David Hodge Comes to Visit and Collect With Me

I had a phone call a few weeks ago from my buddy David Hodge, who is the Field Trip Director for the CAGMAGS Club, sister club to MAGS, the Memphis Club I have been a member of for several years now. CAGMAGS is located in central Arkansas near Little Rock, they come up with MAGS sometimes to collect with me up here and sometimes they just contact me and come up on their own and invite MAGS to go with them. David let me know he was going to be in St Louis for a marching band event for a few days and would be returning home after the Saturday event, asked if I could take him rockhunting on that Sunday morning. I told him it was his lucky week cause I had planned to go rockhunting that Sunday and assured him he was going to love it. We planned to meet up at an area High School Parking Lot since he was familiar with that location, and I took him to the SSQ area and showed him the smokey druse plates I had been finding there. Needless to say, we found a bunch of them and had a great time, before he took off for home. He contacted me a couple of days later and asked if he could come back the next weekend and do that again and I said sure…cause I needed to get some together to take to Arkansas with me on my upcoming trip there…I let him know where we were gonna go down there and extended an invitation to join us at the privately owned mines we were going to. The second trip to the SSQ was a bit wet when we arrived..muddy I should say, they had quite a bit of rain the day before apparently….our trucks got muddy just driving up the druse road…..

….but it only sprinkled on us a few times that day and we did quite well and found some really nice stuff once again…this one right outside my truck as I stepped out….

…and once we climbed up the tailing piles, it was literally laying all over the place….prime for the picking….

Needless to say, by the time we left, we were both exhausted…David spent the night closeby before heading home the next day as he had about a six hour drive. 

 

SSQ During October

During October, I had a few nice visits at the SS Quarry, one visit producing a few unique combos from pockets….

….one producing some nice sunbeam photos….

…and then after some surface collecting, I decided to stop on the way out and check for druse quartz…and discovered some nice plates of bubbley smokey quartz druse plates…

…I grabbed up several nice ones and then washed them off when I returned home, so I returned to the SSQ the next day and picked up several more…

BEAUTIFUL STUFF !!