Great Pocket On My Way Home From Black Rock

Posted on June 10, 2014 by jwj

I decided to stop by MFQ on my way home from Black Rock, Arkansas on May 31st. I had driven down to Black Rock early that morning for a MAGS sponsored trip to the Vulcan Quarry to look for pink dolomite and calcite crystals and maybe some chalcopyrite., however, if I want good chalcopyrite, I def know where I can go to find some big crystals of it. I took the scenic route getting there from Black Rock.

I spotted some pretty Jersey cows in a field off to the right of the highway and stopped to photograph them on this beautiful cloudy blue sky day….

…then I spotted this lone pine tree against the big fluffy white clouds and blue skies….

I stopped off at Falling Spring Mill, to photograph it…neat little water grist mill with a waterfall right next to it and a big millpond in front of it, accessed by a wooden footbridge….

…it has been several years since I last photographed it, good to see that it is still being well taken care of by the Forest Service.

I then continued on, eventually arriving to find that another short wall had been blasted down, with rocks strewn everywhere from it…

…and I mean everywhere, in all directions, all over the floor of the quarry….

I drove around to the east side and parked…..

….then walked around the edge of the pile, looking for any signs of crystals or druse, finding some nice larger pieces of druse on the west side and set them out on the floor to pick up later before I left. I then decided to climb up along the wall to the top of the pile to check for wall pockets…

…finding one very nice pocket that expanded to the size of a beach ball at the entrance and was chock full of little caverns off on each side and up above it, stuffed full of plates of dolomite and calcite druse, with poker chips attached to them. It was soon very apparent to me that one bag was not going to be enough, because every plate I was pulling out was so delicate and gorgeous, that I needed to wrap each one to protect them. I returned to the truck and grabbed a couple more bags, full of wrapping cloths and grabbed a bottle of water as well…it had been cool and breezy down at Black Rock, but now, after only an hour here, it was getting very hot and the clouds had rolled away to leave blue skies and full sun. In the hour I had been there, my arms had already darkened from the intense sunlight and I could feel the beginnings of a mild sunburn starting on the back of my neck. An hour later, and I had filled both of these bags and I carried them back to the truck…there was only one easy way down to the truck and back up to the pocket…hugging the wall to the east and then sliding down the slope like a slalom course…but I made it without any spills each time. I grabbed two more bags filled with wrapping cloths and another bottle of water and an hour later, I had the pocket cleaned out completely. I`ll get some photos taken of those gems soon…took a few down to Tina at the Clement Mineral Museum this past weekend and everyone down there just oohhed and ahhhed over them, just as I did when I was pulling them out of the pocket. The wall I was working actually had several small vugs in addition to the pocket I found….

I made one more sashay around the other side, carefully checking for more pockets, then drove around and loaded up the larger druse pieces I had found earlier, and then I headed home, tired but happy as well. All in all, though, a very good trip and day.

James 🙂

jwjphoto@fidnet.com

MAGS Field Trip to Black Rock, Arkansas

Posted on June 10, 2014 by jwj

WC emailed me earlier this year while putting together the Missouri trip in April for druse quartz and MFQ, to tell me that the club was going to one of the gray limestone quarries in Black Rock, Arkansas, scheduled tentatively for the end of May. I had been fortunate to go to the one there four years ago and found some beautiful pink dolomite crystals, one large piece in a C shape with a gorgeous hexagonal shaped calcite crystal embedded in the center of it….

WC kept everyone updated and the date was set for May 31st. After checking on the forecast for that Saturday, hot and sunny, temps in the high eighties, I decided to leave Missy with my parents…she cannot handle the heat well due to that black rain slicker she wears all the time…and Mom takes her on several walks a day in their subdivision, so I knew she would like that alot better. I opted to get up early that morning, 3 am, and drive down to Black Rock on Hwy 63…the first two hours was a breeze down through south central Missouri, no traffic to speak of til I reached the West Plains area, and even then, it was pretty minimal at that time of the morning. If I had any complaints at all about that drive, it would only be regarding the nice bypass around West Plains…the speed limit on that bypass is set at 45 mph and there are several stoplights through there with very few homes or businesses in that stretch…seems like an oxymoron to have a nice bypass through there and then you can`t drive a decent speed through there as well.

I had only one problem on the entire drive down, a few miles south of West Plains, I crested a hill and found a dead deer stretched completely out across my lane of traffic, and since it was right over the hillcrest, I had no reaction time at all, so I braced myself with the steering wheel, expecting to feel it as I passed over it…my truck only has so much clearance…and to my surprise, didn`t feel a thing…but I did call 911 to report it to the highway patrol as a traffic hazard as I continued southbound.

I arrived at the rest area just north of Black Rock about 7 am, thirty minutes ahead of everyone else, meeting time was 7:30 am. I met Paul Sides, the President of MAGS, when he pulled in behind me a few minutes later and we talked for a bit before everyone else started showing up. We then handed over our signed liability waivers to WC and proceeded up the road to the Vulcan Quarry, where we met with Jeff, one of the foremen there, for a brief safety talk….

