Rock Hound – Spring Agate Hunting Trip

The top of Rainbow Falls in the Black River Harbor Scenic Recreation Area
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Agate Hunting and Rock Picking in the Michigan Upper Peninsula

In early May we headed up to Lake Superior’s south shore near Ironwood, Michigan to get an early start on searching for agates on some of our favorite rock picking/agate-hunting beaches around Lake Superior. You can see photos of some our finds at the bottom of this post.

The Agate Hunters (Jo and Ross) finishing up after a morning on the Black River Harbor beach.
The Agate Hunters (Jo and Ross) finishing up after a morning on the Black River Harbor beach.

We stopped first at Black River Harbor Scenic Area and spent an afternoon and the following morning on the beach. Had some modest success. The second day, before we went rock picking, we hiked the trail to park’s highest waterfall – Rainbow Falls and were rewarded with some impressive scenes. (see our video below).



Our next stop was Little Girls Point and again we did an afternoon of hunting followed by a follow-up hunt the next morning. Here we had some good luck in that there was a storm with high winds overnight which brought in lots of fresh rocks on the beach that weren’t there the day before. We found the majority of our agates and other distinctive gemstones on this day.

We also caught an attractive sunrise at Little Girls Point and a sunset across Chequamegon Bay in Ashland, WI.

Here’s some of our photos from the trip.

Jo inspecting a find at Black River Harbor's beach to see if it is worthy to keep.
Jo inspecting a find at Black River Harbor’s beach to see if it is worthy to keep.
Jo searching for Agates on the beach at Little Girls Point
Jo searching for Agates on the beach at Little Girls Point
Sunrise from our campsite at Little Girls Point
Sunrise from our campsite at Little Girls Point
Sunset Lake Superior Chequamegon Bay
Sunset Lake Superior Chequamegon Bay

The best of our Agate Finds

Peeler Agate
Peeler Agate
Water Level Agate
Water Level Agate
Water Level Agate
Water Level Agate
agate and rock picking tool
Here’s an excellent tool I use to save my back when I am rock picking.

Links – Finding Lake Superior Agates

Have any Lake Superior Agates you want to show off? Write me at Roscoe@SuperiorTrails.com

Ross