
A 5000-mile road trip through some of the
highest points of the Eastern United States, July 12-24, 1998
NEW YORK, NEW JERSEY & DELAWARE
From Bethlehem, we drove in to New York (just to do it) and hit New Jersey's highest point (no photo) near the New York/Pennsylvania/Delaware border. Our mission was Franklin, New Jersey to collect fluorescent minerals for which the area is 'famous' for. The collecting is at an old zinc mine, the collectable minerals are fluorescent under short and long wave ultraviolet lights 'blacklights.' Once again I was at it with my hammer, this time sharing with Ryan. We each pounded our weight in rocks and had one heck of a time loafing them up and out of the mine. A cool thing about the mine is that you can test you rocks under their blacklights to help decide which are keepers and which too toss back. We didn't do much tossing back. We took as much as we could and went to lunch. What I thought was funny was there was a local that was outside the museum/quarry with a car load of the fluorescent minerals, selling them to passers by. I didn't buy any, but to his credit, he had some nice specimens