On my visit this month to Portland, I noticed a road sign to a museum I had never heard of, the Rice Museum of Rocks and Minerals. This is close to my brother's place in Hillsboro, where I'm staying. I was curious, so I looked it up online, and this afternoon, I visited it. It's in an early 1950s limestone ranch house close to the Sunset Highway (US Route 26, the main freeway west out of Portland). This museum is based on the rocks and minerals collection of Richard and Helen Rice; it's in the house they built on several dozen acres of land, in a beautiful setting still surrounded by farmland and orchards. The rock and mineral collection turns out to be of exceptionally high quality, said to be the best in the entire Northwest. It includes many kinds of rocks, minerals, and also meteorites.
One particular highlight: a separate building that houses rocks and minerals from the Northwest. These include a large number of thundereggs, a particularly beautiful type of mineral formation found in Oregon and Washington state. These consist of typically baseball-sized spheres that look like ordinary rough rocks, but when cut open and polished, show hollow spaces that have been filled in withagate, opal or other minerals, often with beautiful colors. I took no pictures of these, but the Wikipedia article on thundereggs is interesting and includes nice images.
One charming thing about the museum is the house it is built in. Almost all of the house is taken over by the collections (save for a couple of administrative offices), but the original kitchens and bathrooms are still there, dated but very striking. The Rices decorated with minerals in mind--here's a fireplace with a petrified wood log:
