MFQ First of August

Posted on August 19, 2013 by jwj

Ray returned from vacation the first week of August and rode down to MFQ again with Missy and I on the tenth, recharged and ready to again see what we could find there. We ran into some full and running creeks….no water was over the highway, but they had definitely had some heavy rainfall there the night before. I found out later, about seven or eight inches of rain had fallen throughout the night time hours and had ended just before our arrival.

As we entered the main river valley from the west, we stopped at a scenic overlook to check out the heavy fog rolling across the valley below….

…s

…since we had gotten up early to arrive early, the sun was coming up over the higher layer of the fog as we were about to head on down the road….

…we arrived a few minutes later to a pretty blue sky filled with fluffy white clouds….sure was a nice cool temp when we started there, too….

…prob largely due to the storms that had cleared out just prior to our arrival….this quarry always drains real well…I have never seen more than a few water puddles there…and only water puddles, no mud…which suits Missy just fine for when she gets thirsty and hot….

…well the knob was still there, looking much the same as last week. Ray poked around it for a bit, climbing up on the other side to see if he could locate any pockets up there, but didn`t find much and so then he grabbed his hammer and chisel and headed east down to the other end in search of boulders to cob down…..

…and pretty soon, I could hear him working on some boulders. I began working on finding more pockets in the cove wall…and by the time he had finished cobbing down some boulders filled with pockets of…get this…ivory snow colored druse quartz….I had found and cleaned out two pockets…he let me know that he was ready to head to the new druse spot anytime…I had just taken a water bottle break and was walking back to the cove wall, wanting to take another look at one area before calling it quits…I put my mini mattox into the dirt and pulled back one swath of dirt and rock…and OILA !!!….. there was a beautiful chocolate brown dogtooth crystal sitting there in the dirt mixture….if I recall, the first words out of my mouth were HOLIE COW…loud enough that Ray, who was walking back to the pile on the east side…heard me and turned around. Then a second later, I found yet another and said it again, loudly, and he came to see what I was finding…and by the time he got there, I had found a pocket of them and they were rolling out of the pocket into my hands…literally….he decided to stay and help me dig it out and one turned into at least two or three….enough to fill two bags….THEN we headed to the new druse spot.

We arrived about a couple of hours later, and although they hadn`t had the same amount of rain up there…the clay mud on top, at least, was a bit soft and gooey. Luckily the construction crews that had been working there the past few months, had likely experienced the same thing and brought some white rock in for traction…

….it was obvious they were no longer excavating the clay dirt now and I drove up the hill to search the south side since we had searched the north side the last time there.

I didn`t get the camera out but suffice to say, we found a ton of bubbles in all different sizes in all colors…my favorites there are the citrine yellow and the smokey colors…Ray even found a lot of pink colored bubble pieces. After collecting for a couple of hours, we headed home with lots of pretty goodies.

MFQ End of July

Posted on August 13, 2013 by jwj

Missy and I loaded up the truck and headed down to MFQ again on the 27th…Ray was on vacation out east and we had nothing better to do…it turned out to be a very pretty day on our arrival down there….

…I mainly drove down to take a look because some friends from up north were traveling down to Marion, Kentucky for a public dig and wanted to swing by on their way home, so went down to scout it out again to give them a better idea of what could be found there…I was going to have to work the weekend they were gonna be there. It was a bit cloudy when we arrived but that helped keep the heat away as well and all in all, it wasn`t a bad day to collect at all…Missy took off on her forays and adventures to check the place out as is her norm these days…

…the knob that Ray and I had been working lately, was still there, but I didn`t venture over to look at it cause it was much the same and still had a lot of rock hanging up on top that could be tricky to work around, so I headed over to the cove wall that we had been finding some beautiful pockets in, instead….

…the last time there, I had found some beautiful stuff, so I decided to nose around and see if I could locate another pocket of beauties…within minutes I had located yet another great pocket and this pocket, much like the last few, really kept going and going and going and….

