Ralph Bishop museum visit
The field trip is led by David Springer with VGMS (805 -450-5025 or coastallapidary@gmail.com).

This is limited to 16 persons, if we have robust signups, we may plan a second trip the following day.

Sunday morning, Oct. 8 we will meet at the residence of Ralph Bishop located at 618 E. Cook Street, in the city of Santa Maria, CA. Plan to arrive 15 minutes early or by 10:45 AM. This is a residential neighborhood and off street parking is available, please do not block any driveways. Best route is to take Main Street of US 101 and head west, make a left on College Ave., and a right on Cook St, finding parking along Cook Street.

We will collect ourselves on his driveway. He will lead the tours of his museum which occupies an entire large garage on the premises, 5 folks at a time, there will be 3 "shifts", each lasting about 20 minutes. This will start at 11 AM. He will have some minerals to look at outside of the museum for those of us waiting for our turn. The range of old world high end materials that Ralph possesses would take pages to list. Ralph has been an avid rockhound his entire life and will regale you with many true stories about his experiences. Many of his works are in other museums around the country, I just saw two of his spheres in the Crater Rock museum in southern Oregon in June of this year. Photography is welcome, you will want to snap pictures of his goodies, many of which you will only get the chance to see them here.

After all 3 groups have been through the museum, we will embark up to visit the residence of Wes Lingerfelt in Nipomo and tour his yard full of rocks, minerals, spheres, lapidary equipment, and finished items, most of which are for sale; rough rock prices are 0.25/Lb! He lives about 15 minutes from Ralph north along US 101. His address is 110 W. Bennett Street, in Nipomo, CA 93444. Off street parking ia available near Wes's house. We plan to spend maybe 45 or so minutes with Wes, drivers may return home at their leisure.

An alternative idea is to venture 15 minutes further north of Nipomo to Avila Beach, where a zero tide condition will be the case after noon. Parking can be challenging, so carpooling is recommended, but it is a relatively short distance to collect the rare Deedeeite. I myself plan to say hi to Wes and then continue traveling to Avila after a brief visit, so interested folks are welcome to ride with me, as space is available.

Easy lunch spots along the way include In and Out Burger off Stowall Rd in Santa Maria, or my favorite burger joint, Charlie's Place, in Los Alamos about 15 minutes south of Santa Maria, with a full menu of burgers and sandwiches in large portions.