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I 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…
I 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…
Small world; I grew up in Petoskey too. What year did you graduate?
I 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…
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
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably because yesterday on reddit, this article was trending: 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'…
That 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.
Fun 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 [1]: http://www.gaylordmichigan.net/member-37/claude-shannon-park...