We were all wearing hard hats, steel toed shoes/boots, and had our safety glasses with us…and from there, Jeff lead us down into the quarry to the first blasting spot…

….personnel there had prepared for our visit by blasting down a huge wall of rock and there was quite a bit of pink dolomite within that wall on the east side as well as some on the west side….it was quite a beautiful day, cloudy blue skies which started off warm but cooled within an hour of our arrival, appearing as if it might rain, but never did, we just had the cooling breezes instead. Soon after parking at the initial spot, everyone was climbing around and looking for pink dolomite…

We had driven down to the first level of the quarry….

….and it looked a bit different from when we were there four years ago, as it looked in the next two photos….

It was apparent that there were a lot of changes since we had been there four years prior, the landscape among the main changes. When there last, we were able to drive down to the bottom floor of the quarry…..

….but this time found it flooded….four feet deep green water all the way across…Jeff said he was pumping water daily trying to stay ahead of it. Comparing the four years ago photos to the photos of the quarry today, it was easy to see how much blasting had been done and how far back the walls had been worked.

There was a lot of pink dolomite in the first blast section, I don`t think anyone left there unhappy with their finds….

After taking a short break after finding some pretty pink dolomite plates with some calcite and hematite balls attached, I spotted my buddy Steven Gibbs, searching for some bigger boulders of dolomite down on the west side of the blast pile…

…while his wife, April, was taking a break on the tailgate….

…over on the east side of the blast pile, several folks seemed to be concentrating on a certain section of rock where a lot of pink dolomite was being found….

…while Jeff and Bentley can be seen near the top of the pile looking for pretty dolomite….

…I caught Bentley climbing down the pile in his colorful fireman`s steel toed boots a few minutes later….

After about 90 minutes at this first location, we loaded up and drove a short distance down the slope to the next blast location…..

…..which was quite a bit smaller and after a short search, none of us could locating anything good at all, most decided to return to the first blast pile and search even more extensively there. In the short time we were down on the second level, however, Steven and April and I had walked down the road to check the rocks on both sides of the road, and April spotted a beach ball sized boulder with a neat impression of a seashell in it…

….the impression lined with quartz crystals, no less !!

As the rest of the group was loading up to return to the first location, we asked and Jeff gave permission for us to stay and see about cobbing it down and loading it up in Steven`s truck. April def wanted to take it back home. Steven got his sledge hammer out as WC and Cornelia came over to check it out as well, and Steven tried to cobb it down with his hammer…

…but the boulder merely laughed at all of Steven`s efforts to cobb it down and he wound up picking it up and loading the whole thing into his pickup instead. Jeff told us that he had never seen anything like that at the quarry while he has been there. After picking up a few more small plates of pink dolomite, some with some calcite crystals attached, I decided to head for home, via MFQ and Falling Spring Mill. I bid everyone good bye and headed out shortly after, pausing at the top of the hill to take these photos of the remaining group collecting at the first blast location…..

Sure had a good time, was a beautiful morning and nice trip and weather, enjoyed seeing several friends there.

James 🙂

jwjphoto@fidnet.com

Deep Pocket at Secret Spot

Posted on June 10, 2014 by jwj

Missy and I loaded up mid May and headed to the secret spot…it was a gorgeous cloudy sky day and the temps were perfect for rock collecting. We arrived mid morning and as soon as I parked, I noticed something moving in the pools of water nearby…I walked over and found thousands of tiny black tadpoles swimming around in clusters….

…everywhere I looked they were just all over the place, never seen so many in one area like that.

We made our way over to an area in the lower area that I had been finding alot of floor pockets in, and within minutes, had located a promising area and began digging down. Within a few minutes, I had a nice L shaped pocket going….

..and it seemed to have ended on the bottom side but kept going a bit further at the top of the photo, so I naturally followed that end of the pocket…and acquired a pretty hefty stack of goodies in short order as well….

…and soon after was finding more pockets under a layer of druse plates, with crystals sparkling in the matrix, waiting to be plucked out of the gravel mix….

…I kept on digging deeper and further toward that end of the L shaped pocket as it kept expanding and pretty soon my goodie stack was getting higher and longer as well….

funny how you lose all track of time when pursuing a pocket like this one, think nothing of taking a break or getting up to stretch your legs, all focus is on the pocket at hand. Well pretty soon, the pocket expansion came to an abrupt end…sometimes you run into a wall and sometimes you can see what appears to be an opening back behind that wall, which in this case I did…it was going to be too risky to try and pursue it because I would have to hammer my way in and too many nice crystals would be destroyed if I did that, so I backed off and decided to scratch around with the mini mattox and see if I could find another pocket on down a bit or a back way into what appeared to be another pocket behind that wall….

…little did I know what lay in store for me….

…within a couple of feet from the end of that pocket, I hit paydirt…hit a soft spot that started descending into the clay colored gravel….

…it kept going and going until the bottom just literally dropped out on me….

…and then I started pulling first druse plates and combos out of the bottom of this huge pocket….

…after pulling about half a dozen plates out, I looked into the bottom of the pocket and just saw poker chip crystals laying all over the place, several large ones even…talk about Christmas in May….

…including this nice combo plate….

…well by this time, I had the pocket dug down about eighteen inches deep and had filled three bags full of crystals, many doubles and triples and singles about six to eight inches long…and I was exhausted. I decided to come back the next afternoon and clean it out.

