Garnets.

After yesterday's hike it was a slow morning start. Sleep in. Coffee. Fix the rear mud flab that got ripped off backing into my camp site last night. There was a 4" stump that pinned it between the tire and pulled it. Relative easy fix. I trimmed the broken screw holes off, drilled new ones and reattached it (just and inch shorter).

Today was a planned travel day. I took the long way around and toured the Adirondack's and found a unexpected rock shop on the way to the Garnet mine. The Barton Garnet mine has been operating for a hundred years and is a large supplier of garnet. It is the state mineral and gem stone (and January birth stone). The main product is producing garnet "dust" and grains that is used in industrial sanding and polishing. They used there stuff to polish the Hubble Space Telescope. It's also used in deck painting on ships and most of the Navy flight decks have Barton Garnet in the coating to help slow down the planes. A large block of the stone (made of feldspar, garnet and hornblende) was cut and polished and used as the corner stone for the new Freedom Tower in NYC. I spoke to a lady in the shop (a family member of the original mine owners). The corner stone was place 70 stories down on bedrock but later removed and is now in storage in Long Island awaiting placement in a more "commemorative" location on site. The garnets are also used in sand paper and water jet cutting and the space shuttle tiles.

The tour takes you to the original mine site and you can sift through the gravel and rocks and pick up pieces of garnet. The road is made of garnet gravel and I found the biggest piece next to where I parked. I got some larger stones to try another sphere.