Personal Stories Contest

The 2025 MMS Club
Writing Contest

The Rules

CONTEST PERIOD: June 15th to October 15th

ELIGIBILITY: This contest is open to all MMS members in good standing.

“WOW! Look at The Rock I Found This Summer”
WRITING CONTEST 2025

Have you ever had a rock-hunting adventure that turned into an unforgettable story? Maybe it was that exhilarating weekend in the Upper Peninsula when you finally found a Lake Superior agate or a piece of copper! Or perhaps it was the time you stumbled upon a Petoskey stone in the most unexpected place. Whatever your story, we want to hear it!

Tell us all about the rock or mineral you discovered, the journey that led to it, and the experience that made it memorable. Include a photo if you'd like! Don't worry—your ninth-grade English teacher won’t be judging, and you’re welcome to ask us for help polishing grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

The contest kicks off on June 15, and submissions are open until October 15. Email your story to paddybenson@sbcglobal.net for a chance to be featured in Conglomerate articles throughout the fall and winter. Cash prizes will be awarded to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners - announced at the BIG November Auction. Please make sure that your story is in an easily read standard like Microsoft Word or PDF please.

By submitting your entry, you agree to allow MMS to post your article on our website and in the newsletter, The Conglomerate, in perpetuity.

Get to typing and send in your stories today!!

Ocotober Entries

Copper Duckie

An MMS Story

By: Cinda Wilson

This is a story about 2 able-bodied rock-crazy ladies who squeezed every last drop of rocky goodness out of a 5 day trip to the Upper Peninsula for a Michigan Mineralogical Society field trip.

When I first read about the MMS Fieldtrip to the Keweenaw Peninsula that would happen in August, several thoughts went through my mind. I had been to the Keweenaw two other times with family, and both visits were in August, which is the best time of year to go because...

A: The water is about as warm as it's going to get, and

B: There aren’t as many bugs, like black flies.

On my previous trips I had not made time to see the A.E. Seaman Museum which really bummed me out.

When I learned about the trip it was early April. I thought I wouldn’t be able to go because I lacked vacation time at my new job. So a couple of days passed and I started looking for hotel rooms because I realized I would have earned enough personal hours to cover 4 days. And then, to heck with it, I’ll just call in sick for the last day because I didn’t know when I would get another opportunity to learn about rocks from some such knowledgeable people. The only mine I’d ever been to was the Iroquois, one year before.

So while I was debating with myself about the trip, I thought I could save money by sharing a room with a friend. And I was thinking about all my rockhound friends from over the years, and my first choice was to invite Cindy Livingston to go with me. We had been friends through another rock club, and I liked to help tear down the MMS show with her over the past couple of years. So I called her and she was super excited about it. She told me that this was the first year that she and her husband had decided not to go to the UP in a long time.

I told Cindy about the dates, and the rooms that I had reserved and we waited a long 4 months. It seemed to take forever, all spring and most of summer, but then suddenly the trip snuck up on me and I didn’t feel as prepared as I would have liked. I wanna tell you I could not have picked a better travel companion. Cindy is in really great shape from her landscaping work, and she is a total rock freak like me. Which will become more apparent later in this story. We squeezed more activities into 5 days than most people would do in two full weeks. Between the 2 of us we knew of all kinds of secret rocky haunts, and gift shops to hit along the route of the *insert large groan here* 9 hour road trip. We would go to sleep exhausted each night and wake up ready for more the following morning.

I probably won’t have time to go into great detail, and I don’t want to bore anyone that might have the time to read this. So I’ll briefly describe all the places we went Monday through Friday…

I picked up Cindy on Monday morning and she didn’t pack nearly as many items as I did. We both had metal detectors, pointers, digging implements, lots of buckets, wipes, and rain jackets. It's a good thing that I drove my SUV. So, after loading up we set off and made a bee-line for the Mackinaw Bridge. It was a windy day and felt cool for August. We passed through Munising and our first fun stop was a beach to collect purple and green slag. By his time it was mid afternoon and it was super windy and cold, so we put on jackets and had fun collecting lots of glass (since we are both lapidary artists and silversmiths).

Afterwards, we stopped near Christmas to see the Bay Furnace ruins which Cindy had not seen before. Then we stopped before reaching Marquette to see the Carp River Furnace, which was new to me. Cindy knew of a place near Marquette to search for rocks and slag, so we stopped for about a half hour to scrounge around and fill a bag with unique objects. Then we moved on to our destination in Calumet and didn’t arrive until 9:30pm at night. Luckily, it didn’t get dark until about 9pm.

On Tuesday morning we met the MMS group and drove to the Cliff Mine. There was all kinds of beeping going on, out in the wilderness, as more than a dozen people on the mountain of rubble were trying their best to find chisel chips and copper treasure. We were there for a few hours and the weather was perfect. Not too hot, and not too cold.

