Beautiful Combos in October

Docia and I returned to the secret spot yesterday, four weeks since we had last dug there, and anxious to see what new treasures we could unearth and add to our collections. As Missy and I were driving down the interstate, we saw a westbound train hauling what appeared to be ten Bradley Tanks….

Docia and I met at our favorite location about 8 am and drove down to the lower area to find that an even larger area had been exposed by heavy equipment and dug out for the clay mixture of rock and dirt…we still have no clue what they are taking it out and using it for, it still looks like a landing strip for ET….

We walked around the new area, but decided since the sun wasn`t above us yet, it would make finding anything sparkly difficult, so we drove on down to our favorite spot and began looking for pockets, or I should say I did…Docia decided to investigate her last big pocket there for more dogtooth calcite crystals…

so I walked back to the back looking for signs of poker chips, found a likely spot, and sat down to dig down and see what I could find. I should also back up here and say that Docia found me a nice mini mattox while I was down in Kentucky…I have been looking high and low for one, couldnt locate one at Lowe`s, or Orschelin`s, or even Walmart, dont know where she found it but I very much appreciate it. It def makes it easier to move alot of rock and dirt around. Here is where I started my day out…

I began digging down and soon discovered that my pocket was going to be one of those subterannean pockets, it was down at least ten inches if not more, and while a ledge seemed to appear on both of the horizonal sides, the chips started appearing under the ledge and then up in behind the ledge as well…I wasnt finding any druse plates to speak of either, just some boring gray and red shale with icky clay mud attached to it. Thats what I dug down into at first until I found the first chip about a foot down…

..then I started finding some crystals laying at the bottom and those led me to the pocket sides and weird ledges with crystals tucked under and behind them…

…so my pocket size continued to expand from side to side and grew in size within minutes, as I was finding pocket after pocket on the sides all the way around the hole…

I kept looping back to the main pocket though, as its the one that looked to be deep, and as I came back to it each time, I was seeing this nice cluster of poker chips and druse at the entrance, and it kept looking like it might break loose on its own…here it is in the upper left hand corner….

and here is my pocket from the end where I started digging, showing the other end which appears to be the pocket headed for the deep…

and a few of the combos I have already found in the pockets so far…

..and gray druse plates that have come from the pocket so far as well….

As I was digging along, Docia decided to take a break from all the heavy pounding on the sledge hammer liberating more dogtooth crystals, and walked over to the wall behind me and right away, discovered a pocket of poker chip crystals….

You can see the crystals inside the pocket under the heavy plates of druse and some are even attached to the druse…this was a good find for Docia…she spent a few minutes removing the overhang and then started gently digging in and removing some beautiful crystals…

and here are some of the crystals she removed from this pocket….

and some of her finds including the chunks of druse with chips attached to them…

So then I returned to my pocket, after that short break which really helped my back and legs a bit…and as you can see, my pocket has expanded a bit….

…so I began digging again, this time concentrating on the nice big druse/chip combo at the entrance to the deep pocket and I was fortunate that it decided to break away on its own…less damage for me to inflict…

and I dug out a few of the plates of shale at the entrance to the pocket, there was actually a small mountain of it piled there…and then set my camera down and took a photo of the pocket, to get an idea of how deep it was…

needless to say, that really didnt help tell me anything about the depth of it at all, due to so many pieces of shale in the way even further back, and the dome of rock on top of the pocket was so thick, after about five minutes of chipping away, I could tell it was going to take me all day or I would need a jackhammer, both of which I couldnt afford, so I started pulling what I oculd out of the pocket from where I was sitting, reaching in and feeling around with my hands…the first few out looked like this….

…after a few minutes of this, it became quite apparent to me that this pocket was extending back at least thirty six inches deep, if not more…underneath and behind me…so I decided to lay down on my stomach and reach back into the pocket….

..this gave me more leverage, but I had to pull myself forward to hold on with my right hand here, for balance, while reaching back with my left hand into the pocket, and once I had my hand back in there, I had to twist around in order to feel for crystals on the sides and back and floor of the pocket…pulling whatever was loose out and setting it in front of me and then reaching back for more again…a process that required about thirty minutes as that pocket became deeper and kept going further back on me…by the time I finished cleaning it out, what I could reach inside it that is, I would guestimate it was at least four feet back and prob kept going, I know I never did touch the back wall of it…here is the pile of crystals in front of me that kept growing and growing, there are even some twins in there….

and a few of the clusters I pulled from the pocket as well….

and…

..I got out of the hole and decided to stretch my legs and fill my bags and wrap the really nice ones up…and took a look at the other side where I first began, and saw crystals under a ledge there too, so I started digging and soon after, a fourth pocket opened up in the same original hole I started in….

After filling my bags and walking them to the truck, I decided to try one last place…Docia drove up to the new place to look for druse plates, so I started digging in the place I had dug in four weeks ago….

..and I only found one small pocket with just a few poker chip crystals inside….

and on the way home, I spotted some beautiful fall foliage…another reminder of why this is my favorite time of the year.

I did a little cleaning this afternoon, helped me work out alot of my sore muscles from digging yesterday, maybe I wont need as much tylenol tonight. Enjoy the results :