Docia and I were talking online Monday morning, Martin Luther King`s Birthday, and talking about how she wished we could go down to the secret spot today and I told her I could meet her down there, so we opted to meet about 11:30 there and see what we could find. I called work and comped out two hours, which allowed me to go in two hrs later than usual. Missy and I loaded up the truck and headed out fairly soon after, arriving a few minutes ahead of Docia. While waiting, I raked around the big hole I had found to see if there were any back entrances to it, since the day before, I had been reaching back into it up to my shoulders. I checked two sides of it and didnt find any additional entrances, and she arrived about then. She grabbed her bags and tools and set about to checking for more pockets about ten feet away from me…

…and pretty soon she started finding some pockets of her own…which for a bit there, I thought might tie into the hole pocket as well, but they didn`t….I started checking out a small pocket back a few inches from the hole pocket and decided to see where it might lead…little did I know…

 

…it started going deeper and I thought I might have a back entrance to the hole pocket…since when I reached in, it seemed to wrap around behind me some…and there seemed to be alot of potential for it…lots of crystals and calcite everywhere around it…

…I kept pulling druse plates up and eventually another hole opened up revealing another pocket behind it and each time that happened, I thought I had discovered another entrance to the hole…

..this particular one had some nice crystals all around it….

…and pretty soon, after digging into it delicately, I deepened this initial pocket and discovered crystals laying in the dirt and clay mud all over the place…

..and here are but a few of my initial finds….

..I kept on digging and pulling crystals out of the mix of clay dirt and gravel, and the pocket just kept expanding back toward me and the crystal pile, which I also had to keep moving back…Docia was finding some nice druse plates and crystals in her pockets as well…

 

and the next photo shows one of the little bluff walls I came upon that had druse plates above hanging down and crystals all over under those plates….

..and we had def picked a nice day to go, 55 degrees, even though there was no sunshine and a slight threat of rain, we def had great weather….in the middle of January….

Well I kept digging and the pockets just kept on expanding, one after another in close proximity to each other and pretty soon I had a large area still near the hole pocket….

..and as it kept expanding, I had to keep moving the stack of crystals found, back to the left and I had to keep moving around as well, cause pretty soon, where I had originally started out sitting, the pocket was moving to….

…and then I had two new areas to work on, the little bluff opening in the upper left hand corner above and the area by my hand rake above…

 

both of them eventually expanding and deepening together to form one nice big pocket….

that produced the following crystals and plates…..

I apologize for the delay in getting this finished…Docia and I returned to the area yesterday, thinking we were going to be taking advantage of a 55 degree sunny day and while we did show up and find more pockets, some including some beautiful orange dogtooth crystals in all sizes, it was a rainy drizzle day at 40 degrees instead, but we made the best of it.

Continuing from above, as I was digging and expanding this area, another hole opened up…

I started digging down into the hole and exploring it and the first thing I pulled out was this nice twin….

and you can see the little bluff area to the right opening up as well, turned out to expand into a bigger area of little bluffs…where I find plates of druse hanging upside down and often single and twins and triples hidden underneath those plates…

and sometimes when you get those plates down and out of the way, you will find even more pockets of crystals behind that little bluff wall…in this case, it was a pocket of darker colored crystal, even some blue colored ones with dark gray or black dogtooth centers and tips….

like the two in the next photo on the left side….

I haven`t found a pocket of blue colored poker chip crystals with dark tips and centers like this since last year when I found a complete pocket of them about fifteen feet long and ten inches deep.

This pocket of crystals turned out to be about half as big as that one was, traveling along this bluff wall about six to seven feet long….

and consisted of crystals loose in the dirt as well as embedded in the bluff line with druse plates….

and as you can see, they are in the length of this wall from one end to the other…

and while digging the crystals out of this wall, yet another pocket opened up in the wall….

and this one was just chock full of crystals as you can see….

including some larger poker chip crystals this time….

and a few nice large plates with poker chips attached like this one…

and then the pocket abruptly ended in this embedded wall….

what I call a pocket ending wall…and sometimes when digging down into a pocket, you`ll come up against it right way and know you have to dig out the other way to find the rest of the pocket….

and here is the stack of crystals from this small hole expanded to multi-pockets….

including these plates and crystals at the top of the prior photo…

well after going as far as I could with the small hole expansion above, I turned my attention to the hole pocket and began expanding it to the right side…and in so doing, opened up another pocket on the right side….

I had to pound a few plates out of the way to expand the opening, and here are a few of those plates which broke into a few smaller pieces in the process….

and a look at the opening on the right as well as some druse plates from it…some pretty gray bubbly druse with hematite balls sprinkled all over the bubbles….

and a close up of the pocket with crystals all over the place at the bottom of the right hand wall…

and I continued to dig out the crystals and and you cant see it in the next photo, but there is a huge druse plates above all those crystals, hanging upside down..folks I couldnt see it either and I was on top of it, even sitting on it a few times before I got to this point, but boy, once I turned it over…I was elated…so was Docia when she saw it….

and up close….

it was quite pretty and def something I really like finding in these pockets…one never knows when they pull them out what you are going to find, might just be druse and might be druse with hematite balls sprinkled all over, and then you find them like this, or even just a single crystal attached…yesterday we were even finding druse plates with dogtooth crystals attached….what a day that was.

I continued to dig back into the pocket on the right and was even more pleasantly surprised to find more dark colored crystals…another pocket of them….

and even more of them….

I decided I was too pooped to continue digging at this point, so I laid down and reached into the left side of the hole pocket to see how far the pockets went back…and was able to pull a few more nice crystal clusters out before calling it a day….

just a little side note here…I get asked all the time about some of the crystals and plates having damage to them….some are damaged prior to the time when we reach in and pull them out, possibly having fallen off the roof of the cavern they are formed inside, or something falling down on them……sometimes we cause the damage to the plates when pulling or hammering them out of the pocket. This next one, you`ll prob think has damage to it, and maybe it does, but it was done before I got to it, I assure you.

 People also ask me, how do you determine what you take home and what you leave behind….I cant always answer that, but go by one cardinal rule…if its pretty, it goes home with me. 🙂