…and was located just a little higher up on the wall….

…it took about three hours to clean it out, and I filled about six bags full of wrapped goodies, including quite a few dogtooth crystals again. As we left, I snapped a photo of the new blast pile, which they have cut down to size quite a bit in the past week…

,,,having cut it back to the wall almost, and they pulled a bunch of boulders out into the middle of the floor area and were cobbing them down with that big hydraulic jackhammer attachment, doing a fine job of it I might add, and I found some beautiful beach ball pieces of pretty stuff there as well, and loaded them up too…here are a few of my finds from today and the week before as well, as I finally found some time to photograph them….

the next couple of photos show small curved plates of dolomite druse with chips on them…very pretty and sparkle immensely beautifully in the sunlight….

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

MFQ in June Part 2

Posted on June 30, 2013 by jwj

Ray let me know that he was available to go rockhunting again on Saturday, the 29th, and he would do the driving this time he said. I made arrangements with my parents to leave Missy with them for the day, and we couldn`t have picked a better day weather wise…we nearly burned up the Sunday before and the forecast highs for this weekend were in the upper seventies…turned out to be a breezy day as well, much more comfortable to go rockhunting in at a place with little shade. Once again, we headed out mid morning and arrived late morning, and found some work going on in another section of the quarry. We drove over to the right side and checked out the older walls first, finding some pockets of dolomite druse and Ray found a pocket with some gorgeous white as snow, druse quartz soda straws…I have never seen anything like them that far south in Missouri, so that was quite a find by itself !!

After about fifteen minutes of poking around there, we drove on over to the blast area and started nosing around where we left off the week before. There was a trackhoe sitting there with a hydraulic jackhammer attached to it, it was obvious they had been busting up the big boulders in the past few days, down to basketball and small beach ball size. We crossed over them to get to the chunk of rock again….

…and we started in digging in pretty much the same area as we left off last Sunday….

…and we pretty much started finding pockets of crystals once again, in the same areas as the week before, too. Ray began following a trail of crystals up high and discovered a pocket of them, while I followed a pocket of druse that led to even more crystals. I was working on the left side of the major crevice in the middle, and he was working on the right side….

…and as you can see in the next photo, it was an absolutely beautiful day, there was a nice cool breeze blowing all day long, and the temps were seasonably perfect….

As I was nearing the bottom of the first few pockets I found, we pulled a large chunk of rock out of the way and it turned out to be covered with crystals including a nice pocket containing a dogtooth or two on one corner, here seen on the tailgate of Ray`s truck…..

After removing a few more boulders in key places, Ray found yet another pocket of crystals, mostly in clusters and removed what he could. We were still dealing with some loose rocks above us, so we were trying to remove them as safely as possible, knocking a few out whenever possible to make things safer.

We finally took a break and as I was returning from getting a good drink of cold water, I noticed Ray checking out the right side of the pile, where it sloped up next to the wall. I walked over and we started making our way up and checking for pockets along the way, in the wall, finding a few small pockets but nothing major. Once I reached nearly the top, I looked over to the chunk of rock we had been working on, but way up higher, and saw a small shelf of dark gray crystals sticking out. I made my way over and was able to pull a few out…I noticed an area of crystals about five feet below me and suggested that Ray check it out, so he made his way over and no sooner sat down, than he started pulling out some beautiful deep brown dogtooth crystals, many of them with a sugary looking frosting all over them. Within minutes, he had opened up a HUGE cavernous pocket that was chock full of more of these beauties….

This next photo will show you how high up he was working this pocket on the sloped pile from where we had been on the floor below…..

…about thirty feet up at a sixty degree angle, yet compared to the rest of the wall behind him, he doesn`t look that high up….and it was about this time that I noticed his big blue bunny ears…..

…course they only looked that way from a distance….

…and here is that beautiful HUGE pocket up closer that he was working on….

