St. Joseph, Mo. ? Isabel P. Bush runs her 76-year-old fingers over a smooth pink stone and the polished piece of royalite takes her back to the New Mexico desert.

She brushes over the surface of a different sparkling blue stone and she’s hunting for opals after driving through a field of wildflowers in Idaho.

Holding a cloudy green stone set in a gold ring, she finds herself hunting for amazonite with her husband and their children in Colorado. She and her family had a picnic right there amidst the rock ledges and crystal outcroppings.

She and her husband, Russell Bush, a retired auctioneer, dug each rock out of the ground with their own hands on their own vacations. For the Bushes, rubbing the now-smooth rock faces is like peering into a photo.

“Every time you look at it,” she said, “it puts you back to where you found it.”

Each stone has a story, but the rock hunters themselves, perhaps, found the greatest treasure of all out there under the wild night skies of their camping trips.

The couple began rock hunting nearly 50 years ago, in the first years of their marriage, after both were widowed and each was left with a small child. They found each other. They found a new family. They found rock hunting and a pastime that would unite their family for generations to come.

The small basement of the Bushes’ home is cave-like with its glittering gathering of rocks and petrified wood. Down here, one can find shelves of rough rocks and shelves of thin, smooth and polished rocks.

“You name it,” Russell said, “and it’s down here.”

Russell Bush, right, and his family, including his wife, Isabel, and his stepson, Kirby Paulman, begin planning their next rock hunting trip while at their home in St. Joseph, Mo. For the Bushes, rubbing the now-smooth rock faces is like peering into a photo.

Their life as rock hounds began after they were first married. That year they hunted for an unusual present for his brother and stumbled upon a small rock polisher. He loved it and they loved it, and the couple began going to rock club shows and finding rocks for him to polish. Soon their vacations became camping trips and their time was spent digging for rocks.

“We never grew up out of the sandbox,” Isabel said. “When you see pretty things on the ground, whether they’re very good or not, you pick them up and take them home.”

In the rock-filled basement, Russell, 83, now has his own polisher and an 18-inch diamond rock saw, along with grinders, tumblers, smaller saws and a vibrator polisher to polish bookends. Thanks to his tools, rocks they have found around the country decorate the belt buckles and bolo ties he’s never without.

The couple has traveled to all of the states west of Missouri searching for rocks, and along with them their children and grandchildren often follow.

In 2001, the clan gathered at Wiggins Fork, Wyo., with family ranging in age from 1 to 81 — four generations all camping and digging “with the old popcorn a-goin’,'” Russell said.

“We go where there are not very many people, and we call ourselves the clan,” Isabel said.

Not every family member is a willing party for the clan’s rough outings, though. Suellen Louden, Russell’s daughter, doesn’t have the fondest memories of digging in the earth for rocks.

Shelves of rocks line the walls of Russell and Isabel Bush's basement in their home in St. Joseph, Mo.

“I’m not the camper of the family,” she said. “I do not camp.”

Her memories of the trips she did take with her family, however, are good, other than the camping part, and the experience helped make her blended family a real one.

This winter, the Bushes hope, they’ll board their class B motor home and head to Texas on another rock hunt. Their son, Kirby Paulman, and his wife, Jani, will travel with them.

Out in the quiet wilderness, Russell loves “digging and walking and just enjoying it,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Just enjoying life.”

Along with their family photos of rock hunts around the country, they have written archives of the family’s history. But more than words or images, perhaps, the stones that stock their basement and garage and decorate their belt buckles say the most about who Russell and Isabel Bush are.

And the treasures they’ve unearthed aren’t those polished rocks and stones, but the moments they spent together as a family.