Customer Reviews

Rockhounding Montana, 2nd: A Guide to 91 of Montana's Best Rockhounding Sites (Rockhounding Series)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As a fellow rock-hound, I can certainly appreciate good directions to off-the-trail sites to collect minerals and fossils. There's no feeling like when you hold a great find in your hands. With Montana's help, the difficulty in finding these locales is greatly reduced. Not only are you provided with a map w/ contour shading, but gps coordinates are given as well. She makes every effort to educate you as well as guide you. I was extremely impressed and pleased by the end result.

I've personally met Ms. Hodges and read her other works; She's an excellent writer and well traveled, with ambition only over-shadowed by her talent. I intend to keep an eye on this geo-journalist, and expect great things of her.

Dolly would be proud!!

The book was very useful to me on my recent trip. The river was too high so Montana agates were off the menu unfortunately. The book is as good as any of the others in the series.

I have read this book and found it to be extremely informative and full of good places to visit

A great book to guide you to locations for finding fossils in Montana. Last Spring we went camping at Makoshika State Park near Glendive Montana and could not find a park ranger who could direct us to a location open to fossil hunting. This book provides the details throughout Montana.

This book decribes in great detail the location and historical geological means of each rock and mineral. Its a perfect guide for the traveling rockhound that enjoys finding news things while exploring montana!

This book is misleading with regard to the sapphire hunting. We tried two of the sapphire locations. The Yogo Creek directions were vague, with GPS coordinates that were totally off. The Spokane Bar Mine location was also inaccurate. It would seem the author hasn't been to the site in quite a while or they would have warned the reader about missing signage. Montana is a big state and having poor directions can cost you many hours driving when you could be hunting rocks.

On the plus side, the book is good at getting the reader excited about rock hunting. A strong word of advice to the reader: Don't be trusting when following the directions to the specific locations. Do your own research before setting out.

I am so grateful for this book. My husband and I just returned from Montana and other than one site that must have been affected by massive road rebuilding, we had little trouble finding the other sites that were listed. Of course, with this year's massive flooding due to high amounts of winter snow, one of the sites was inaccessible due to a road washout and cleanup of toxic waste from old mine tailings prevented us from visiting yet another. The ones we were able to reach proved delightful for me as a lifelong rockhound. I found garnets, golden barite crystals, fossils and numerous other minerals. My husband even joined in the search. As to the signage for the Spokane Bar Sapphire Mine, there is currently no problem with it. I am relatively new to GPS so I cannot speak to that concern, because putting in coordinates is not something that I know about. The authors put in a lot of time and research as I can see and I am looking forward to returning to Montana to explore yet more sites. We were able to pick and choose what sites to go to by the descriptive analysis and excellent information about how much effort would be needed to reach each place and time needed to find what we wanted.

my family and i love rock hunting here in montana while camping and fishing. it is great to have a book specific to our area instead of a book with every rock found on earth. i hope to visit all the sites described!

My father and I bought this book at the first gas station we stopped at on a week-long trip in Montana, summer 2010. Very glad we did!

First I'll address the negative things. As some have said there are some things that are inaccurate. We found a few things that were a little unclear or left something to be desired in the directions and descriptions. I think most of the problem is time and things change. Published in 2006 and it was 2010 and now 2011. In 3 or 4 years a lot can change. Signs fall, roads get constructed/destructed, and property changes hands.

We followed the book and found a several smallish, but pretty garnets on the shores of Ruby River Reservoir. Up the road about 30 minutes from that we got some mineral samples of garnets, mica, and other rocks from a road cut. We took highway 43 west off the I-15 to Calvert loop old mine site were we found some brown calcite scattered around and great epidote in the gulley/valley west of the lake. After you come around the pit there is a road that heads just of the water just around the corner drop down in the trees in that small valley. You'll see lots of rock and some larger boulders. Scattered through that is the epidote. It was easy pickings when we were there. We didn't bother trying to look for sapphires on our own using the book. We went to Gem Mountain, paid our $20, sifted through the bucket, and each came away with a half-dozen pretty little sapphires. We didn't find any great rare amazing worth a fortune gems, but the hunt, the family bonding, the thrill of a find even small... Priceless!!

This book is an excellent source for locating several specific fossil sites. I visited some of the listed fossil sites 30 years ago when these fossil sites were not known to the public. There are some excellent collecting suggestions and recommendations especially when collecting on BLM or Forest Service sites. It's always a good investment of time to read about collecting on or near protected sites. While I am not a Rock Hound collector, I would highly recommend adding this fossil resource book to your personal library. RDM