So I returned the next day, early afternoon, and proceeded to see if I could clean this puppy out…

…it measured about eighteen inches deep and two feet long, from my viewpoint above and ten inches wide, but when I stuck the camera down inside it and turned the flash on, you can easily see that it goes back to the left pretty far and has crystals inside it as well….

…but in order to get to that point, I had to knock some of the top roof plates out so I grabbed my four pound sledge hammer and started pounding for a few minutes to break them up…let me tell you, that took quite a few minutes because the rock above that pocket going that direction just became thicker and thicker, giving me quite a workout in about twenty minutes…but I pulled a few nice roof plates out as a result of it…

…and some nice crystals as well…

…and pretty soon, the pocket was expanding in all directions…and wound up being an all afternoon pocket….

by four pm, I was done in and had the pocket cleaned out as far as I could reach back in there…I had brought my flashlight with me this time and looking in, could see the pocket went back in there at least four feet, much farther than I could reach and no way to even get a rake or anything in there to pull anything else out. At any rate, I had two more bags full of crystals and plates and I was happy. Missy and I saw some nice sunbeams on the way home…made my day even more…

If anyone wants to contact me and talk about rockhunting or my blog stories, you can reach me at jwjphoto7@gmail.com

Black and Blue Dogtooth Crystal Weekend

Posted on May 7, 2014 by jwj

Earlier in the week, my chances of going rockhunting even one day during the first weekend in May, were looking pretty dismal for me…as I had scheduled a portrait shoot on Saturday the 3rd, in the middle of the day and that meant I was going to have to stick around all morning…and I was going to an event on Sunday early afternoon to commemorate the lives of two firefighter friends that had achieved milestones in their lives, celebrating fifty years of service to the Sullivan Fire Department and District. Both men are good friends of our family and after attending the same event for my Dad the year before, and knowing it required a couple of hours time, I wasn`t sure I was going to have any time afterward to go hunting that day either.

By midweek tho, my schedule cleared up so that I could not only drive down to MFQ on Saturday morning early, but I was able to squeeze in a few hours of hunting on Sunday after the event as well. I made a call to my buddy Jim on Friday evening and he told me that the new blast pile was nearly gone and he was seeing some streaks of black as well, so Missy and I got up early Saturday morning and were on the road by 7 am. under mostly cloudy skies, with a hint of clearing skies by mid morning.

We soon rolled into the quarry and found a much smaller pile of rocks and evidence that the huge hydraulic jack had been used recently on some of the larger boulders with a line of the busted boulders skirting the edge of the reduced pile from one side to the other.

I pulled just past the back of the reduced pile and parked, and after switching to my boots, grabbed a bag, my gloves, and my mini mattox and decided to do a surface hunt first around the edge of reduced boulders on the east side of the pile. I found a few smaller pieces right off the bat and then made a closer inspection of the walls of the pile. I found a few small pockets of dark gray colored poker chips and some calcite druse as well. I walked down the wall to the east and found a few small pockets of druse as well as one nice poker chip cluster, a small one….

…..enough to fill one bag with some interesting looking shaped druse pieces. I returned that bag to the truck bed and then grabbed another one and headed around the skirt of rocks to the west side….

….and immediately started seeing some nice cobbed down chunks of calcite druse all over the place, sparkling and glittering in the strong sunlight. I sat my bag and mattox down and began selecting some of the nicer chunks and carrying them over to the parking area and creating a grouping of them to pick up later before I left. They would make some great yard rocks. I was up in the middle of them making more selections, when my buddy Jim drove up in his pickup with his wife and daughter. They were on their way to town for some festivities…I told him I had been hearing sirens and parade preparation sounds in the past hour and he said the parade would likely start soon downtown. Soon after they took off, I did hear the start of the parade and then later on, live music and what sounded like a drag race or tractor pull as well. They definitely had some beautiful weather for a celebration.

Soon Missy was back from her explorations and parked under the back of my truck in the shade…I put a bowl of cool water out for her and headed back to the pile to see if I could cobb some crystals out of a large boulder. I took my four pound hammer and chisels with me and soon came up on the huge boulder laying on its side on one side of the pile. I liked the looks of the crystals embedded in one end of the boulder, dark grey and black colored. I was able to free a couple of nice crystals from the boulder and was working on some others when a bumble bee starting flying around close by and even buzzing right by me a few times. I decided to give him some room and took a short water bottle break about thirty feet away to see if he was trying to get into a wall hole nearby…however, he didn`t settle down, even followed me over to my break area and buzzed by me some more. I walked back to the truck and retrieved my spray bottle of bee and wasp killer, however by the time I got back over there, he had apparently found a hole and ducked inside. I was glad, cause I was neither interested in killing it nor in being stung trying.

I tried to free a few more crystals and clusters, but was unable to do so, and decided to move to the back side of the pile and see if I could climb up to the top of the pile to see what more could be found. I got around to the back side and determined this was going to be no easy feat in getting up to the top of the reduced pile, as the dirt and rock material was extremely loose under my feet and for every step I took up the pile, I was either sliding back down or losing two steps down. I left the bag at the bottom…a mistake I later almost regretted…and used the mini mattox to carve out steps so I could get to the top, going up switchback fashion even. Eventually I made it to the top, after having to stop and knock down some of the top rocks to make things easier, dragging myself up and over the top edge finally. Once up there, I checked the walls for new pockets, finding a few pockets here and there. I decided to check out the huge boulder that had supplied me with many black dogtooth crystals the last trip down there, and to my surprise, started finding small clusters of crystals all around the bottom of the boulder once again. I even found some laying in the loose dirt at the base of the boulder as well as a few large ones that were nice too, and after digging down thru some of the loose material, I was able to recover some very pretty twin dogtooths…here they are cleaned up….

