Beach Combing Treasures found on the Oregon Coast

Rewards from Monday 

Monday the Oregon Fossil Guy and I had a nice afternoon checking out the beach. Conditions were clear and we pretty much had the beaches to ourselves.  We had a rather successful day.

I hadn't been out there in some time to see these conditions exposing the tide pools out beyond the normal tide line.  I came home with a nice piece of bone, some petrified wood, beautiful fancy jasper, brecciated jasper and a few agates.  Much to our disappointment the blue appearing agate on the right is NOT a blue agate but just a cloud agate with a bluish rind.  Hopefully today's storm will remove the sand necessary to expose the gravel bars further up the beach.  Please be careful out there and don't try beach combing today with this storm lasting until 6:00 tonight. Today is definitely a good day to storm watch from the safety and comfort of your warm beach front hotel room.

Fossils, a Concretion, Petrified Wood etc. 

How to buy a Rock Tumbler for the holidays...

< - - Consider carefully a more useful size rock  tumbler for medium sized loads or larger material up to 2¼" (size of a golf ball). Lortone's single 4½lb. barrel features a 10-sided interior surface (measuring 5¾" by 3½" deep) for optimum tumbling action and a capacity for 5 cups of rocks.

Here on the Oregon Coast beach combers will find many small stones but you can also find a selection of agates, jaspers and petrified wood in larger sizes. Don't let yourself be sucked in by an attractive low price on a rock tumbler only to find you are limited to polishing stones the size of a quarter and smaller.   

Oregon's Fossil Guy & Beachcombing in the Snow at Newport

Scott beach combing in the snow

Greeted by winter snow & hail storms that rivaled the Rockies...Our "Oregon Fossil Guy" hit the beaches early Thursday with  our friend Scott & both were awarded excellent results on the rock/fossil gathering sides.  Below are a just a few of Guy's trophies: the large one at the top is a sizable 3" piece of agatized wood  weighing over a ¼ pound.  The lower left piece is a nice piece of myrtle wood and the remaining piece is a very nicely preserved fossil clam shell.

Photo was taken wet to better show the colors.

Beautiful wood found on the Oregon Coast

It is beautiful, sunny and bright today in Newport for a 3 day weekend at the coast.  These beautiful specimens of wood were found recently by two different fellows beach combing here on the Central Oregon Coast.  Ken  found the beautiful agatized wood specimen.  The Myrtle wood was found by Nathan of Neotsu  and it weighs over 14lbs.  and just over 12" across. 

Trophy Sized Petrified Wood Found on the Oregon Coast

Just in yesterday: this trophy sized petrified wood was found by Dane, a north county resident earlier this year, here on the Central Oregon Coast. This is the biggest piece we have seen so far weighing in at just under 72¼ pounds, looks to be part of a very large limb or a part of the tree trunk. The color is actually blue grey measureing 11" x 12" and wet as you see it (as seen for scale over a large full size 22 ounce geologist pick for scale) it takes on a black with beige wood grain pattern running through it. It looks like it might be Spalted Myrtle an Oregon Myrtlewood.

This was found by lucky beachcomber Dane, a north county resident. It took him three hours to carry it home from the beach. What a determined guy he is.

Strange Petrified Teredo Wood Specimen

This piece found by Ronnie the "Rockhunter" of Newport measures 6" x 2½" and is a most unsual specimen. The areas that appear to have been sawed are the actual damage done by the Teredo mollusk to this piece of wood.

Petrified wood found beachcombing at Newport, Oregon

This was another extreamly large piece (weighing in at maybe 10 plus pounds) of petrified wood just found here in Newport by Arnie, another lucky guest. This piece has an oval shape centerally located of druzy quartz crystals, and the end above the teeth of the garden fork appears to be well agatized displaying the wonderful grain paterns in colorful banding of bluish-black, grey and white agate.

April was a very busy month here at the beach!

This winter the storms scoured the beaches down so far that ancient forest tree trunks and shipwrecks that had been buried for 200+ years or so were exposed. This brought so many visitors to the coast, that on some days there were as many as 150 people at a time on the local beaches.

Photo above shows a small but unique 2" piece of petrified wood limb cast with small worm holes, as found in by Newport resident Larry Thompson. This was just one of the many beautiful pieces that we had seen from the many people beachcoming in April.

Trophy Sized Petrified Wood Found!

Beachcomber Thiago G. of Lincoln City, proudly holding the large 15 pound Myrtle Wood boulder he reciently found on the beach, in Lincoln County, Oregon.