skiptherock

Inspired after adopting a 27-year-old cat (yes, really). A Michigan rockhounding brand built on Higgins Lake. A collectible rarity guide to 48 Great Lakes stones and fossils, The Rock Journal (a free, private app with every rock beach in Michigan and heat maps for each stone), field guide posters, tees, and The Rock Spoon. Ten percent of every order goes to Roscommon County animal shelters.

The Rock Journal · the map that stops people mid-sentence

Open The Rock Journal and the whole state lights up: every rock beach in Michigan on one screen, with heat maps for each stone showing where it actually turns up. A family in Ludington can see that Leland Blue is a two-hour drive north and a Petoskey is under their feet.

Your own pins stay on your phone. Nothing you find is uploaded or shared, there is no account, and it installs from the browser. download the screenshot

Photos · click to open full size, right-click to save

The Rock Spoon at the Straits, Mackinac Bridge behind. download

Stone tees: Petoskey, Lake Superior agate, Leland Blue. download

Fact sheet

What

A Michigan rockhounding brand with a collectible rarity guide at its center: 48 Great Lakes stones and fossils, tiered from bedrock to grail the way trading cards are. Petoskey stone is an uncommon. Isle Royale greenstone is a grail. Once it clicks that this is essentially Pokemon on a Michigan beach, you won't keep people off the shore.

Where

Built by hand on Higgins Lake, Roscommon County, Michigan. Launched August 22, 2026.

The line

Two 18×24 field guide posters (one drawn, one photographed from real specimens), The Rock Journal app (free, private, heat maps for every stone), stone tees and sweatshirts, and The Rock Spoon, a hand-built stainless tool that lifts one stone per stroke. $29.99, long or short.

The app

The Rock Journal maps every rock beach in Michigan with heat maps for each stone, lets you catalog your own finds, and builds an identification card to post in rockhounding groups. Private, no sign-up, no tracking, no location ever recorded. Installs from the browser, no app store. Built so a kid can run it. skiptherock.com/journal

Give-back

Ten percent of every order goes to Roscommon County animal shelters. Inspired after adopting a 27-year-old cat (yes, really).

The name

Three ways: skipping a stone across the lake, Skip, the rock mascot on everything I make, and skipping a rock, as in leaving it on the shore for the next person.

Reach

The first posts reached roughly half a million people in the brand's first week.

Stewardship

The guide states Michigan's 25 pound per person per year collecting limit plainly and names the national lakeshores and refuges where you look but do not take.