Mike Trelfa told us that there was material at Cliff Mine that looked like greenstone but it was unlikely to be the real deal. So he took us to another location and taught us how to identify it, and showed us the best places to look. We spent about an hour there and it felt a little toasty on the rock piles, but not too bad. I filled one third of a bucket and don’t know if I really got anything worthwhile, but it was a great experience.

Around 5pm a handful of us hardcore rock fanatics went to Central Mine to see what we could find. We spent about an hour there with Dale describing the different piles and how coarse, or fine the rocks had been ground up. That location was the least successful for me, and I wouldn’t want to go hunting there again (unless it was up higher on the hill where the building used to be) but I did get a snack bag with copper that was not embedded in rock.

Afterwards, we went back to our hotel to clean up, and shortly thereafter met a group of rockhounds to eat a late dinner in Calumet. It was a much needed break, BUT, that was NOT the end of the day, ohhhh noooo. Not when there’s UV reactive sodalite to be found. And even though we didn’t get to the WaterWorks park until 9pm there was a fabulous sunset, and I took way too many photos. My adult daughter has taught me all kinds of camera tricks to use when photographing the sunset. So Cindy and I took photos of each other holding the sun in the palm of our hand. Later we noticed the moon was a small crescent shape in the western sky.

I am so grateful that Cindy let me borrow her powerful UV flashlight because I found my first Yooperlights ever. They were not super big but I was so stoked that I actually had the opportunity to find some for myself. So needless to say we were extremely tired when we got back to our room on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday morning it was rainy. We made ourselves get up and leave the hotel by 9am because I really wanted to shop at Prospectors Paradise before meeting the group at 10am to go to the Baltic Mine. By the time we braved driving next to the huge pits in the rocky area before the large rock piles, the rain had lightened up. Most of us sat in our vehicles for 20 minutes before venturing out, but then it turned out to be a really nice morning. The rocks at Baltic were more colorful than the previous day, and since they were wet, the colors really stood out. I collected a variety of small pieces to put in my display case at home and maybe turn into cabochons one day. I found a few pieces of copper there as well.

We left the Baltic after 12:30 pm and drove to the A.E. Seaman Museum. We arrived before 2pm and drooled in the gift shop before paying the admission. It was fantastic, and it felt great to check it off my bucket list after missing the opportunity twice before. We saw many MMS members visiting there as well. We limited ourselves to 2 hours because Cindy knew about a rocky gift shop near Mohawk that might have Mohawkite for sale. On our way there we stopped at a towering sign that showed how much snow fell in the area last winter. Almost 27 feet in the winter of 2024-2025. It's hard to imagine driving on roads with huge walls of snow on either side.

And you’d think that was enough for one day, but by now you should realize that we are a little kooky. Because this was the best day ever, and we couldn’t stop. Susan, Carla, Cindy, and I went back to Cliff mine around 5pm. Cindy was determined to find a chisel chip, and I was having a blast. It started to really sprinkle at 6:40pm, but we all had raincoats so we just stayed there with our metal detectors like it wasn’t even precipitating. I put a plastic bag over the battery box of my metal detector and made a short video of the rain and took more photos. Luckily, the rain did not last long.

Susan and Carla went to another hill to search for copper, and a while later my metal detector ran out of battery power so I was forced to look for blue, oxidized copper with my eyes. Then, I saw IT on the ground, and I couldn’t believe it. Just sitting there like someone had placed it there to be found. And I felt so much disbelief because no one else had seen it yet and scooped it up. Dozens of people must have walked right by it and not seen it, because it blended right in with the dirt and rock. And the words came out of my mouth without me even thinking about it. “Ooooohh mmmyyyy Gggoooddd??!!”

Cindy was all the way across the huge plateau of rocks and heard my exclamation, so I ran over and showed it to her. It was a chunk of copper about the size of a rubber duckie. I was so excited because I’d never found a piece that large and heavy before. It just made my day. By then it was about 7:40pm. Shortly thereafter, Cindy and I made our way over to the hill where Susan and Carla were still hunting. We stayed another hour but then it started to get cold and a little dark, so we decided it was time to get back to our cars. I took a hilarious selfie of the four of us weirdos hunting in the damp, cold evening until the sunlight went away, and the mist started rising in large swirls above the green trees.

On Thursday morning we were up and ready to leave by 8:30am. At this point coffee was my best friend. We went to see the large piles of rocks that Mike Trelfa had collected over the past weeks, and met a large group of MMS members at a diner for breakfast. I had a delicious omelet with hashbrowns inside, and it was good for energy because by 11 am we were all at the Laurium mine hunting for all kinds of rocks. This location had some red basalt with epidote and quartz crystals that sparkled in the sun. It was a vast field of rock and I wasn’t really sure where to hunt. So I walked around a lot and collected small amounts all over before hunkering down near the cars. By 12:30pm Cindy and I decided we wanted to walk around Calumet so we left for town.

