Herkimer, NY - small town, abundant antique shops, thrift shops, derelict buildings with chalkware saints in the window, verandas with permanent garage sales inviting you to knock and enquire about the many treasures displayed within.
But that's not why we're here. We're here to mine the fabulous Herkimer Diamonds, which somehow or another I stumbled across on the internet and have obsessed me ever since. And so we base ourselves at the motel in Herkimer and drive out to the mines. I'm excited, far more so than my daughter and somehow she's caught my enthusiasm and is excited as well. Her mother is a little more pragmatic.
We arrive, tour the museum, view the incredible displays of giant crystals that have been found there, for sale from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, there to whet your appetite, then pick up our hammers and head into the quarries. They give you a tiny plastic bag to hold your finds in, and I look at the clerk and suggest that perhaps it's not going to be big enough and he looks at me and I understand that this is foreshadowing....
Now we begin, it's straightforward enough, you bash rocks and break them and find, occasionally, tiny crystals within. Which we do for an hour or two, but the crystals are too tiny, and while the daughters mother is encouraging us to give up both my daughter and I are obsessed.
In the cliff face there are numerous exposed cavities, vugs that have been opened and emptied, looking within you can imagine they once contained hundreds, maybe thousands of giant crystals. They inspire you, but the hammers we have are too small, we can't break open the cliff and so try our luck digging in the eroded bedrock, soil, easy to break rock. We find some, small - all well under 1 cm, but perfect, and it's an 8 hour day passed relaxing and bashing stones.
Now I'm not disappointed, it was good but I know I should have packed better and I could have made it great.
If you're going to try it here are a few recommendations to maximize your trip: (the voice of rueful experience...)
BRING: sledgehammers, wedges, chisels, buckets (for water - to rinse your finds), screens (to search through the dirt), dynamite (OK, probably they won't let you but it would sure help). Work the base of the cliff, you'll only find tiny ones in the rocks that are broken lying about the quarry. Or simply move the rocks and excavate into the bedrock, this will assure you of some minor findings and you might get lucky and break into a vug from above.