Docia and I decided to try our luck again last Sunday, January 22nd, at the secret spot and take advantage of the forecast for 55 degrees and sunshine. I decided to split my short night, enabling me to go into work two hours later and then return home two hours later in the morning than I usually do. I got a few hours nap time after work Saturday night and then Missy and I took off for the secret spot about 10 am, to meet Docia there at 11 am. It was froggy and a cool and breezy 40 degrees as we passed through Cuba, winds gusting out of the south, so I thought maybe it will warm up alot more in a couple of hours after we get there. As we arrived, the winds became almost gale force up on the hill so we decided to drive down to the lower area and start there, as we would be sheltered from the wind there.
We parked down at the lower end this time and decided to wait til the clouds cleared to go up above and look for druse, sunshine always makes the search easier, and so we decided to start on pockets of poker chips and druse plates first. As you can see in the photo above, we didn`t get far from the trucks before we started finding pockets. The next photo shows Docia working on her pocket, located about ten feet from where I started finding some calcite signs right away…
…she started scratching the surface with her mini mattox, and within a few minutes, said hey look at this big crystal….
…and it came from her first pocket shown here….
…and here are some of the crystals she found in those first few minutes…
In the meantime, here is the pocket I started digging into just about ten feet from her…I had walked up on some calcite signs and decided to rake around and see if I could find anything and within moments, this pocket materialized…
…I raked out a few feet around it to see if there were any other areas near it that might be a back way in and within moments of digging into the depression, a hole appeared…
…so I dug in and within a few minutes, it expanded even more…
…and pretty soon I was pulling some pretty druse plates out with some crystals attached and separately….
..and a few minutes later, another pocket opened up….
…and within minutes, I was pulling out more plates and some dogtooth crystals of a deep orange color….
…and now the pocket looks like this, the two openings joined together….
…I decided to see if I could work further back in the direction I was sitting and see what panned out…
..and found a few more nice crystals….
..but after taking a closer look inside the pocket, I decided to remove that top layer of rock above it and see if I could remove the plates inside, some with dogtooth crystals attached to them…
…here are the crystals I was seeing under the pocket roof….
…I took what I could get out, and then let Docia get the dogtooth crystals that were left…she uses many of them for her gem trees…
After cleaning that pocket out as much as I could, I wrapped and bagged my better pieces and plates and carried them back to my truck…then grabbed a few more bags and started walking to the hole pocket to work it some more…Docia was already working another pocket she found just moments before and as I walked just past her, I looked down to see a small ledge and some calcite around it..
…..I kneeled down and began raking at the calcite by the ledge and pretty soon a hole opened up….
..after a few minutes, the hole opened up into a bigger opening and I started pulling some nice large orange colored poker chip crystals out…
the pocket started expanding back toward me, and pretty soon the area I had been sitting on, began producing more crystals…usually the pocket heads toward the crystal pile but not today….
…and here is the view inside the pocket….
I started moving with the pocket down to the left side…to stay with the bluff formation….
..and pretty soon started removing some more pretty plates of gray bubbly druse with hematite balls and poker chips attached….
you can see in the next photo, the small narrow trench moving to the left toward the blue bag, this was the start of the pocket moving left…
…and the depression in the foreground is yet another pocket that opened up and went deep on me…the next photo shows it closeup and it turned out to be another pocket of dark colored crystals with black or dark gray centers and tips……
…and this next photo shows the pocket expanding from behind the bluff line and a nice combo plate I pulled from the area near the dark crystal pocket as well…
…and here it is up closer…
…I then returned to the dark crystal pocket and began pulling some nice crystals out of it, a light bluish gray tint to the poker chips with a dark gray or black dogtooth inside right up to the tip…I had found a pocket of them once before in an area of the upper spot about 100 yards away that was absolutely pretty as could be…these were nice, too, and I was quite happy to see them.
…and as it turned out, this pocket actually stretched from out in the middle of the expanded area single pocket all the way over to the left side where the bluff line lay…here are some photos showing the darker crystals still in the matrix…
and this next photo shows the dark crystals imbedded in the matrix of the bluff line, at least four feet across from the interior pocket where I found them first….
..and another pocket opening up in the bottom left corner above…that led to yet even more crystals and plates….
…here the pocket and bluff line shown expanded as is….and the extra crystals and plates found as of now….
…so after cleaning out this last new pocket, I turned my attention to the pocket under the bluff at the end of the trench where I started…
…and the first crystal I pulled out of that pocket under the bluff overhang was this beautiful twin poker chip….
…I laid down on my stomach and reached back into that pocket and was able to reach up to my shoulders and still couldnt reach the back wall of the pocket with my fingers…I started widening the hole with my four pound sledge hammer, feeling only a little bit of crystals on the druse plates hanging up side down under four inch thick dolomite rock, to better access the crystals loose on the pocket floor….
…and believe me, there were several in there….
Docia left for home about the time I started working this pocket more…and after getting about two feet deeper inside, and cleaning out what I could, I wound up wrapping everything up and leaving as well…knowing I would be returning this weekend to look for more…