It appeared someone had chipped off a few of the remaining clusters and crystals I had left behind and I`m glad that whoever was there, left behind a lot of pretty crystals for me to find and take home. One that was in the shallow area of dirt, was a spectacular twin black dogtooth crystal, in the shape of a V, each one about two inches in length. After chipping off several nice clusters from the huge boulder a few weeks ago, I was delighted to find a few more perfectly shaped small ones this trip too….

I dug down around three sides of the boulder and found enough small crystals to fill two bags full…however since I had left my bag below and didn`t want to slide down and grab the bag, and then make the arduous climb back up with the bag in tow, I decided to take my long sleeve shirt off and wrap up the crystals in it and then carry the whole thing back down the pile. I also grabbed two or three nice large chunks with lots of black dogtooths on them, and then slid down the loose talus pile on my butt…this was much easier. After wrapping them all up separately on the tailgate in my wrapping cloths, I decided I had enough goodies for the day and headed home. By this time, I had four bags completely full of wrapped goodies.

However, after getting them all wrapped up and bagged, I decided to drive over to the cove area and check that wall as well. By this time it was pretty hot outside so I turned on the ac and left Missy in the ac while I worked the wall. I started at the east end and worked my way back west and pretty soon was finding crystals, poker chips and dogtooth crystals, laying in the loose matrix at the base of the wall. I followed a trail of poker chips up the small ramped pile and pretty soon, discovered a pocket buried in the loose matrix that had apparently fallen from above and became buried. I pulled enough crystals out of it to fill half a bag and by this time, I was approaching exhaustion fast, and still had a four hour drive home. I`ll get some of these crystals photographed and loaded up here soon.

Soon, Missy and I were headed home, stopping off briefly for a short hike to a refreshing spring fed creek, that we waded around in for a short time….to cool her off mainly….

….we headed back to the truck and ac, and drove home. Missy was as tired as I was, carrying ten pounds of fur in the heat…I thought I was going to have to carry her to the truck…luckily she gets her hair cut on Wednesday.

Sunday morning, I decided Missy and I would drive down to a neat spot where I have always been able to find some neat druse pieces….my Mom had asked me for some holie rocks that she could plant ground cover in for her rock and flower gardens. I had seen some holie rocks there that I thought would be perfect, and as it worked out, we had a few hours of daylight left after the event on Sunday afternoon. It was as hot Sunday as it had been the day before, and I was prepared to leave Missy in the truck if need be with the ac on full blast. We arrived about 4 pm and I was able to locate about half a dozen nice large druse chunks with some holes in them, tho the holes were not nearly as big as I thought they were going to be. I also found some really pretty soda straw plates nearby as well, some of the straws were about two to three inches in length and very sparkly in the sunlight.

After loading the holie rocks and druse plates up, I drove over to the secret spot to check it out and decided to putter around a bit and see if I could locate any new pockets there. The shade had stretched out about thirty feet from the west wall by that time in the day, so I drove over and parked in the edge of it, enough to cover the cab in case Missy would need to get in the truck in the ac again.

As it turned out, there was a great breeze blowing from the northwest and came right across the shaded area very nicely. I scratched around a few times until I found a nice area that had great potential…I was ten feet under the huge pocket I found back in the spring time last year, the pocket that had apparently vibrated open after a blast seventy feet away from it…the pocket that was three feet in diameter…the pocket that was chock full of dogtooth crystals, some of them were a big as beach balls….and about ten feet below it, I found a very nice pocket. Missy by this time, had made a few forays to the edge of the parking area and then wandered back and laid down about fifty feet from me on a ledge in the shaded area.

I walked back to the truck and grabbed my camera to document the pocket after I had decided that it was indeed going to open up into some poker chip crystals…

….the first one I pulled out was about four inches high and had a beautiful blue tint to it with a black dogtooth center…

….and once the pocket really opened up, I started pulling several nice large single crystals out as well as a few clusters, some with some beautiful druse attached to them….

…I could see several on the edge and just inside the loose mix of matrix at the bottom of the pocket…I really get excited when I see those, cause I start wondering what all is inside and how deep is the pocket going to wind up being…the thrill of the hunt I guess….

What was really strange, was that after I had pulled out several blue tinted crsytals with black dogtooth centers, I also found a small pocket off to the side, with a few small orange dogtooth crystals inside it. I have never found the two colors that close together in different pockets, usually they are at least ten feet apart. I`m always thrilled when I find the blue tinted crystals tho, since they seem to be a rare color to find. Here are some of the initial crystals from the blue pocket….

The pocket kept expanding to the left, so naturally I kept digging in that direction and it continued to open up along the way….

The top section of matrix around the roof plates was very thin and loose, so everytime I started digging in that area, things started falling down and had to be cleared out gently….

