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Petoskey stone
- acidburnNSA 9y agoI grew up in the small town of Petoskey, MI. You can indeed just walk down the shores of Lake Michigan and find these. People at local camps come and gather them one day and then spend the rest of their vacation polishing them in rock polishing stations and fashioning them into jewelry and stuff. All the gift shops sell Petoskey stone paper weights, knives, boxes, necklaces, Michigan-shaped Petoskey stones, you name it!
- interfixus 9y agoAll the stuff I didn't know I didn't know that I get to know I didn't know on HN every single day. Thank you :)
- losteverything 9y agoIs the Mole Hole still around.
- acidburnNSA 9y agoWoah, random! I loved that place. The Petoskey location closed but they're operating in Sault Ste. Marie [1]. [1] https://www.themoleholeonline.com/history/ https://www.themoleholeonline.com/history/
- losteverything 9y agoThere was one in Barnegat Light, NJ - and i assumed it was named after the entrance in Petoskey
- nslocum 9y agoSmall world; I grew up in Petoskey too. What year did you graduate?
- angmarsbane 9y agoI was a "fudgie." I spent 90% of my summers growing up in Petoskey.
- awful 9y agoAbout 45 years ago from TC, before they redid the lakefront area (? wasn't there a concrete/gravel plant? or was that Charlevoix), I found so many I couldn't carry them home. Is it still that way? Also, back when Consumer's energy was trying to make nuclear your friend, the Big Rock nuclear plant used to have a a very cool visitor's center with dioramas of the core and a cool cartoon movie theater IIRC. I got the comic book!
- sus_007 9y agoWhy a Wiki page of a stone on the front page of HN ?
- dang 9y agoAnything intellectually interesting is welcome here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Wikipedia pages about predictable things are not interesting, but when the topic is uncorrelated with anything else, they're fine.
- interfixus 9y agoBecause it is, you know, interesting.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mherdeg 9y agoProbably because yesterday on reddit, this article was trending: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6p1iwi/til_a_michigan_rock_collector_found_an_impressive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6p1iwi/til_a... ("TIL A Michigan rock collector found an impressive 93 lb. Petoskey stone in Lake Michigan in 2015, only to have it promptly confiscated by authorities. The stone violated a Michigan law that states no more than 25 pounds of rocks or minerals can be taken from the Great Lakes per year.") I'm guessing that someone reading that reddit post found the phenomenon interesting and submitted its Wikipedia page to news.ycombinator.
- curtis 9y agoThat is exactly right. I'd never heard of Petoskey stones before, found them pretty interesting, and I figured many people on HN would think the same.
- taylorbuley 9y agoI'll send you one if you'd like to see one in person. DM me at @taylorbuley
- jphillipsio 9y agoI was there and found a few on Saturday. I try to make it to Petoskey at least once per year. Looking for these is one of my favorite ways to spend an afternoon.
- jlamberts 9y agoWe always used to go up to Torch Lake during summer when I was a kid. Collected a bunch of these. The easiest way to find them is to bring some water with you and go for a walk on a rocky road, and pour the water on likely rocks. The water makes the pattern much clearer and fewer people look for them on the roads.
- chime 9y agoWell this was a serendipitous post! My wedding anniversary is coming up and I wasn't sure what to get my wife. Thanks to this, I looked up 'Petoskey stone' on Amazon and found a pretty necklace for sale. Someday I'd love to visit Michigan and buy matching earrings/bracelet in person.
- geoffbrown2014 9y agoSpent many summers up at Glen Lake as a kid sanding and polishing these stones. Lots of fun.
- xanthineai 9y agoAll the way from Traverse City to Charlevoix is, indeed, very good and never crowded. Storms are good for stirring up the aluvial deposits to reveal new finds. Rubber boots will help if the temperature is significantly below freezing. Otherwise, I prefer barefoot with some local microbrews. The biggest one I found, about the size of an american football, was the one I stepped on. :)
- jcrabtr 9y agoFun fact: Claude Shannon, father of information theory, was born in Petoskey, MI [0]. He grew up not far away in Gaylord, MI, where you can now visit Claude Shannon park [1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon [1]: http://www.gaylordmichigan.net/member-37/claude-shannon-park-329.html http://www.gaylordmichigan.net/member-37/claude-shannon-park...
- Isamu 9y agoSee, you can bring up information theory in almost any context.
- EvanAnderson 9y agoI am _so_ checking that out the next time we pass thru Gaylord!
- edwhitesell 9y agoI spent a lot of childhood summers in Gaylord, MI. I'm sure I've been to this park, but somewhat I recall mention of him elsewhere too.
- m12k 9y agoThey look like organically grown voronoi diagrams - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voronoi_diagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voronoi_diagram
- toomanybeersies 9y agoI've always found it fascinating collecting fossils. Of course the rock is millions of years old, but the fact that it has the shape of a shell embedded in it from millions of years ago just makes the fact so much more real.
- cpr 9y agoSerendipity! Just looking at a large one last night, here at my wife's parents house in Boyne City, found decades ago. (My mother in law grew up here.)
- jcrabtr 9y agoThe craft fair in Boyne over the 4th of July is a good place to buy trinkets made with Petoskey stones like the ones in the shape of the state that someone else mentioned. We didn't make it there this summer, but stop by Kilwin's and Lake Street Deli for me!
- cpr 9y agoLake Street Deli is amazing, as is the Boyne City Bakery, run by a world class French baker.
- tjr225 9y agoMy Grandmother used to take me hiking along the northern shores of the lower peninsula of Michigan in search of these stones.
- jlrbuellv 9y agoThe even cooler part of these stones is that they often look totally plain when dried out, because the white coral pattern blends into the light gray of the stone. If you're walking the beach looking for them, you might have to pick up likely looking candidates and dip them in the water to darken the gray parts of the stone; every time is like a little lottery that you might win.
- fdavison 9y agoBy brother collected these as a kid living in Charlevoix and threw a bunch into Lake Champlain, nearly a thousand miles away, in the hopes of trolling some future geologist. My brother does stuff like that.
- kelchm 9y agoThis is fantastic.
- kainolophobia 9y agoMy Mother has a bit of a fascination with these, going so far as to put a "rock shop" in her garage. Here's a blurry image of one that she gave me (after I wore down the polish a bit). http://i.imgur.com/IhvgT.jpg http://i.imgur.com/IhvgT.jpg
- luckroy 9y agoMy grandparents retired on the eastern shore of the Leelanau peninsula, very near the town where the recently discovered 93 pound stone was found. We would walk the shoreline after a fresh rain to find these. They kept buckets full of them that they would give away to whomever wanted them. I never realized how unique the stones were until I was in my 20s and discovered most people know nothing about them. The buckets are long gone and one of my biggest regrets is not having claimed any before my grandparents moved back down to southeast MI.