Eminence Again…

Well I am late once again in finishing the two part story from mid August…this time I have a semi good excuse though…we had a pretty bad storm roll through here last week that caused some wind damage and some lightning damage to alot of computers in our area. My computer didnt want to work well the next day, kept locking up on me and then would only work in spurts, so I limped along with it til Monday, then had my telephone carrier come out and check all the lines and when it still didnt want to work, I took it down to my computer repair folks at A to Z, and after a couple of hours on the diagnostic table, they found it was a bad spot on my terradriveĀ  instead. Chris was able to fix it and its been fine ever since, but I also found out while there, that terradrives only last about a year, due to their size…he said I would be better off with a 500 gig hard drive instead, even an external drive would be better. If I had known this drive was only good for a year, when I purchased it last year, I def wouldnt have bought it. Food for thought.

Missy and I got up early on Sunday the 12th and headed south to Eminence, stopping off at the Casey`s General Store in Viburnum along the way to fill up on gas…it was twenty cents cheaper per gallon there than it was in Sullivan or Cuba even…and then a few miles south of there, I slowed down to shoot this beautiful sunrise behind the Doe Run Lead Company`s Magmont Mine, on Highway K, south of Hwy 49….

01 Sunrise Over Doe Run Magmont Mine

..its a little fuzzy, which means I didnt slow down enough before snapping the photo, but anyone that has been through there can understand why…there is no shoulder there and not much room to pull over at all, without dropping off into a rocky ditch. We continued on down without seeing anything else worthwhile and arrived about 7 am…to find a cloudy sky instead of a sunny sky…meaning the weather people got the forecast wrong once again, and this time a pleasant mistake instead. I can live with these types of blunders, let me tell ya…65 degrees is much more pleasant to start digging in than a humid 85 dgrees…any day and twice on Sundays. šŸ™‚

02 Arrival Cloudy Skies

This time I drove on over to the middle of the north wall, since it was directly below some of the new upper bench and wanted to see if there were any pockets of dolomite druse or poker chips over there as well…I got out of my truck and snapped the photo above looking south and slightly west, and the photo below looking east along the north wall…

03 Looking South

…and after getting my boots on, I looked west and began to think I had better get a move on or I wouldnt be doing much digging at all…

04 Rain Showers Heading My Way

…at least not staying dry while digging…as it was, it only sprinkled a few times and that was all…I actually wouldnt have minded having to stop and wait out a good rain shower down there, am sure they are in just as much need of moisture as we are up here. I got my boots laced up and grabbed my mini mattox and a bag, and walked over to an area of fall down material, that had some shiny stuff about midway up it….

05 Started Looking Here

I could see some seams of calcite here and there, and after climbing up a bit to the left side, I was able to find just a few poker chips in some matrix, but that was about it. I checked the walls up and down both sides and then went up to the upper bench where I was able to fill yet another bag with some beautiful fall down material in both druse and poker chips. After spending about an hour up there and filling two more bags eventually, I came back down to check out the pocket on the north wall that Docia had pointed out originally to me and that I had already worked on once before…

06 Returned to Pocket

…I wanted to check on it at least once more, when I left it the last time I knew there were more crystals inside but it was gonna take quite a bit to get to them and get them out. I was definitely out of energy the last time I had been there but was ready to tackle the job this time. As I was scoping it out though, I noticed a few signs of crystals on the left side of this hanging ledge, and so I started cleaning off that side and sure enough, I found a pocket of some poker chips and dolomite druse over there as well…

07 Found Some on Left Side

The photo below shows a close up of the pocket that turned out to be fairly shallow and I was able to remove the dolomite druse pieces and few poker chip clusters in about twenty minutes…

08 Pocket Found Here

..and then I moved over to photograph one of the areas of poker chips that I left attached to the interior wall the last time there, and hoped to be able to remove this trip….

10 Poker Chips Embedded

…as I did so, I noticed that the sun had finally come out and was beginning to warm things up. I decided to get a quick water break in and then return with my tools to see what goodies I could remove from inside the main area.

11 Sun Comes Out Finally

As I was walking to the truck, I looked west and noticed Missy had finished her running around and was now chillin out in the shade from the North Wall…..

12 Missy Chills

…I returned with my hammer and chisel and another bag with some wrapping cloths in case I was able to remove some really pretty ones. The photo below shows the area I am about to dig into and explore more,Ā  to get to the pockets of crystals that are inside it.