…and pretty soon I was pulling some beautiful roof plates out too….

…then I set the camera down in front of the pocket and here is what was inside…

..and then the pocket started going deeper, when it went as far to the left as possible…

here are some more of the crystals and roofplates from the pocket….

I filled two bags completely full and then Missy and I took off and headed home. Sure made for a nice weekend.

Here are some of my goodies found at the secret spot Sunday….

James 🙂

jwjphoto7@gmail.com

Dandy Black Dogtooth Crystal Day

Posted on April 15, 2014 by jwj

I received a phone call from my buddy Jim regarding recent activity at MFQ about mid week, and since I had already arranged to take Saturday off to go rockhunting, it made perfect sense to drive down there Saturday morning and see what could be found. After a relatively calm night at work Friday night, I drove home and changed from my uniform into comfortable jeans, picked up Missy, and headed out. Jim was right, it was a short wall that came down…the smallest and shortest wall there yet.

The last time I had seen activity in this area, you could walk from the parking lot up the slope of the pile and come out on top of the upper bench, but one look at this pile, and I knew that wasn`t gonna happen, it didn`t even go halfway up. It was evident they had already removed some material in the past few days and were working on some boulders, reducing them down with the hydraulic hammer. Missy and I drove around to the back side of the new pile and began looking around back there first….

…walking around the front of the pile along the edges and then walked up the pile next to the back wall….

…well I didn`t find much, other than a few shallow pockets, so I drove back around to the other side and decided to check out the pile where they had been taking some material out….and soon discovered a huge boulder with some pockets at the base of it chock full of light green colored poker chips….

I decided to wait til later to see if could liberate them and walked up into the center of the pile and made my way toward the back wall, looking from side to side to see if I could spot any crystals. I found a couple of calcite druse pieces until I got close to the back of the pile…then I started seeing small black poker chips with black center dogtooths laying all over the pile…I finally looked up and around for the source and spotted a HUGE boulder, half the size of my truck, with many pockets of huge black poker chip crystals with the black dogtooth centers, many of the dogtooths exposed even….

..including this pocket that was located at the bottom of this huge boulder, containing several black dogtooth crystals, many that appeared to be four or five inches in diameter and about six inches long….

…and this one next to it, with a bit of damage, most likely from the blast or the fall afterwards….

…and this next one was underneath and to the side of both of the other pockets, a single large dogtooth crystal in this vug….

…well needless to say, I was stunned and happy at the same time…and after picking up a few more loose crystals in the pile below, many of which were unblemished and just plain beautiful, I walked back down to my truck to retrieve another bag of wrapping cloths, a bottle of water, and my hammer and chisels. After drinking half a bottle of water, I walked back up and started filling one bag with all the loose crystals around the base of this boulder that I could locate, some were even down below in a few drop holes, and I pulled them out and wrapped them up and bagged them as well. Within moments, I had one bag filled and was working on the other and still hadn`t even touched the boulder vugs. It was about this time that my buddy Jim drove down to visit a bit. He was enjoying the weather on his day off and waiting for his wife to get home from work.

I soon returned to the boulder and began to see what I could successfully chip out of the vugs. Luckily for me, everything was coming out just fine and pristine, and soon I had two more bags full of goodies…here are a few….

here is the cluster that I chipped out of the bottom of the HUGE boulder at the back side of the pile….

….and the last thing I did after cleaning all those black beauties out, was try to liberate some of the green poker chips in the boulder on the front side of the pile…but like most green poker chips, that tend to shatter much easier than other colors, I was only able to get these two out somewhat intact….

I did manage to find a few pockets on the back wall that were full of calcite druse, some with poker chips attached and liberated some of them as well, however I have no photos of them, maybe I can add some later. It sure was a Dandy Dogtooth Crystal Day.

James 🙂

jwjphoto7@gmail.com

MAGS Missouri Field Trips 2014

Posted on April 15, 2014 by jwj

I was really looking forward to the visit by members of MAGS the weekend of April 5th and 6th, their members are some of the best people you would ever want to meet and rock hunt with, one of the best clubs I have ever had the pleasure of joining. My scouting trip the last week of March turned up a couple of new locations, one which needed further exploration and one that sounded too good to be true. I was able to contact the property owner of the quarry and it turned out he was into metal detecting, so we shared a common interest and he gave me permission to check out the quarry on his property. I then contacted my good friend Virgil Richards, who lives in the Tulsa area, to let him know what I had found out and he indicated that he would be back up on Friday night to go with me to the new druse spot and check out the other location for the first time as well. He also wanted to rejoin the MAGS Club in order to get in on some other field trips throughout the rest of the year, too. I also updated my friend Ray from St Louis County and he indicated he would be out early Saturday morning as well. I had all my grab bag material separated and ready to hand over to MAGS Club for grab bag material at their end of April Show and I coordinated with WC on when and where to meet up with them Saturday late morning.

After a late supper with Virgil at Cracker Barrel, soon after he arrived in my town, I retired early to bed on Friday night, but then woke up around 4 am for some reason, so when the fire department was paged for a house fire about six blocks from my house at 5:30 am, I quickly dressed and headed that way to photograph it for the local paper. I was on the scene until nearly 7 am, when I headed home so I would be ready when Virgil and Ray showed up at my place at 7:30. Virgil arrived soon after and I gave him the grand tour, heading out soon after Ray showed up. We stopped at Steelville to gas up, where Virgil grabbed some ice and goodies for later, and then headed on south to check out the abandoned quarry.

