MFQ in August 2019

It was the first weekend in August before I had a chance to go to MFQ again…when Patty, Colby, and Gabriella came to visit the weekend of July 4th, they didn`t get to go there, so we kept in contact and she decided to drive up and meet me there on the morning of August 3rd. Gabriella was visiting Colby`s parents up north in Illinois and would not be back in time to come down with her on this trip. Patty had a three hour drive and arrived before I did with a two hour drive, however it was quite foggy when we arrived there at daylight…

We headed down to the pile and started up from the west side again, this time working several visible pockets along the wall..many filled with some nice calcite druse and some of those druse plates had gorgeous and sparkley blades of clear calcite on them, sticking out at angles from the druse and later, when the sunlight captured them, they just sat there and glittered like sugar frosting….

Here are some of the first ones I pulled out of the pockets I began working along the wall and as you can see, there were some poker chips inside as well…

Here is Patty getting prepared to work the pockets along the wall….

She started out about 30 feet to my left, on the west side of me, and we were working our way along the wall to the east side. We had worked several small pockets and she passed me up and went around a corner sticking out from the wall, and called me over to look…I had been there about 20 min before that and discovered five to six nice looking pockets, at least one of them I figured was going to be a dogtooth pocket..I didn`t say anything to her as it was her first time there and I wanted her to find it on her own…she did, took to it like a duck to water, and here is what she started pulling out…..

…..of what turned out to be a HUGE pocket of blade plates and dogtooth plates !!!

Here are a few photos of the pockets before we began working them…

I worked the pockets in the 2nd and 3rd photos above while Patty concentrated on the huge dogtooth pocket, stopping only to walk a few flats down to her car and get more empties to fill. On one of these trips to her car, she told me to help myself to the pocket, so I did…I handed a few off to her when she returned and worked it for about 45 minutes and then turned it back over to her, and she worked it the rest of the time we were there.

It went further back a few chambers, then up, over to one side or the other and down…I told her that many rockhounds work the pocket they find and then stop…to be completely thorough, a rockhound should explore for more pockets as there usually are more chambers that will open up as you remove crystals. She did a good job, but by the time early afternoon arrived, the sunlight, heat, and humidity were fast catching up with us and we came to a stop. Here is what the wall of pockets looked like when we finished…

the one on the left, with the much larger opening, is the one she was working much of the day…

She let me know that she got home okay, and then started updating me on cleaning up her plates of dogtooths….Patty used a few window screens to clean hers…I let her know she would likely only need to wash them off, as they normally come out pristine or a little dusty from those pockets, but normally nothing more. Here are some of her finds, enlarge these and you will spot the dogtooths where there are several clusters in one photo….

this next cluster of dogtooths and blades, has a bit of a purplish tint to some of the blades and crystals…I had a couple of plates with a similar color variation to them…a variation that I like….

My finds include a pocket of green poker chips I found as I was climbing down from the pile that day…they cleaned up rather nicely…one of those pockets that blasted out of the wall and fell to the pile, landing fairly intact, which is unusual for green poker chips as they fracture more readily than the other colors seem to do…

My purplish colored plates above….

and just to give you an idea, this is how they normally look dirty, coming out of the pocket….a little dusty is all….no need for a power wash either….

…and here is tired Patty climbing down from the pile, bucket and flat of crystals in her hands…

It was fun and we had a blast, pun intended, and brought home some beautiful crystals including some beautiful dogtooths !!

 

 

MFQ Producing Once Again

Around the second weekend of June, I got the word that a blast had occurred on the east wall so on Sunday, the 9th, Onyx and I got up early and drove down there to see what we could find.

It had been some time since the last time I was there and almost felt like the first time there once again…the last good time I had been there was end of July in 2018 when Chuck Reed, Nathaniel Reid, and Abigail from Nashville came to visit. We had a good time that weekend rockhunting there, let me tell ya. It can get really hot and muggy down there that time of the year, stretching into September, plus the horseflies and wasps can be really bad during that time of the year as well, and are getting to be this time of 2019 as I have already found out and experienced.

I got stung at work about ten days ago, my eppi pen shot failed to work so my boss whisked me over to the Kirkwood Mercy Urgent Care, another part of that day I would rather forget as well, and eventually Kirkwood Fire Department picked me up there and transported me to St John`s Mercy Hospital, where I had to be monitored for a couple of hours after receiving my adrenaline shot.

