Gems and Minerals Show in Fairplay

Geology is the new love of Paige's life. She is taking a geology class over the summer and has lost her heart. Her class will be taking field trips to Red Rock Canyon Open Space, the  Garden of the Gods, and the Florrisant Fossil Beds National Monument.

Paige has taken a number of studio art classes in making jewelry, so gems and minerals have long been one of her interests. Yesterday, we drove out to see a gems and minerals show in the roaring metropolis of Fairplay (population 704) in Park County. There were about 25 vendors there, selling trilobite fossils, minerals, polished gems, and cottage industry jewelry. Park County is rich in mineral resources, and many of the vendors looked like ancient prospectors and mountain men -- long, grey hair and beards, 10-gallon-hats, and weather-beaten faces. Paige was in seventh heaven and returned home in triumph with several mineral samples, a beautiful Labradorite bracelet (the gems change color as the light changes), a small Trilobite fossil, and, her greatest find, a 15-million-year-old fossilized Megalodon tooth.

Megalodon tooth

I love the drive west on Highway 24. We passed through beautiful, mountainous Teller County in magical and changing light and then on into South Park, a vast, empty, high (9,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level), flat grassland, flanked by the Front Range to the east and the Mosquito Range to the west. Apart from scattered hamlets, a few farm buildings, and relatively deserted highways, the area is probably not much different than it was 200 years ago when the buffalo roamed. We saw buffalo in a fenced enclosure and several pronghorns.

Next on the agenda is a visit to the Colorado School of Mines Geology Museum. It's been years since we last went.