We arrived there around 9 am and after changing to my boots and grabbing a bag and my mini mattox, we started climbing up to the rock walls to check for pockets….

…it was obvious, once we got close enough to inspect the walls, that we were in a quarry that had been abandoned for years, the walls were heavily discolored and weathered….

….and it was a steep climb to get up to those walls as well, slippery slope as it were. We found some beautiful druse quartz on the way up there as well, some intense sparkles and colors….

…and I was working a small pocket near the entrance, while Virgil and Ray were taking a short break down below me…I was pulling some wild looking clusters out of the pocket that had some druse that was def wired differently and poker chips attached to them, looked like a knarly mess to me, but they were def different than anything I had seen, so I pulled about a dozen out and then decided to turn the pocket over to Virgil, since he had made a five hour drive up there and hadn`t found anything good yet. I had already filled another bag on a pocket I had found up above, where I pulled this pretty druse plate out that had this poker chip attached to it….

We began to get a bit worried that we hadn`t seen the MAGS members drive up on our location when 11 am rolled around, so we decided to load up and head toward their Washington County location that they were slated to go to early that morning. We drove down to where I had been told they would be located and found no one there except some workers preparing a cemetery plot for a service, and after they told us that no one else had been down there in that area, we turned around and headed to Viburnum, to see if they had gone on to the site without us. We kept trying to call but as it is in most of those valleys in south central Missouri, there are few times you can pick up a signal. Not until we were deep within the heart of Viburnum did we finally get a signal and make contact with WC, and then as it turned out, they were about half a mile behind us and followed us to the druse spot from there. It seems they had gone to a different location than where they originally thought they were going to, and we had prob driven by the turn off to that location and missed them by mere minutes. I was just glad that we were able to meet up and that everyone was okay, and that they had good luck finding some big pieces of druse at the other location.

After directing them into the parking area and helping them get situated, I noticed one of the trucks had Blue Springs Marina on the side of it as well as a KC phone number, and pleasantly discovered there were now a few more members from Missouri in the club now. I knew most of the member from the year before and it was great seeing Bebe again, as I met her the first time down at Marion, Kentucky at a fluorite dig. I talk to WC and Matthew online all the time, WC is the Field Trip Director and Matthew is the Newsletter Editor, both very accomplished in their respective duties and great to talk to. After getting to visit with everyone and explaining to them that I had left Missy at home so she wouldn`t get so muddy, I pointed out the boundaries of the druse spot and what they could expect to find, and soon after everyone spread out in search of beautiful druse. Some had been there the year before and were looking forward to this spot once again, its a great place to bring kids, too.

After I saw that everyone was finding some nice stuff, I started looking specifically for some more smokey colored druse bubbles for my own collection.

Virgil had run up to the Caseys Store at a nearby town, to get some more goodies and when he returned, he started checking out the ditches and gullies on the north side while most of the rest of us were on the south side.

We had been there about 90 minutes when a guy pulled up in the road and stopped to check us out…he wasn`t sure what we were collecting and his curiousity got the best of him, so he stopped and started asking questions…turned out he was Cindy`s husband Bob, and he invited us on up to his property to look for druse there. We continued on down the road to their farm about an hour later…they have fifty acres there of mostly cleared forest land, but as it turned out, the only druse we found there were contained in very small vugs, not the type of stuff we were looking for and used to finding. From here, everyone was pretty tired and decided to head back to Park Hills to get some supper and rest up for the dig tomorrow, so I pointed out a shortcut to make the return trip. I told WC that Missy and I would meet them at the quarry entrance the next morning at My Favorite Quarry. Ray, Virgil, and I headed to the Caseys to get a few slices of pizza and decided the day had been long enough for us as well. Virgil decided to head on home from there, since we hadn`t gotten the word about any new blasting at MFQ, so we all split up and headed home.

The next morning, Missy and I headed south by 7 am, arriving a little early and on pulling into the entrance to the quarry, discovered we were the first ones there. I had enough time to get out and make some needed adjustments to one side of my tonneau cover to make it more secure when closed…I honestly think the wind has slapped it around enough this year to make it hard to open and shut. Soon after changing to my boots, we saw the convoy of vehicles headed down the hill toward us, with WC leading the way….

…and as soon as everyone was in the lot off the highway, we drove on down to the newer cove area and parked. Missy jumped out and everyone wanted to say hi to her…she was a bit easier to pet this year, easier to catch up to I should say…she is getting older and doesn`t run around as much these days, comes back to where I am hunting at and lays down to watch and rest, so it`s easier to catch up to her and pet her these days. She has been a very good and constant travel companion in my life these past fourteen years and a great buddy girl to have around….she absolutely loves to go rock collecting with me.

On driving in, I had noticed a couple of new areas of activity, and pointed them out to everyone, and soon after, most headed to those new areas to check them out. Even though I grabbed my tools and bags, I mainly helped everyone get started finding stuff, specially the two kids there, Bentley and ” D ” who were part of the Kansas City group.

