Riley,

Those are really cool looking. It's amazing all the colors that the minierals can take on. Such vivid ranges, just quickly looking at your picture my eyes noticed the bright yellow one closer to the top. When I was a kid I believe I had a small geo collection. It was fun classifying each one (not to mention really diff. - your dad may of actually helped me with that project) Not only are the colors amazing but I'm also drawn to the smooth textures of some as well. In Santa Cruz there is a really large bead store. Not only do they have a wide variety of man made beads but they also carry a number of colored multi shaped stones like the minerals you saw but much smaller.

Dury my undergrad it was a requirement to take one science class. I had the option of taking geology or botany. Both were very difficult, you had to examine plants and rocks, take them home and then classify each to it's lineage family line. I ended up taking California Flora which was really cool. We were able to take field trips to some of Cali.'s more scenic locations exposing ourselves to a whole new world of plants, rocks, and wild life. It's experiences like this and your trip to the Smithsonian Museum that I used to take for granted. As I get older and life gets busy it's these experiences that I've learned to charish and remember the most.

WOW......I have always loved minerals. In college I took Earth Science and the building had wonderful displays. I really enjoyed the shapes, textures,and colors. Many paint colors are made from minerals. Like Cobault blue. If you go to Iowa City some day you should go into the Geology building. When your Dad was little we went to Chicago and he loved the Science Museum there. One of the things he bought was a rock collection.

Tell us all about school.

I will be gone on a ship to Hawaii. Since there is volcanic actgivity there, I imagine that we may see some beautiful rocks. I hoped to take a submarine ride to see the fish. Do you remember the glass bottom boat you, Claire and Gerry went on off the ship we took to Mexico?

i love the panoramic photos! (referring to the previous blue angle pic too) looks a like a very neat display... hard to believe those colors can come from a rock.

tip on photos - to 'resize' a photo visually you can set it's width (or height in this case) to a value and by default the height/width (value not defined) will be set to keep the correct dimensions. you can set it using exact pixels or it might be easier to just use percentages too. currently your width is at 100% so try adding width to your image code the database gives you.

for example: width="50%"