At noon it was time to quit, so I headed south to the Centennial #2 Mine and made my lunch in the parking area there.

Unfortunately there isn't much left of the mine dump piles at the Centennial and the bulldozed area was relatively small. Here is a picture of most of the group searching the dozed area, with the old mine shaft building behind.

Most of the Copper that I found here is inside larger rocks that I have yet to crack or cut open, but I did find some nice micro crystals including these...

It was a hot afternoon, and by 3:00 I'd had enough, so I returned to camp and put away the day's finds, had supper, and relaxed for the rest of the evening.

Tuesday August 8th

The first field trip of the day was at the Champion #3 Mine in Painesdale, Michigan. Here are the old mine buildings visible when you drive in to the mine area.

I have seen photos from other reports on this mine that show the massive mine dump piles, but they seem to be quickly disappearing for use in local road projects. What is left is really just the outer rim of the once massive piles. This is a picture of our parking area and the largest remaining pile.

I had pretty good luck here and found some nice pieces of Copper.

  

One guy there seemed quite casual about finding a heavy 7" plate of float Copper while detecting in the parking area. I would have been jumping for joy, but I'm new at this. At noon it was time to drive up to the Laurium Mine and have lunch before the hunt began. The heat from the rock piles must have been getting to me because I completely forgot to take any pictures at the Laurium. What must have been a fairly large rock pile has been dozed flat to about the same level as the road you come in on. That's still 7 or 8 feet above actual ground level in some places. Most of the Copper I found here was in the form of amygdules; oval or almond shaped pieces of Copper that are often hollow or contain other minerals inside.

Here are a few pieces of Laurium Mine Copper that I "cleaned up" using an old fashioned Copper cleaning remedy, ketchup.

And some of the micro crystals I found...

At 3:00 or 3:30 I was hot and dry and decided it was time to return to McLain State Park and have a swim in Lake Superior. I had gone wading the day before and it didn't seem as cold as I expected. The lake bottom here is covered in rocks about the size of a potato and larger. I used my "Adams Aqua-view" to scan the lake bottom but saw nothing resembling agates, only a piece of banded chert which stayed where it was. I had a refreshing swim and was glad I braved the waters. That night was the Mineral Retreat Banquet which I had signed up for, but I decided to skip it and rest up for the following day.

Wednesday August 9th

This morning's field trip was at the Central Mine, which was my most northerly field trip of the week. On my way to the mine I stopped at the grocery store in Calumet for some Gatorade to help get through the afternoon. It really did make a difference.

The Central Mine dump pile is still quite large, and I got this photo of the parking area from the top.

At one point I got another fellow rockhound to take this shot of me. It's hard to tell from the photo but it's about a 45 degree angle up to where I'm at.

From the sound of the metal detectors most people were finding specimens. I heard of at least two other people besides myself who found Copper "Chisel Chips". The rockhound next to me explained that the chisel chips were made by early miners who used chisels to break up the porous Copper into small pieces for more efficient transporting. Here's the one I found, followed by another nice piece of Copper from the Central Mine, both with their original patina intact.