…and here he is working the pocket even more, as I am climbing back down the rocks and pile, carefully, with my camera in one hand and a crystal in the other….luckily there was a nice staircase near the bottom, complete with a ramp….

…and just before I reached the bottom, I looked up and he had pulled out yet another large crystal with a dogtooth coming up off it….

…and then he went back to working it yet some more….

…and from the front, you can barely make him out….

…we took another break and got some more water, and discovered we now had shade…figured it must have been around 4 or 5 pm now…

…after the break, I decided to walk over to the other wall and see what I could find. I was getting tired but still had some energy left and wanted to find a pocket as nice as the one Ray had found up on the slope. As I walked along the edge of the short pile against the wall, I saw some crystal pieces that had rolled down from somewhere above. I looked up higher and saw that someone had been digging around a little bit so I moved up and dug into it as well, It appeared to go left as well as to the right, so I kept on digging and soon enough a small hole opened up going back toward the wall, As I explored it more, a deep pocket opened up and I was soon pulling out one small cluster after another, and then another pocket opened up below and above as well. Within 30 minutes, I had put enough crystals to the side to fill two bags full, and I kept on digging. I pulled a few out that had bright yellow dogtooth crystals on them as well, but most were just simply poker chips nestled in the pretty dolomite druse. After a bit, Ray decided to come over and see what all the excitement was about…he had been hearing me say ” holie cow ” several times…I took a break to go get some water and another bag with wrapping material, and he took over digging for me…

….I started wrapping them up, and he brought me some wrapping paper and a roll of paper towels as well, as I had exhausted my supply of wrapping material with the prior pockets. Ray walked back over and began looking for more pockets…

…and working a pocket that I had worked on the right side earlier in the day….after knocking down more boulders….

.shortly after he did, I was trying to chip out two beautiful big clusters, and the inevitable happened…I mashed one of my fingers between the rock and the hammer. Luckily i was able to remove both of them still and then wrap up the remaining crystals and carry everything back to the truck, where I stuck my finger down into the ice cold water in my cooler…boy did that hurt even worse…for a few minutes only thankfully…fingernail was already turning blue tho….

I also grabbed a couple of aleve and took them as well, and within twenty minutes, the pain was starting to subside…I walked over and checked on Ray. After returning to the huge chocolate dogtooth pocket one last time and pulling out a very large boulder with a few crystals attached to it, and cobbing it down, we decided to head for home. We were both happy with our finds from the afternoon and it appeared that rain was coming our way as well. On the way home, we spotted this beautiful double rainbow….

…and then soon after we began seeing the sunlit clouds as the sun was setting….we were the only ones out on the roads, so when we came across this nice scene, Ray came to a stop in the road and I shot this sunset photo….

MFQ in June Part 1

Posted on June 30, 2013 by jwj

Sorry folks, been doing a lot of rockhunting this month, starting with the first weekend at Marion, Kentucky at the annual Gem Show and Fluorite Dig at the Eureka Mine, and then stopping off at a new quarry on the way home from that…and the past two weekends I`ve been taking a new friend rockhunting to a couple of quarries in south central Missouri and found out that he shares the same enthusiasm for it as I do. I`m a bit sore today, after eight hours of extensive digging at MFQ yesterday, but it was well worth it, cause we opened up about ten huge pockets of chocolate brown dogtooth crystals, some of them were big crystals, some were a bright yellow dogtooth nestled into dolomite druse crystals, and several pockets of poker chip clusters, some of those were nestled into the druse as well. Ray even found a pocket of pure white druse quartz soda straws and was able to remove a few intact. I`ll start with last weekend`s trip first.

I talked to Ray about a week before Sunday the 23rd, and he let me know that he was off and available to go with me finally. He has a lot less free time with his job, than I do, and was finally able to get away for a day, so I jumped at the chance to take him and comped out on my short night to take him rockhunting. Despite the excessive heat forecast for the day, we headed south about mid morning and arrived late morning, and pulled into the middle of the blast pile remains. Ray immediately grabbed some tools and headed to the tall wall right in front of my truck and began looking for pockets….

