Aug 06 2008
Royal Rainbow Opal Mine Photos
Since Sunday, I have been promising to get some of the photos that I took at the Royal Rainbow Opal Mine uploaded here, and I’ve finally gotten them together. This first picture is the view from the mine at the top of the mountain. The scenery here is fantastic, and you can see for miles and miles in any direction.
In my previous post, I neglected to say what the hours of operation for the mine are. There’s a good reason for that - basically, there are no standard hours! If you can get to the mine, it’s open. Well, that is, as long as Richard, the owner of the mine is there. But he is there most all of the time except for a day once every 4-5 weeks or so when he heads into Fernley to pick up supplies. If you do somehow manage to miss him when you travel to the location (and that would be rare!), there are public geode, agate, and crystal collections nearby. You can even wander up and down Soldier Meadows Road picking up some pretty nice rocks.
I’ve had a few people ask me what a tailings pile looked like, so I took a picture of one of these at the Royal Rainbow. If you want to attack the virgin ground at the Royal Rainbow Opal Mine, you’re going to need hard rock mining equipment like a chisel and sledgehammer. However, there are several tailings piles around that you can easily go through with a shovel and screwdriver. It wouldn’t hurt to have a rock hammer here, too, but you can get by without one. On my visit, it was pretty hot and I stuck to the tailings piles. There’s still a LOT to be found here. I only sifted through a very tiny portion and found several specimens that I really liked. I’m hoping that the next time I go there, I’ll have a friend with me and we can hit some of the harder areas of the mine.
Here’s another view from the top of the mine facing the other direction. You can also see a couple more of the tailings piles that line the path that leads over to the fresh mining ground. If you look real close, you can also see the top of the yellow out-building off on the right-hand side.
It’s a little hard to tell from this picture, but the tailings pile on the left-hand side was littered with nice pieces of obsidian. If you’re an obsidian fan, you’d love this place. There’s no work at all to gathering it - just walk around and pick it up from the ground.
To the left is a snapshot of some of the obsidian pieces from the mine. This was taken after I got home while I was sorting through and cleaning some of the stones. 
To the right here is a photo of some mahogany obsidian. I didn’t find this myself at the mine. When I came down from the top of the mountain, I sat and talked with Richard for awhile. I told him how excited I was to see all the obsidian at the mine site and he asked if I seen any of the mahogany variety. When I said that I hadn’t, he went and fished through his own samples and gave this one to me to bring home. This is going to look great when it’s polished. It’s a big enough slice that several cabs could be cut out of it, but I’m not sure that I want to do that! It’s too pretty the way it is. I’ll have to think about it some more and make a decision before I polish it.
The picture to the left was a fun little find! Little did I expect to see an opal just laying on the ground. As I was going through some of the tailings looking for more obsidian, I saw something glittering in the sunlight. I picked it up and held it up to get a better view. Sure enough, it was a nice little opal with a small play of fire to it.
Those tailings were just full of surprises. It was kind of like Christmas, except all the pretty presents were wrapped in dirt. By the way, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, you definitely need to wear old clothing when you’re out digging around for rocks - sturdy, old clothing at that. I usually stick to jeans and and men’s work shirts.
The photo to the right is from Richard’s “front yard” at the foot of the mountain. How would you like to step outside to that view everyday? Behind those bushes on the right side of the picture is a small pond and camping area. Visitors to the mine are welcome to bring their tents and trailers and camp out right on location. There’s even an outdoor shower for guests to use. The area is pretty spacious and can accommodate a lot of campers. Richard told me that at one time, he had a group of almost 40 people come to visit the mine together and they all camped around the pond and in the front yard area.
Here are just a couple more pictures of rocks I found at the Royal Rainbow. I photographed them while they were wet so the colors would stand out more.
There are still some more pretty specimens that I want to photograph including some very nice sodalite pieces. Right now, they’re still sitting on the front porch waiting to be cleaned up a bit more. The sodalite would look gorgeous polished, but I’m not sure what I want to do with that either. The problem is that the pieces are so big, they would need to be broken up in order to polish and consider using as jewelry settings. So I’ll need to make a decision on that, too. Even if I do decide to break them up, I’ll make sure to get pictures first and post them so you all can see what nice specimens they are.
The closest town to the Royal Rainbow is Gerlach, Nevada. I’ll give directions from there since you can find Gerlach pretty easily on maps. Even though Gerlach only has a population of around 4,000 people, it has gotten quite a reputation because of its proximity to the yearly Burning Man Festival.
It’s hard to believe that in less than a month, this vast empty playa in the Black Rock Desert will be turned into Black Rock City for the 2008 Burning Man Festival. About 48,000 people from all over the country showed up for Burning Man last year and some estimates are putting this year’s anticipated crowd at around 60,000. This year, the Burning Man Festival will run from August 25 - September 1. They decided to stop selling tickets at the gate this year, so if you are planning on making the trip make sure you get your tickets ahead of time so you don’t end up not being able to camp on the playa. 
In case you’re trying to figure out what this picture is, it’s a thunder egg that was found in the Black Rock Desert. No, I didn’t find it. I was reading some other articles today about gems found in the Black Rock Desert and I found this picture. Thanks to David Rix for posting this in Wikimedia Commons.