I checked out a pile to the east for a bit and then returned to the west side of the coved wall, after Matthew`s wife Carolyn called me over to check out some finds. I began picking up dark colored poker chips all over and we all began digging in and finding even more laying around all over the place. Soon after, my buddy Jim Bay drove down to visit with us and I introduced him to everyone there too. We continued to look around and even though we didn`t find any major pockets, I`m pretty sure everyone went home happy with what they found there. We had hoped they would blast before they arrived, cause then there would be even more material laying around to go thru, but alas for some reason that didn`t happen. By 2 pm, it was just Missy and me, and we looked around in another area before heading home an hour later. I look forward to seeing everyone at some of the other field trips later this year.

if you have any questions or wanna say hi, give me a shout at jwjphoto7@gmail.com

Last Week of March Vacation

Posted on April 15, 2014 by jwj

I took the last week of March off for some vacation time to get ready for the MAGS visit here the first weekend in April, they had asked me to take them druse quartz hunting on Saturday April 5th and then to My Favorite Quarry on Sunday, April 6th. I wanted to do some additional scouting the weekend before they arrived to make sure the sites we were planning to visit were still producing great material and still accessible. Therefore I made another trip to both of the major locations and did some collecting as well as the scouting….hey if I`m making the drive down , I might as well have fun and collect too. I also took the time to separate my finds from the prior year into several buckets to give them some good grab bag material for the upcoming show at Memphis, April 26th and 27th, The Earth Wide Open…if anyone is going to be in that area during that weekend, make plans to visit the show, it`s one of the best and largest gem and mineral shows across the United States.

I also wanted to check on an abandoned quarry that I had been given information on, that was closeby as well. On Sunday afternoon on the 30th, after breakfast with my parents and some friends, Missy and I drove down to Iron and Washington Counties and after locating the abandoned quarry with the information given to me, I then set about trying to find the property owner. I spotted a guy working outside at a nearby farm, and stopped to ask him if he might know the owner, and had some great luck, It turned out he was an assistant to the Assessor for that part of the county and was able to point out the house where the property owner lived, even though he didn`t know the guy`s name. He also told me that he had been collecting rocks and minerals since he was a kid, too, and told me of a few other locations nearby that were on National Forest Land and accessible for druse quartz. I thanked him for his information and drove down to the residence near the quarry to see if I could locate the owner there. While I didn`t find him there, I was able to copy some information that would enable me to locate him later in the week and obtain a phone number and name for him. From there we drove over to one of the roads that the Assistant Assessor had pointed out and slowly drove down the road looking for druse…I spotted a large chunk of pink druse halfway down the ridge road and stopped to check it out. I liked it so well that I placed it in the bed of my truck and as I started to get back into my truck, I noticed many aluminum cans laying all over the place on both sides of the road right there, many within fifty feet of my truck. I grabbed a small bucket in my truck and within five minutes, had it filled with cans. As I drove on back to the highway, I thought of how any of my friends that collect cans, would literally have a field day collecting down that road and could likely fill a few large plastic trash bags on cans alone there.

I then drove up to the druse spot…as I was driving down the road on approach to the spot, Missy and I came upon a nice lady that was collecting cans…she was walking along with a walking stick and accompanied by a big beautiful and fluffy Golden Retriever…I stopped alongside her and struck up a conversation and asked her if she needed some more cans. She said she would gladly take donations and I opened the tonneau cover and gave her about a dozen cans. I found out her name was Cindy and she is a nurse with her own business in town, and Cindy introduced us to Ed, her dog as well. She and Ed walk about three to four miles a day picking up cans, she said. I told her I was out scouting druse quartz locations for a gem club trip the following weekend and she offered her property which is a few miles on down the road. I thanked her for her hospitality and continued to the druse spot….

Missy and I hunted the druse spot for about an hour and I filled one bag completely with beautiful smokey colored druse, which is my favorite color from there, and then we loaded up and headed to the secret spot. We stopped briefly to visit with Cindy again, who was then on her way back to her house and nearly in the same spot as we saw her an hour before. I told her it was very possible that we would be visiting with her and her husband and Ed the next weekend. We arrived at the secret spot about an hour later and found a pocket fairly quickly this time….

…and within minutes, it seemed to be going deep….

…here is one of the top plates I pulled out of the entrance to the pocket, with a poker chip attached….

…and a pile of goodies growing, which contained alot of twins and triples….

…and on the way home, I spotted these nice sunbeams….always a good sign of a good day….

Protected: Oklahoma Visitors

Posted on March 26, 2014 by jwj

Nice Combo Pocket Found

Posted on March 17, 2014 by jwj

Missy and I returned to the new secret spot this past weekend and found yet another nice pocket, one that apparently the weather had been working over this winter. I didn`t find it for a few hours though, in the meantime I found a few smaller pockets and worked them, starting with this one….

…after finding a few indicators laying around in the general area of this pocket, including these plates and chips….

…this pocket was very shallow, didn`t even form a hole or indentation into the muck, so I pulled a few poker chips from the loose fill and moved on to the next pocket, which I found near a water hole…hoping that it would not fill with water as the pocket the week before did….I really didn`t want to spend two hours bailing water once again…that really cuts into your digging time…..