Soon after climbing up the short pile there, he found a pocket and began chipping out some crystals….

I looked to the left and this is what was left of the blast pile looking west….

He wasn`t over there for long though, he wandered around a bit and then came over to check and see what I was finding in the solid chunk of blasted out rock on the west side of the pile. After getting my boots on, I had first walked over to the east side piles and found a few very large yard rocks that had crystals all over them, decided I would look at them again later if I needed to, and then walked to the west side pile and found some pockets of dolomite druse at the base of a large chunk of wall that appeared to have separated itself from the wall and fell down into the middle of the pile on blast off. Ray joined me there and we were soon finding pockets of chocolate colored dogtooth crystals with eroded poker chip formations around them and appeared to have been sprinkled with brown sugar as well. I didn`t take my camera over close to that chunk of rock, because there was dust and small rocks raining down on us all afternoon, below you can see Ray putting some of his finds into a boxtop after wrapping them up about thirty feet away from the chunk of rock…

I did zoom in however to show you some pockets we found at the base of that big boy….

Boy was it hot that day…guessing it was about 95 when we arrived and the humidity was something else as well…felt like a wet blanket wrapped around me much of the day…we took a lot of breaks and went through a lot of cold water, at times pouring it into our hats for a nice refreshing splash when we put our hats back on. I know my limits when it comes to heat exhaustion and warning, and let me tell you, we both hit our limits on the exhaustion part a few times that day and had to sit down a bit and take a breather. We were finding so many nice crystals and hated to, but had to…one of those priority things. I was glad I had brought enough water with me, we were wringing wet within fifteen minutes after our arrival. After one of our breaks mid afternoon, we decided to knock down some of the big boulders on the right side of that chunk to make things safer for collecting, here is Ray using one of my pry bars to knock some down on the right side….

…til things finally looked much safer…..

….we worked on pulling a few more out and then left about an hour later, and headed to another quarry to check things out there…as we were heading there, we saw black storm clouds to the north. We arrived and hadn`t been there long when the wind suddenly picked up and turned much cooler very fast, we watched the storm clouds roll our way and then split off on either side of us. We stayed about an hour and found a few pockets, Ray located some nice druse plates, and then we headed for home. I had the following weekend off and told him to let me know his schedule then, and we would go again. Here are some of my finds all cleaned up from the quarries….

…and here is a mess of the clusters found too….

…the next photo shows a dogtooth exposed in the lower end of a crystal, coming out at the top end, nestled on a base of matrix and dolomite druse…

…and more dogtooths….

Spectacular Dogtooth Crystals and Clusters

Posted on June 21, 2013 by jwj

I got bored the other day on my day off and decided to drive back down to the new spot and see what else could be found…Missy decided to tag along since it wasn`t extremely hot and we arrived about mid afternoon. In the next four hours, I discovered hundreds of spectacular dogtooth crystals and clusters in a few gooey wet clay pockets, which started going deep on me fast, and as I dug down into the wet clay even deeper, I discovered some blue and brown colored ones underneath a bed of bright yellow and orange ones !!! I was blown away…I wrapped them up double in the terry cloths I had and filled five bags completely full !!! I was so happy with them that I headed home with an hour of daylight left. I started working on cleaning them up this afternoon, some of them are double terminated, and there are some twin dogtooth crystals in this batch as well, one of them was about six inches tall and had the brightest yellow center I have ever seen on a dogtooth……

Here are the crystals and dogtooths I found, now all cleaned up….

