Past JR Events

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Jr. Rockhounds, March 4th, 2023

The Junior RockHounds met on March 4. We were glad to have Erica DeMeritt and her son Ari with us again for a very interesting program on Salt. We had a short video showing how salt that is mined from the earth is processed and how sea salt is processed by evaporation. After the video we tasted a variety of salts such as regular salt, pink Himalayan salt, ice cream salt, kosher salt, smoked salt, black salt, and black Indian salt. We learned some very interesting salt facts:

Man stared using salt about 6,000 years ago to season and preserve food
Salt was so valuable it was used as money
3% of the weight of seawater is salt.
Water with an unusually high % of salt are called brines. Dead Sea and Great Salt Lake are examples.
Sodium is essential for nerve and muscle function and is involved in the regulation of fluids in the body and blood pressure and volume. Chloride ions are important electrolytes , regulating blood PH and blood pressure. Humans excrete salt when we sweat and we replenish these lost salts thru our diet.
Put a little salt in the water for you cut flowers and they will last longer.
In winter more salt is used on roads than in cooking.
You can’t drink seawater BUT you can drink water from sea ice.
We also made ice cream in a plastic bag. Using milk, sugar, cream,and vanilla and our ice cream salt (rock salt)

Jr Rockhounds, April 3, 2021

by Ginger Lessard

So, pretend you’re searching for treasures at a creek, and you have your screen sieve and a bucket… now you just need some material to sift through. And three CCGMS members provided just that, so thank you to Ken & Robbie Hunt who donated some rubble from Helena, Montana that they brought back from their trip out west. Also, thank you to Pat Brown, who shared some scree from north Georgia.

On Saturday, April 3rd 2021, the CCGMS Junior Rockhounds learned about and practiced waterside sieving and sifting skills. Treasures found included Montana sapphires and north Georgia rubies and topazes!

We then discussed the Rock Hound Code of Ethics— if you’d like to read these, please see p. 13 of the March 2021 Newsletter or visit the US Forest Service website. We also talked about what to bring with you when you go on a field trip; please visit ccgms.org/tools-tips-for-fieldtrips for details. Lastly, and always a Junior Rockhounding favorite, we searched the rock pile for additional treasures – thank you for leaving us some boulder opal!

Thank you to Christen Knickerbocker for sharing photos from April 3rd Junior Rockhounds.