Speaking of hat trips I thought I would show guys how to have a fun afternoon romp in the outdoors right in our back yard with your son or wife or both or just all by yourself.
The image below is a tiny square copied out of an aerial map I made using Terra server that spans from Indianola to the hills below DNF and 20 miles wide that is a whopping 36 megabytes and the biggest image file I ever made.
You can get these aerials at your county NRCS office or anyplace you wish to look at, but Since I could make a map like that I went ahead and did it and it took me a LOOOONG damn time to build it, but boy can you EVER see what is going on along the sunflower river with it, all the way into DNF and out the other side, things really jell together when you can see that much dirt at one glance.
This slice of the map is a place that I'm leaving for in just a few minutes to spend a little time havin a looky around. Grab the ice chest some colas and hit the turnroads.
The mound arrow points to an anomoly in the earth that is the site of an existing 40 foot tall mound with two smaller mounds flanking it. The other arrows point to spots I can see on this map that Ive never been to that look real good potentially for finding rocks.
When I noticed these anonomlies on these maps at known mound sites, I then looked at other areas where I had found rocks where no mound is standing and was surprised to see the same odd looking anomolies there as well.
I realized that you could actually see old native american occupations on these aerials, and I began to study them intensely using maps that zoom in much closer than this one does to study the soil colorations.
Some of them are elevation changes due to build up and usage, but most of them are nothing but a place on a ridge where the ash they left has not leached into the soil and you can still see it on the surface in these maps. Potassium is the only element I believe that does not leach into the earth, it stays where it lands.
You cant see most of these when you drive up to them.
They appear no different than the rest of the earth around them usually, but sometimes they have shells on them and that is a SURE sign that you have found a 5,000 year old occupation site. Sometimes it's just the slightest rise where the farmers have smoothed then with years of tilling.
Sometimes it's as flat as a board but I have found some serious rocks on board flat sites like this.
If you look at the other arrows, may have to look a minute it aint an instant thing, you can see that the ground anomolies are showing clearly that there was something going on at that spot and rocks may be there to be had on the surface. Sometimes different color saturations show length of occupation, sometimes they show a difference in occupation frames spanning thousands of year. They kept comin into the region and re-occupying the same spots because living on the land these are the best places to live.
Notice also where they are all located.
After awhile you begin to see a pattern of settlement site selection that helps you to locate more of them. They almost always had a site at any intersection on a stream or creek or river. The bigger the intersection the bigger the settlement. I myself prefer the tiny ones because they are walked much less and yield some fine stones sometimes.
They were dependant on the water for usage and their highways were the rivers. They traded as extensively as from new york state area to Mexico from here and you can see the proof in the type stones that the points are made from. The first trade routes were forged not for fur but for stone. It was a BIG deal to them.
This is how you "cheat" and it does a damn fine job of it too. I'm going to leave now and go 15 miles from the house, I have never been there before (an adventure) and I already know that when I get there, I am gonna see rocks.
It's a treasure map
And boy do I EVER like going out there to see if it's really there!!!! It's fun, it's clean and wholesome too, just another way to enjoy our great outdoors in the back yard.
This is also the only hobby that I have done that can actually pay for itself. If you find the right rock, you can make a thousand dollars off of it. Most of them that you find are worth less than $10 bucks but I have found quite a few of them that are worth between $100 and $350 depending on the buyer. Theys MONEY in them thar fields!
I dont sell them but rather collect them, I figure if they worth that much now then by the time I get old they may be worth a little more and I can turn them loose as one collection and make a lick on it if I want to or need to.
I don't know many hobbies that can deliver that. Value with interest. I know duck huntin DAMN sure aint doin it but a cubs hat in 25 years may be worth even more for sure!. The winning home run ball? Who KNOWS!
[ July 28, 2002: Message edited by: Old Salty ]