Onyx and I arrived about 6:15 am and for once, it wasn`t foggy there that time of the morning…

…and we found a pretty good sized pile of rocks waiting for us to explore. After gearing up and heading up from the west end of the pile, I didn`t find many pockets to explore along the wall, so then I branched out to check the pile itself and began good signs of poker chips all over the place. One of the first indications that this was gonna be a GREAT day of rock collecting, was when I ran across four ( 4 ) nice beach ball sized clusters of green and black poker chips, they were all found nestled in between some bigger boulders…not hard to spot at all….here they are in order of found…

Number four is not shown as it was very similar in looks to number three…I decided to hand carry each of these down to my truck, while I had the strength to do so…and as I got down to the bottom floor at the edge of the pile, I started noticing some round, geode like shaped rocks like we have found at work, called chert nodules, some were even small boulder sized. We have never found anything like this at this quarry before, to my knowledge…

…this was one of several firsts this summer for this quarry. Got those four beautiful beach ball sized clusters wrapped up and stored in the bed of my truck and headed back up the pile to locate some more beauties and needless to say, it did not take long for that to happen, as I just about stepped on these next three in the path on my way back up to my bucket…

…and I no sooner had those wrapped up and placed in my bucket when I came across these beauties as well…

…spotted in a vug of a huge boulder and easily chipped out for once. 🙂  Normally, they do not come out willingly, nor do they seem to cooperate when you find them at the end of the day there and you are nearly exhausted. Within the next hour, I located several nice calcite druse pieces as well, and a nice poker chip cluster, shown here on the tailgate of my truck….

…and a nice plate of root beer colored calcites as well as dogtooths nestled in…

 

All in all, I think I filled four buckets and the bed of my truck was covered in clusters of poker chips and calcite druse pieces…not a bad haul for the day. A few weeks later, my buddy Pete Stoeckel, from the Philly area, drove down to visit and rock hunt with me, and Patty, Colby, and Gabriella came to visit from Southern Illinois as well. We had a great time that weekend too !!

 

Park Hills Mineral Show 2019

Had some problems with my website for a few weeks, that stretched into a couple of months before I was able to get them resolved with the help of a good photographer friend in Arkansas…at this point we think it`s resolved now, so I will be posting on a regular basis again soon.

I drove down to the Park Hills Show on Saturday morning, the second day of the show, to see what they had this year. I always make it a point to stop and visit with my friend Johnny B from Mt Ida…..

….who is always on the second row near the info booth gate. Johnny usually has his green carved dragons and some new stuff…he did not disappoint again this year…the new stuff this year included a few flats of the last of a new discovery of creedite balls with multi-colored fluorite cubes attached to the balls. He allowed me to look through a flat or two so I could make a selection…he had some on display in a glass case on the table too….

and here is the one I selected, with a nice smattering of multi colored fluorites on it…


Afterward, I visited with my geode hunting buddy, Ken Vaisvil, he was also on the second row but further to the south east end of it, selling and cracking geodes as he does each year, and beautiful ones at that. I picked up a few more special ones from him, he always has some gorgeous ones….

Great talking to ya again Ken, see ya at Geodefest 2019 !!

From there I wandered over to the back row to see the new dealers and what they were selling, ran into some friends of John Oostenryk from Iowa, that were down to buy some druse quartz…the gal they bought some from didn`t even have the decency to clean them up before she brought them to the show. I let them know I had some much prettier stuff and would be happy to sell it at wholesale prices, as I normally do, and she said they would be in touch soon. From there I wandered on down the row and came upon my miner buddy Josh, who had some great chalcopyrite pieces with bladed barites attached in the snow white colors, as well as some new finds…galena cubes with double terminated golden calcites attached to them….

…large calcite crystals and the nice sphalerite balls attached to the chalco pieces…

…I plan to drop by his residence next week and see if he has some more nice stuff for sale, to take to Kentucky with me in a couple of weeks. Will see if anyone else down there likes it too. 🙂

Hope everyone is staying cool this summer, so far we cannot complain too much about excessive heat here in Missouri. 🙂