‘Stone Crazy’ Millwood business owner entices neighbors outdoors with crystal searches

Jenny Dykes, 55, grew up at a time that today’s youths might consider the Stone Age.

Dykes said Rathdrum was an even smaller town in the 1970s and ’80s when she was a child. She spent many summer days riding her bike, scouting fishing holes and tromping through the North Idaho woods.

“You didn’t come home until the street lights came on,” she said.

Nowadays, the sole proprietor of Millwood’s Stone Crazy crystal shop is enticing today’s youths to follow in her outdoorsy footsteps – quite literally. Since the pandemic, Dykes has been leaving crystals from her business along Inland Northwest trails to spur others into exploring public lands.

Dykes chooses a new trail for each of her geological treasure hunts. She announces the searches on her business’s social media pages, including the details of what paths to follow, what crystal trail she left behind and pointers on where to search.

Dykes said she’s had to add more details to her posts over the years.

“People don’t get enough green space anymore,” Dykes said. “You kind of have to guide them by the hand.”

That includes being explicit with participants that they don’t need to tear up the wildlands to find the crystals. She never goes far off trail, and never disturbs the natural areas, she said. Most rocks are left in nooks of trees, atop larger stones and tucked in old stumps.

“We don’t want to overwhelm the communities either,” Dykes said. “Be respectful of the land of the neighbors.”

Dykes’ 2026 adventures include spattering trails in the Dishman Hills area with sparkling red vanadinite, large dog-tooth calcite formations and tangerine quartz crystals. She left amethyst-colored formations along Mirabeau Point Park, and most recently, left 70 garden quartz along a trail in Metaline Falls while in town for the annual Bigfoot festival.

Spokane Valley resident Kayla Schoonover, 35, brought her daughter to search along the Stevens Point trail last week, after previously going on two of Dykes’ other hunts. They each walked away with a vanadinite formation, and an appreciation for the time spent together, the community and the region’s public lands, she said.

Schoonover thanked Dykes for the experience, which she described as “the coolest thing ever.”

“Her biggest message is just getting people to connect with one another,” Schoonover said. “Like, yeah, go find a rock but connect with nature, each other and chill out a little.”

Shauna Toney, of Millwood, is also a frequent hike-and-hunter. She said she’s gone on three searches but walked away empty-handed all but once. Still, she said she loved the excuse to go find trails she otherwise wouldn’t know about as a relatively recent transplant.

“It makes you slow down and be intentional, and pay attention to the fine details around you,” Toney said.

Toney said she’s stumbled into “quite a few” people on the trails also engaging in the search. She said the interactions have, surprisingly, been her favorite part.

“I’m pretty introverted; I typically wouldn’t just say ‘Hey, did you find anything,’ ” Toney said. “It’s been really nice.”

Dykes was hoping to build a sense of community when she started leaving crystals along trails for others to find during the pandemic, she said. There is a large selection of free-to-access trails in the vicinity, and it provided a means for her and others to get outside and safely interact.

The first iteration of Stone Crazy operated downtown next to Auntie’s bookstore from 1999 to 2005. Dykes is an artist, but her jewelry work with stones and crystals proved to be more fruitful, she said. After the first brick-and-mortar closed, she transitioned into trade shows and later an online shop.

It’s a career following in familial footsteps, she said.

“My grandfather was a geologist and rock hound,” Dykes said. “He had way too much information for a little girl. I just was like ‘I like it, I want to put it in my pocket.’ ”

Dykes reopened a brick-and-mortar location two years ago along Argonne Road in Millwood. The shop is in a former house-turned-salon, and it’s a location Dykes has had her eye on for years, she said. She left two salon-style sinks in the back of the shop where she’s set up an apothecary, complete with lotions and hand soaps for customers to sample.

Dykes sources her goods from all around the world, as well as with her own two hands. She occasionally takes her staff members on rockhounding excursions where they dig for their own product.

“I took all of the four other girls and went to central Oregon, and we dug up moss agate and petrified wood and obsidian,” Dykes said. “It was great.”

The shop carries a bit of Dykes’ love of the outdoors throughout, with natural decorations adorning the walls and display tables. In the back is a free-to-the-public healing room with sound bowls and tuning forks where people can “shut the door and decompress.”

“We have a little sign that says, ‘Where the magic happens,’ because it doesn’t just feel like an average shop,” Dykes said.

Dykes said she didn’t start the crystal hikes as a promotional stunt, but it’s having that effect anyways. Schoonover said she started frequenting the shop only after seeing one of Dykes’ posts about the hikes.

“I didn’t even know her shop was there until like three weeks ago,” Schoonover said.

The hikes will continue throughout the year, Dykes said. She hopes they resonate with a younger crowd in particular, in an age when most searches end within seconds, aided by a mobile device and the internet.

“There’s probably people who will never step foot in a store who go on the hikes, and I don’t care,” Dykes said. “It’s about building community and getting out there.”