGMVC-017S.JPG
 

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