Customer Reviews

Gem Trails of Texas

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The first thing you need to notice about this book is the publishing date. While fifteen years is a blink in geological time, it does predate the GPS unit whose use would help this book a lot since many of the sites are only vaguely described. The scale on most of the map must be B-flat or something, because they are in no way proportional to the actual distances on the real roads. The book is also full of highly inaccurate or out right wrong numbers. Of the 46 sites in the book (back cover says 56), I have collected (visited) 27 of them. At many of the sites I found so little material, that I considered the whole thing to be a waste of time. At one site (Lake Possum Kingdom) if you follow the directions, you will need a boat for the last mile and a half of the trip. I often was able to apply a little reasoning about geology and find other sites that were far superior to the ones in the book. Some of the sites cover geographical areas that are larger than some states (Toyah Agate, Cleburne fossils.) Many of the sites are pay to hunt sites. Texas has enough roadside geology exposed in road cuts that I have never found it necessary to pay to hunt rocks. Further more I often knew of free sites that were far superior to the pay site listed. An example would be wood and jasper in the Trinity-Crocket area. I spent all day looking for anything and at the end of the day I had maybe a pound of low-grade stuff. The next weekend I went to Madison county 35 miles away and found about a hundred pounds in three hours. All in all, this book is a big disappointment.

This helpful book has assisted in finding very interesting samples and formations...Unfortunately, it seems the most recent addition was published in 1987...An update would be wonderful...