…this one didn`t amount to much at all, a few druse plates hanging upside down as seen above and a few poker chips underneath them and that was all there was. I figured the rest of it must have been excavated and this was all that was left. The next pocket I found was about ten feet away, again near the water hole and again, luckily for me, it didn`t require any bailing either….

…after pulling several poker chips out of it…

….all of a sudden, I heard a loud roar…I quickly turned around and looked up in time to see a low flying, fast moving jet…and it was a little lower in the sky than normal, I thought….

…and then I remembered the days when I was much younger and down at my grandfather`s farm in western Arkansas and you could first hear the jets coming up the valley toward his farm, moving fast and low, almost as if they were racing each other, from the Arkansas National Guard Base in Fort Smith…they always flew their maneuvers over his farm up and down that valley near the Oklahoma state line.

I figured these jets must have been from either Whiteman AFB, Scott AFB, or the Missouri National Air Guard at Lambert…and possibly from Fort Leonard Wood which wasn`t too far off either….within moments I noticed one more jet and they were circling my position quite a bit….pretty neat to watch….

…I couldn`t even tell you what types of jets they were, but they were pretty neat to watch…one of them might have spotted me down there and turned his jet up in a tight turn, I just looked up at the right time to see it and waved at the pilot…don`t know if he saw me or not…just to say hey and thanks for all you do….thanks to all of our great military for their service and sacrifices that have enabled all of us to enjoy our freedoms and our relatively peaceful lives and hobbies….

I cleaned out that pocket after it came to an abrupt stop with a very deep and narrow hole, that I was not able to see down into, nor could I even begin to chip it out to widen it, so I looked up and around, and my eyes settled on a mound of rock and dirt, that had a calcite chunk of a face…I wandered over to check it out as I had looked it over other times, and thought it had great potential….

….after scraping around on it with my mini mattox, I soon discovered there was a pocket behind a few deteriorating shelves of rock….probably loosened up alot by the constant freeze and thaw we had experienced the past few weeks….the first plate I pulled out of this pocket was a bubbly pretty gray druse plate….

…followed by several poker chips of a slightly pale reddish color, some were a couple of colors even…alot of small clusters and triples and twins more so than the normal singles that we tend to pull out of pockets, and quite a few more druse plates hanging upside down in the photo above came out as well, some with poker chips attached to them. The pocket continued back into the hillside, and then split into three different directions…I pursued to the left and straight back as much as I could, pounding the top shelves back as far as I could before I ran out of steam….

…the entire time I was working on this pocket, Missy was about ten feet up the slope above me just chilling out….

When I ran out of steam, I wrapped up the clusters and bagged them, and then we headed for the barn and a good nap.

Another Dogtooth Pocket Found

Posted on March 17, 2014 by jwj

Figured I had better write this before I get too far behind and forget the details of it, found a very pretty dogtooth pocket at the new secret spot a few weeks ago, bright orange dogtooths attached to some very pretty colored druse. Missy and I didnt arrive til noon and it was the start of daylight savings time, so I knew we had at least six hours of daylight in case we needed it and it was going to be a nice warm day as well, reaching nearly 75 degrees that day. Here is one of the nicer ones I found, just to whet your appetite….

…it`s not in very good focus, but is very appealing looking and you can see some of the colors I was enjoying as well. I actually found it by doing some raking around a few likely looking bumps at the base of the wall and soon spotted some calcite indicators at the bottom of a ledge, as well as water filling the hole I was digging, which I really didnt like, but sometimes you have to take the bad with the good…..

…as I dug into the pocket, I started seeing twins and triples of poker chips…very few singles except those attached to clusters attached to the base rock on the sides as the pocket expanded into a trench that was about fifteen inches wide and started expanding to my left and deepening down…..

…the water in the pocket was cold….very cold…spring fed type cold….and kept filling in every ten minutes with whatever amount I took out by bailing….pretty soon it was evident that I needed something bigger to bail with, the little water bowl for Missy that I had wasnt getting the job done, so I went back to my truck and pulled out the 3.5 gallon square bucket that I keep my tools in, and began bailing water much more efficiently after that. I was taking seven to ten gallons out of that pocket every fifteen minutes and digging out crystals in between bailing times….here you see crystals just waiting to be pulled out of the loose fill and muck as the pocket kept expanding to my left….

…and here is a group of crystals already found so far….

…some attached to some pretty plates of bubbly druse too….

…and after about four hours of continuously expanding to the left, pulling out twins and triples and small clusters, including some I was able to chisel from the sides of the trench pocket, I came to the end of the pocket….

…after clearing away more loose fill and muck above, it turned into a cavelike opening, capped with a dome of ten inch thick dolomite rock, the pocket contained even more cold water and was filled with about twenty dogtooth crystals and clusters….

most of them just hanging out loose in the water waiting to be found…the one at the beginning of this post is the first one I pulled out, and one of the larger ones as well, here is a closer up and sharper view of it and another of the other ones as well….

…after removing these and wrapping them up with three cloths as opposed to the normal one cloth, I sat back and rested a bit, then gathered up my bags of goodies, tools, and buckets, and Missy and I headed for the barn. Sure was a nice productive day.

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Protected: Oklahoma Visitors

Nice Combo Pocket Found

Another Dogtooth Pocket Found