I love this Forum, Got my Dirt!!!!!

When I first read your other thread I thought "wonder if one of us could send him some."  Then I thought about all those rules and regulations about transporting different things to different places (could contain foreign bacterias, parasites, and all that fun stuff) so I never said anything.  All that aside, my point with this reply is, I'm glad you got your dirt!

Don, just don't send any dirt to the mainland. The locals say it's po'ino.

mjrodg3n88,

I think you would discover that those that collect specific dirt for modeling and then sift it for specific size will bake it (when the spouse isn't home) to kill the nasties. They certainly don't want them in the layout scenery.

Don...I am so glad that Doug "got down and dirty" for you!!!..  Seriously, I thought the same thing as Mike so never thought about just sending you a box of my front yard!!

Alan

Oh no, I wasn't concerned myself.  I don't worry about that stuff, I just meant I didn't know if it'd cause problems in transit!  I mean I guess they really wouldn't know what was in the box. 

They worry about live plants and things like that. By the way the taking of rocks from the island will bring bad luck was started by a tour bus driver on the big island. People would puck up rocks then forget them on his bus. He started telling passengers it was bad luck to take Hawaiian rocks to the mainland. It worked, now many tourists believe the tale. Don

Thats a pretty interesting/cool story.  The National Parks are like that with things too.  One place, I think it was Arizona, could've been Utah, I can't remember, there was a certain type of dirt that you were not allowed to walk on.  It was protected for some reason.  Not quite the story like yours, but it ties into the dirt conversation!

Good story. Can you tell me about the funny piles of stacked rocks everywhere? I didn't get the story for that one. I even saw them on the old lava flow on the southeast end.

I don't know much about them but I'm starting to see signs asking people not to do it. On the big island as you know it's very common. I don't see Hawaiians doing only tourists. Don

No, these are not hiking trail markers. "

HILO, Hawai'i — Visitors to Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park who build small rock stacks as a show of respect for Hawaiian deities or the power of Kilauea are doing nothing more than tampering with potential scientific evidence of long-ago eruptions and should stop, park rangers and volcano scientists said.

Anyway not important for this forum. I think we are getting off "track" Don

Yes, bake for 1hr at 500 degrees in the oven.

Nothing like adding realism to your train layout if you can do it.  And dirt is how shall we say, 'dirt cheap'.

Your quite welcome Don, glad it worked out. If you need more, just let me know.

Oh and by the way, I didn't sift the sample I sent to you, that's just shoveled right off the dirt road down the street from my house. I have buckets full, and I sift that down before I use it. I don't bake it either, I'm quite sure there's nothing "growing" in that dirt, but more dirt!

We're all lucky this year that dirt continues to be plentiful.

Don,

I'm glad layout construction can continue.

Thanks Joe, I glad, Allan is grad. Maybe I will still get a article in this year. 

Douglas, that was perfect dirt. I think it's better than shifted for me. With your help I finished the first section yesterday. I'm starting the canyon/mining section today. When get a hot minute maybe a med. box? Thanks so much. I you are ever in the need for some red dirt, I'm your man. Don

I thought there was a native Hawaiian taboo about collecting rocks or anything off

one of the volcanoes, that it would bring bad luck, and I heard stories that tourists

when home and experiencing misfortune believed it and sent the rocks back to the

Volcanic Parks.  Or is that, too, a myth?  I may have heard this from one of the park

rangers, who, like the bus driver, may have been trying to scare people away from

carting off the mountain.

It true, it's all the myth. We hear stories like that from tourists all the time. We had some guests last week that picked up a small stone and the lady in "Dukes" told them they better take it back where they found it or they will have bad luck for a year. Don