Red Beryl Mine

Today Derek and I met the owners of the Red Beryl Mine which is located in the mountains of Utah. Red beryl would be near the top of any rare gemstone list. In fact, red beryl is so rare, most people don't even know that it exists, but I saw it. Gem beryl occurs in a variety of colours; green (emerald), light blue (aquamarine), pink (morganite), and very rarely, a deep red. It was in the late 1950's, around when I was born, that the deposit at the Red Beryl Mine was discovered. It is mined from an open pit. The red beryl crystals are more or less randomly distributed in the white rhyolite host rock. Red beryl was deposited in expansion fractures that formed in the rhyolite as the magma cooled. We are talking a long time ago. Tons of host rock are drilled, blasted, and moved in the search of fractures where red beryl crystals might occur. Now after your lesson on red beryl I must tell you that I didn't buy any. Remember at the beginning of the paragraph when I said it was rare, well rare usually means expensive. It was, but I did buy some aquamarine faceted stones. Look for these new stones set in bangles, necklaces and of coarse rings.
The picture here shows how we are getting around Tucson this year. My light blue "Huffy" just needs a basket and some streamers hanging from the handle bars to look perfect. It only has one gear and you can hear me huffing and puffing up the hills. Good thing Tucson is fairly flat. It's just those mountains around the perimeter of Tucson, that Derek keeps wanting to bike up, that causes me some trouble.