The red buildings in Calumet are so interesting. I love old architecture. I take photos of decorative corbels, moldings, and tin ceilings, to get ideas for patterns to use in silver jewelry making. But I never knew that Calumet had a courtyard with a sculpture and piles of rocks (grouped by color) all around the perimeter. It was quite fascinating and I’m glad we happened upon it. By this point it was close to 2pm so we left to meet everyone for a picnic at a nearby park.

We met most everyone in the group to eat hot dogs, watermelon, chips, and picnic fare. It was wonderful to socialize with everyone and share our love/addiction for rocks and minerals. Carla took a fun group photo. I filled up on caffeinated soda before we left for Marquette where we would stay the night. But of course we had to make a couple of stops along the way.

We had to leave the picnic shortly after 3pm since our next hotel was a few hours away. While driving around Houghton we tried to find a rock shop across the street from Walmart, but we learned it had moved to a different location. We found the Keweenaw Gem and Gift shop on the east side of downtown, and the store had changed ownership. It was small, and had no rough material. Just some jewelry, and specimens, and I don’t even remember now because it was so disappointing. Cindy and I left without buying anything.

Luckily, Cindy knew about another gift shop on our way to Ishpaming. And she had met the shop owner many times before. It was at the Ford Center and Forest which seems like it is in the middle of nowhere. Now “That Place” was cool. Not very big, but worth the stop. There were rocks for sale and on display, in addition to tons of wood carvings. The back room also had some slabs and rocks for sale. By this point I had already spent quite a bit of money, so I asked the shop owner if he was willing to trade for a pound of raw Mine #8 turquoise. He was in favor of it and weighed it up, so I traded for some Mohawkite, and datolite, and a bunch of slabs. Woo hoo!

We figured out that “Da Yoopers Tourist Trap” did not close until 7pm on Thursdays so we had just enough time to stop at Champion Mine for some Specular hematite. Thank goodness that Cindy had been there before Covid and remembered how to get there. I had no idea where we were going, and there was a huge puddle in the two-track on the way to the parking lot. We had no idea how deep it was, or what boulders might be lurking beneath the water but I told Cindy my jeep has a little higher clearance than my old minivan, so we held our breath and drove through it. It was fine, and the parking lot was just around the bend.

When we got out of the car I was greeted by the most sparkling ground I’d ever seen. The sun was getting lower at dinnertime. And I couldn’t figure out why my camera phone just wasn’t picking up on the sparkles. It was baffling and maddening at the same time. But we didn’t have time to waste because I wanted to pick up as many small pieces as I could since we were on a timetable. We probably stayed for 45 minutes and filled about three 1-gallon containers. Cindy saw a nice drill core and sent a photo of it to Dale and Mike.

We got to “Da Yoopers” about a half hour before they closed. But I only wanted to buy a few rocks from the rock shop there, and soon we were on our merry way to Marquette. We checked in around 8:00pm and went out for dinner. When we got back we decided we were too tired to use the pool.

Friday morning we decided to rearrange the entire car so that we knew whose rocks were whose, and when Cindy got home she could quickly unpack her gear. We stopped at several beaches around Marquette but didn’t find any interesting rocks so we moved on to Presque Isle Park and arrived about 11am. We stopped briefly, and got a small amount of rocks that look like Septarian, but aren’t. Then we moved onto our much anticipated activity for the day to get Kona Dolomite.

I had never been to the Lindberg and Sons Quarry before, but Cindy had visited a long time ago. We learned at the front desk that this was the last year they were going to let people drive their cars directly to the piles of Kona. In following years people will have to park elsewhere and the rocks will be trucked over to the site for visitors to pick what they want. So I felt super fortunate to have the opportunity to look at the source.

When we arrived at the two story pile of pink rocks Greg was there collecting. He had been there a while and showed us where he found some really colorful pieces. We were all wearing reflective vests and hard hats that Lindberg provided, and I took a selfie of the 3 of us. Greg left shortly thereafter and Cindy and I stayed a couple of hours. At one point, Cindy was extremely excited about seeing a bald eagle fly right over us.

When we were about to wrap things up, without any planning, Susan and Carla arrived in their van. And thus, another selfie was needed. We stayed a while longer and showed our friends where some really dark pink rocks were, and where I had found good pieces with “Moose Blood” in them.

By 2:30pm we were starving and stopped at Crossroads Restaurant which had a tavern-like atmosphere with a bar and multiple antler chandeliers. The quesadillas we ordered were devoured very quickly, since we were ravenous and had a lot of miles to cover for the rest of the day. After an hour of driving I was getting sleepy, so Cindy Googled coffee places, and she found a coffee truck by the side of the road in a tiny town which was amazingly good.

We stopped at one more beach to say goodbye to Lake Michigan before crossing back over the “Mighty Mack”. I dropped Cindy off at home at 9pm and then drove back to my house. Both of us were too tired to look at our new hoard, but we were both upbeat about all that we had seen and found, and explored, and learned, on our most amazing adventure. Thank you so much to Mike, and Dale, and everyone who made the Field Trip possible.

Hey Cindy! Let’s go again next August.