.LakeMichiganSunset

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My favorite "vacation pastime" is to walk the shoreline of Lake Michigan, listen to the waves, and hunt for rocks. In the beginning, I was only looking for Petoskey stones. If you look carefully at this photo, there are two or three "gray looking" unpolished Petoskey stones in this group with just a little bit of fossilized coral showing . As Thad writes in his comments below (THANKS THAD), this fossilized coral is from 350 million years ago when all of Michigan was under a coral sea. Something that old fascinated me and I began to collect Petoskey Stones...The ice age changed things and now this fossilized coral continues to wash ashore daily. The Petoskey Stone is the "state stone" of Michigan. I have so many Petoskey stones that now I look for colorful stones to add to the "grey drab colors" of the Petoskey stones in my rock gardens. If the Petoskey stones are not wet, you usually do not see the facets which are the fossilized coral. They simply look like a ordinary looking grey rock. I sprayed these rocks with water before I photographed them. Another way to bring out the beauty of a rock is to spray it with a clear acrylic paint spray found in a can at any walmart or hobby store. I found Bunny's (lovesred) underwater photos fascinating because there are several of large heads of coral which are slightly broken and show the inside of a head of coral, and there is the individual coral stalk visible inside the coral group.