Road trip: Lucky Lake Gem and Mineral Mine (McKenney, VA)

Anouk got a rock collection for her birthday and has been really interested in geology lately. I thought over spring break that maybe we would drive to Luray Caverns to check it out but after looking at a map decided it was too far. Much more reasonable for a day trip was the Lucky Lake Gem and Mineral Mine in McKenney, VA, just over two hours west of Norfolk. At Lucky Lake, you can see the same sorts of rocks and minerals you might find at Luray...just on a smaller scale.

Lucky Lake features flume mining, which means that you shovel buckets of dirt into small trays and shake and swish it around in the water to reveal the treasures hidden there. We examined each rock closely, kept the ones we thought might be special and dumped the rest (the staff at Lucky Lake goes through your cast-off pile to make sure you're not throwing away anything remarkable). After you've finished sifting through the bucket, they sit down with you and tell you about all of the minerals and rocks you've found, show you what they look like when they're cut and polished, and share the supposed mystical properties of each crystal (Anouk has been sleeping ever since our visit with her uncut amethyst, which is supposed to take away bad dreams).

We found aquamarine, rubies, beautiful blue sodalite, garnets and a lot of quartz. We also purchased the option where our bucket came with an already cut stone in it, so that was exciting to find our mystic topaz glimmering there. Another slightly more expensive option was to get any stone from your bucket cut and mailed to you.

Besides panning there is a picnic area and fenced yard where the kids can run and play. We brought our lunch, which ended up being good because there isn't much else around the McKenney area at all. We debated stopping in Emporia on the way home but ended up driving back, which made for a lot of driving in one day and some cranky kids. Our advice would be to find a place to camp overnight or to make a detour to McKinney on a trip to Richmond, just to prevent this from happening to you.

But overall, it was worth it, even the cranky kids. One of our coolest road trips to date!