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

Pocket of Black Dogtooth Crystals at MFQ

Posted on May 19, 2013 by jwj

Missy and I had nothing better to do with our time yesterday so we got up early and headed south to MFQ. It was a bit froggy when we took off west and shortly I found out, the fog was heavy up on the hills and almost non existent in the valleys, which is usually the opposite of normal. I had received a call from a good friend down there the evening before and he told me that the blast pile was completely removed and the walls of that coved blast area now exposed, so I figured it would be a good time to drive down and check it out.

It stayed foggy the whole way down there, and when we arrived, I drove down past the old hunting area and over to the new coved section of the wall, and sure enough, the blast pile was all gone except for a few boulders and the walls looked untouched….

…it was still a little foggy as you can see above…but as long as I could see the walls, I was okay…got my boots and hard hat on fast and grabbed my tools and a bag of wrapping cloths and was soon looking for crystals that had rolled down the piles from the walls to figure out the location of pockets…here are the walls up closer from right to left….

…you can see in the wall photos that they look vuggy and believe me, they were…..within a few minutes I had located three nice crystals and a medium sized cluster of crystals…

…including this beautiful dark gray, almost black, poker chip crystal in matrix….

My buddy Jim came by a few minutes later, just as I was starting to locate pockets, he and his girlfriend had been up in town and he told me that by the evening, the main highway which is also their Main Street, would be closed to traffic, for a street dance this weekend. I assured him I would not be going into town. We chatted a bit more and then they took off to get their day started and I set about looking for crystals. By this time, the fog was beginning to lift a bit….

….and soon after when it lifted completely, I was so deep in crystals that I didn`t even notice it. I found the first set of pockets straight back in the middle of the back wall, at the top of the falldown material, and began burrowing into the wall at that spot……

….where you see the bags above, and soon the first few crystals I removed from that spot were clusters of black dogtooth poker chips….

….the first five I pulled out in fact…here are a couple of them….

….and the next thing I knew, the pocket branched off to the right and left into two other pockets, one mixed with dolomite druse as is often the case there….

…and here are more of the crystals from those other two pockets….

…but you wont hear me complaining cause I personally like the poker chips surrounded and imbedded in the dolomite druse, cause it looks like marcasite or pyrite instead of druse, in the sunlight, by the way it sparkles alot…occasionally I see some of that mixed into the druse too. I filled five bags completely full with the crystals from these three pockets, and then stood up to take a break, and stretch my legs and walk around a bit…Missy had finished her rounds and was laying in the shade under the tailgate of my truck by then…I walked over and got a bottle of water and took a long drink and then grabbed another bag and decided to walk the wall and see if I could locate any other crystals loose or in pockets. It didn`t take long to find some out in plain site along the wall and I was able to remove quite a few nice ones…I wrapped those up and then started to return to the first set of pockets. I was climbing back up the pile to retrieve my mini mattox, and off to the left side about twenty feet from the original pockets, when I noticed some loose poker chips in the pile…I reached down to pick them up and all of a sudden, more appeared underneath in the rubble, so I began digging down and soon after, discovered a pocket down deeper in the pile….

…that had apparently fell off the top somewhere months back and was buried all this time intact….I pulled several nice crystals out of this pocket…they were intact and in good health, protected because the rocks surrounding the crystals came down completely intact as well. I decided to stop and work this pocket and then finish up the original pocket afterwards…it took me well over an hour to empty this pocket, pulling out several nice clusters and crystals embedded in a sea of dolomite druse, some of it a bright yellow color….

…as you can see, they were tightly packed in there, and pulling them out was no easy task, cause there was a huge pile of sand and small rocks up on top that kept on sliding down occasionally…like whenever I pulled a crystal out of the pocket….

…after about the fourth slide of rocks and sand, I triggered a large slide and got it all out of the way, and then began digging down into the pocket once again, this time without all the hangover stuff to worry about….

…and here you can see I haven`t gotten to the point of triggering the final slide yet, cause it`s still raining down below a bit….but I`m getting close to the back of the pocket and the only thing left are some druse attached pieces to pull out….

…and here are a few of the crystals I pulled from this pocket found in the pile….