This is actually the base of a large hanging curtain of rock….

13 Bluff Shelf Pocket

..attached to the main north wall…I say shelf, because its vertical and not horizontal, and this curtain of rock that covers the main pockets inside,Ā  is about six to eight inches thick, three feet wide and about ten to twelve feet high…as you can see in the photo below….

14 Section of Wall

…and you can see in the closer up photo above that I have chiseled off some of the base support in order to create an opening big enough to reach in and remove several pockets of goodies inside…and yes, it worries me each time I have chiseled off more and more base rock. I have removed about seven bags full of goodies from there so far. I`m hoping that curtain of rock comes down on its own before I return there the next time.

Within a few minutes of removing the last crystals, it had warmed up to about 92 degrees and I decided to pack up and head home. I`ll add some photos of the cleaned up crystals and clusters that I found there that day.

On the way home, we spotted these old barn buildings next to a creek on Hwy B that were nice to look at….

15 Barns and Trees

…the trees framing them really set them off well….

16 Barns and Trees

 

 

 

 

 

 

Secret Spot and Eminence in One Weekend

I had the weekend off last week and nothing going on…had a chance to go to southern Arkansas, near Mt Ida…one of my favorite second cousins got married in the Gulf in July and was hosting her reception for family and friends who couldnt make it down for the nuptials…if she had held it in September or October when cooler, I prob would have attended, but Arkansas is normally very hot in August, and on my weekend off, I would have been pushed for time, so I opted to stay home and rockhunt instead.Ā  I wish Cassie and her new beau the very best, hopefully they will be at the family reunion in November and I can visit with them then.

Missy and I loaded up the truck early Saturday morning and headed to the secret spot. I figured I would check on that blue hole pocket from a couple of weeks ago and see if I could find another opening to it, see if I could find a few moreĀ  crystals in it. However, soon after arriving, that all went out the window. I decided to look around up on the pile first, it looked like it might have been recently disturbed, so I did a fairly brief walk around and while I didnt find any freshly disturbed pockets, I did find a nice big chunk of druse quartz and was able to walk it down off the pile and down to the floor. I loaded it up last before heading home.

I walked back to the truck and grabbed another bag and headed to an older pocket that appeared to have a pocket exposed…thought I would check it out and see if there was indeed a pocket there or a dead end….on the way to it, I scratched around in another one, shown below on the left side….

01 Started on the Left

…the only thing I found in this pocket that was new to me was a perfectly round hole as I dug down into it….

04 Hole Found In Middle

…which turned out to be a drill hole, nothing more….so I ambled on over to the original pocket I wanted to explore more, and dug it out…

02 Expanded This Pocket

…and here is the ledge with what appears to be a pocket underneath it…what originally caught my attention…..

03 Looks Like More Under Ledge

…I reached in and pulled out a few loose poker chip crystals and figured what the heck…lets chip it out and see where it goes, if anywhere….

06 Crystals Under Ledge

…I started chipping out this corner, as it opened up a small pocket when I started hammering and so I started here and cleaned it out first, only pulling one or two small crystals out. I then broke open the roof and pulled out a few roof plates and this pocket opened up underneath….

07 Under Ledge Pocket Opens Up

…so I decided to explore further and see what I could find. I pulled a few loose crystals out and it appeared that there might be another pocket on behind this one….but I concentrated on pulling the loose ones in this clay matrix out first….

08 Crystals in Clay Matrix

…and so I decided to peel back the top of the pocket as far as I could and see where it led…

09 Peeling Back the Top

…and found yet another pocket behind it….as I had thought.

10 More Pockets Found

So I decided to clean this pocket out and then peel back yet another roof layer….this time not one pocket hole opened up, but two and then shortly after, three holes were before me…

11 Another Pocket Opens

…things were starting to get interesting now…I cleaned around and peeled back yet another layer to make things easier to get to the pocket holes…here you can see inside one of the holes and see the crystals waiting inside for me…..

12 Crystals Under Druse Plates

…hiding under druse plates that were very solid feeling to my chisel and hammer….so I concentrated instead on peeling back more of the roof layer….no easy task in itself believe me…as you can see the protective rock layer is getting thicker and thicker above the pockets….by now I was swinging my four pound hammer with both hands and giving it everything I had to break them apart….

