Yes, it is great to have an active club.  It can mean the difference between creating a "rockhounds" or catering to people with just a mild interest or who just want to sit around socialize.  I'm familiar with many people in the latter category.   I have no problem with those type of people, but the "rockhounding" experience is very important in my opinion.

We'd love to see some of your finds from Yellowstone.  Looks like with 150 lbs of rocks you've got plenty you can show us.    Virginia has some very interesting rocks to be found -- especially the Western part.

Welcome to the RHL mobjack68.

Welcome mobjack,
that sounds like a heck of a trip!
It's another world out there all right.
There's a lot of good rock in Virginia but we just don't seem
to make it up there much. I would really like to collect some
of the cherts someday.

Thanks for dropping in,
Joe

Joe, it reminds me of Ocean Jasper from Madagascar.

Hey Joe..back at ya..
need to relay an experience I had many moons ago on the coast. I grew up in the shadow of the Ches Bay Bridge Tunnel, spent a lot of hours on the beach there. While in college (Old Dominion) I lived about 4 miles from where I grew up and a little closer to the Lesner Bridge (Lynnhaven Inlet). I did fiberglass/boat repair to support myself thru college and being in that area meant I was exposed to a lot of "boat people" One of those folks, whom I had done boat repair for, invited my wife and I to "go digging".
It seems that there was some expansion approved for an area along the Lynnhaven River....man made cut from Broad Bay to the Lynnhaven Inlet. Anyway, when the original cut was made, they brought a sand dredge in and just "blew" the sand/salt water mix up onto the property on one side of the cut. Made it about 10' higher than the other side...anyway, we got the necessary tools together with some screens and sifting equipment and after work one Saturday we hiked the 30' or so from the parking spaces provided by the boat hotel, we set up shop. Opened and adult beverage and started digging. About 5' down, we ran into a dark layer of sediment in the sand...almost like a hydrogen sulfide line at the "real" beach...just below that line, we started sifting.
It seems there was a Native American encampment there many many moons ago. The dredge sucked it up and deposited it up on high ground for us...and we took advantage of it. We found about a half a 5 gallon bucket of shards, chips, arrowheads, points etc....and probably that much in pottery pcs that we discarded. I was not into arrowheads, although I did keep a bird point that was absolutely gorgeous, so they took the spoils (at my insistence) we toasted a good dig...and I never went back.
There is now a new(er) 4 lane covering that area with a new(er) boatel and necessary dock space/parking lot...

Go to www.flashearth.com and type in these coordinates....
lat 36.906067
lon  -76.065497

that puts you pretty close to the spot we were digging in the parking lot to the right of the big building...boatel.....Rt 279 replaced the parallel rd to the left in the pic....that was ALL sand...who knows what was really under there...
For the record...William & Mary had been contacted, no one ever saw them there....

I have read accounts of your folks finding surface stuff (Wake Forest) in advance of construction after initial disturbance....do they keep stuff like that to themselves or is there some super secret late night ritual to be inducted into the fraternity??? coordinates would be great...heads up would be nice??