My wife, Robyn, wanted red beryl for Valentine's Day. It is an expensive, rare gemstone, in the same family as emeralds. She wanted to find her own, so we booked a dig with Gem.Tours and had fun getting dirty. We went to their Searle Canyon Mine where owners John Holfert and Jeremy Fuller helped us know where and how to find the minerals.

We found a ton of topaz and a good number of small beryl. In my photo, beryl are the small hexagonal discs. (One is free-standing and the other is attached to a piece of topaz.) While we did not find any beryl large enough to be faceted, we will probably clean up what we have and use a couple uncut to make some fine earrings.

The small, clear gems in the photo are topaz. The larger gems are also topaz, covered with rhyolite. If we clean them up we will have some impressive specimens.

The mine is located on the west side of Topaz Mountain, NW of Delta. It is relatively easy to find nice topaz at the mountain and the surrounding area. Various shades of topaz can be found. As it is exposed to sunlight, most lose their color and become crystal clear.

We do a lot of rock hounding and find many rocks and minerals on our own. The best red beryl sites are all under mining claims and so you have to pay to go after it.

We had fun and learned a lot. Gem.tours is a fist class operation and we recommend them.