Today was the first day of the Northwest Federation of Mineralogical Society’s 2008 show in Ontario, Oregon. I thought this would be a great event for the family so we loaded up the car and headed to Ontario.

We arrived at the show just after it opened. Right away we could tell that this show was larger than the local shows we had attend before. It wasn’t long and we started running in to friends. The first people we ran into were the Stringers from Nampa, Idaho; they actually had a booth at the show. As I was talking with Bill Stringer along came Bill Henn and John Howell from the Owyhee Gem and Mineral Society. We had a good talk about the field trip that is scheduled for tomorrow.

There are a lot of dealer at the show. We spent almost three hours looking at what they had to offer and talking about rocks. After that my wife and son were getting quite tired and wanted to leave. We started heading to the exit but I couldn’t help myself, I had to stop at the silent auction and bid on a few rocks. As we continued to the gate I noticed a few dealers that we hadn’t visited yet so once again I had to stop.

The last dealer we talked to was Emory Coons form Burns, Oregon. He had many arrowheads and blades that he knapped from obsidian and jasper. My wife actually had won a large arrowhead that he made earlier in the day when a gentleman at the show decided he wanted her to spin the wheel of fortune and bought her a couple of spins. It was good to meet the artist that created the arrowhead. I had a good talk with Emory. He explained a lot about working with obsidian and where to find it at Glass Butte which is near Burns.

Once we finally left the show we headed into Ontario looking for a place to eat. We ended up at a restaurant named DJ’s Family Restaurant. The food was very well prepared with quality ingredients and priced right. The waitress also provided excellent service. I normally wouldn’t plug a restaurant on this site but after eating eight to ten meals in restaurants over the past week and having mediocre food and service at best I just have to point out a business doing it right.

The Gallery below shows a little bit of what you will see at the show if you are going.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 9:42 pm and is filed under Gem Shows, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.