13 Peeling Back Layers Again

…and now, as you can see in the photo above, another hole has opened up and this one appears to be deeper than the others…

14 This One is Deep

I reached into this one and pulled out a few loose crystals and a few small plates of pretty druse with some bubbles and soda straws on them….and a few nice combo plates of druse and chips as well…you can see the initial finds from this pocket alone in the next few photos….some with hematite balls on them….

15 Some Pulled Out So Far

 

16 Pretty Druse Plate

 

17 Druse Wtth Chip Attached

18 Hematite Balls Attached

 

I widened the opening to this deep pocket entrance and took a few moments to move the growing pile of plates and crystals farther to the right and then moved some bigger ugly rocks further back…..

19 Widening and Deepening

…and here is a close up of the growing pile above….

32 An Area I had Long Studied

…..I then took a break, grabbed a bottle of water and a brownie that my mom had made…she makes the best brownies I have ever ate….bar none…she made me a big bowl of them a couple of weeks ago for my birthday and then made some more recently.

I came back and looked into the larger entrance to the deeper pocket and saw several crystals inside it….

21 Full of Crystals

…I removed what I could and then peeled back the roof plates once again….

22 Roof Plates Pounded Down

…and about four fairly large roof plates came out of this, but one or two with damage, as this next photo shows…they dont always come out nice and pristine….

23 One of the Roof Plates

…and after looking down into the pocket, I could see there were yet more roof plates in the pocket that would prevent me from getting to even more crystals, so once again I pounded the thick protective rock plates out of the way…boy was I getting a workout today….

24 Peeling Back Again

…however now you can also see that there were crystals lying in the bottom of this pocket all over the place…some were attached to the bottom and some were loose…you can also see yet another thick roof plate inside the pocket on the right side that would have to be removed….

25 Crystals All Over

…and here are more photos showing roof plates and crystals removed from the pockets so far….

26 Crystals and Roof Plates

 

27 Druse Plates and Crystals

 

28 Druse Plate with Chip Attached

 

29 Combos and Crystals

..I ran into the back of the pocket soon after so I moved a few feet away and scratched down only to find some shallow pockets with some holie druse, but no crystals….

30 Three Feet Away

…after spending about twenty minutes scratching and digging to find this out, I took another water and brownie break, and then walked up to the blue hole pocket to check it out. I didnt find any new openings around the existing pocket I had found a few weeks prior, so I moved over about ten feet and scratched around and still didnt find anything new. I stood up and stretched and looked up and saw some crystals loose in clay dirt, on a short sloped pile that I had studied before and never checked into any further. This time I climbed up and started digging around and pretty soon a nice loose poker chip crystal tumbled down into my hands…I started digging more and pretty soon I had about eight crystals sitting off to the side. I walked back to my truck, pulled it up closer and grabbed two more bags and some wrapping material for just in case my hunch turned true…

32 An Area I had Long Studied

…I dug down some more and little did I know what was about to come….I triggered a controlled slide of a line of rocks above….

36 Controlled Landslide Triggered

…and as soon as the dust cleared and I was able to clear the loose debris and rocks in front…….lo and behold, right in front of me, were two nice football sized chunks of solid poker chip crystals in a pocket that literally just opened up and fell down with the controlled slide of rocks….

34 This Pocket Opened Up

…and behind them was a MASSIVE chunk of poker chips….and I mean MASSIVE !!!!

35 Big One Still in Pocket

this thing is probably three feet high and solid…and yes its still there…gonna have to do yet another controlled slide to get to it…I pulled so many crystals out above and around and below it though….enough to fill three bags…yes I had to go back to the truck and get another bag and more wrapping cloths…I had triples and twins and clusters and combos just all over the place around this massive chunk….I was quite happy and pretty soon it was evident that it was not only getting warmer but I was wearing down…so I stopped digging and started wrapping. After about twenty minutes of wrapping tho, I looked up and saw yet another pocket of crystals imbedded in the dirt….

37 Pocket of Crystals Imbedded

…so I gathered more energy from that and removed as many of them as I could and wrapped up even more….here is the last photo of the crystals from these two pockets before I took off for home about mid afternoon….

38 Pile of Crystals and Plates

...as you can see, a very nice selection of crystals and even some druse plates of bubbly gray druse, that were in with the crystals…all in all another good day`s haul….stay tuned for the Eminence story tho….