…including this nice large double poker chip crystal….

as well as this smaller dogtooth with slight damage to it….

…and here is another beautiful brown dogtooth double that I pulled out of the first pocket found….

After finishing up cleaning out the original three pockets, I moved along the wall to the right, and found a few more crystals in some smaller pockets, and then discovered a pocket full of druse…since they sometimes contain poker chips too, I checked it out and discovered they were either plates and chunks of bubbled black colored druse, or druse with hematite balls all over them. I`m still not quite sure, but maybe after I clean them up I will have a better idea…at any rate, I filled two bags full from this one pocket and had two large ones that didn`t fit in the bag. We headed home soon after that, very tired and very satisfied. I`ll get some more photos on here as soon as I finish the cleaning work.

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

Poker Chips and Dogtooth Crystals…May 2013

Posted on May 9, 2013 by jwj

Dont worry folks, I`m still hunting frequently, just been busy helping my parents with storm damage from a few weeks ago and catching up on some other details here at home, and still have about ten bags of crystals to clean up…will get the details and photos posted on here soon. Been finding some spectacular stuff lately. The details don`t matter as much as the photos, so here are some photos showing what I have been finding lately….

For the fluorite fans, the June Celebration Dig and Rock Show will be the last weekend of May, which is the first weekend of June as well, at Marion, Kentucky. Hope to see you there.

Cleaning out the Dynamite Dogtooth Pocket

Posted on March 6, 2013 by jwj

I returned to the Dynamite Dogtooth Pocket Sunday morning and found it intact and waiting patiently for me to return and clean it out. I had taken the day off from work, Missy and I arriving about 9 am on a fairly pleasant day, it was due to warm up later in the morning to about 38 degrees. I had my heavy coat on when I arrived but soon shed it in favor of something lighter so I could move around inside the cavern pocket.

The photo above shows the roof and far side of the cavern pocket at the opening…when I first climbed back up to it, this time cleaning off the stairs as I climbed back up, then cleared off a level spot for four bags, I set about pulling loose crystals, some druse bubble plates, and a few clusters from the muck below the pocket opening…

…this guy was sitting there on top of the muck fall down from the pocket opening, right in front of me, when I got up there and started digging in from the bottom of the pile and working my way upward…

…and I carefully cleaned out around him before pulling him out…wasn`t sure if he was attached to a plate lurking below the surface or not…as it was, he was pretty much just by himself with a small calcite base attached….

…and if you look close, you can see another smaller one right behind it higher up…..

…I pulled several small clusters and single crystals out of the loose muck and then climbed up into the pocket opening and looked inside. It pretty much looked the same as the last time I was there, some big dogtooths on the roof as well as down on the far side of the cavern wall….I say cavern cause it was pretty much as big as a small cave in there….

…I could have easily crawled in there and still had room to spare…it wouldn`t have been comfy getting poked and stuck by those needles on all sides, but it was definitely roomy. I decided to check out the crystals on the right side first, since I thought there was a possibility that I could damage them if I didn`t take care of them first…good thing I had my hard hat on, since the wind was blowing pretty hard and knocking rocks off the top…here you see this massive cluster of poker chip crystals, covered in dust, sitting next to my hat….

…and above them are a couple of thick plates of bubbles of druse hanging upside down…poised right above them, but luckily still very firmly attached to the roof, otherwise they wouldn`t still be in the photo, I would have removed them. Down below them was the short wall of dogtooth crystals, again covered in a heavy layer of dust and dirt, where that little single guy was located a few minutes before…

…I chipped a few of the more accessible dogtooths off the short wall, mainly ones near the top after raking several loose ones off the top shelf and placing them in the bag…I refer to the smaller single crystals as ” christmas tree ornaments ” cause Docia uses them to make christmas gem trees and use them as ornaments on the trees. Pretty soon I had a bag full of wrapped goodies, and set it down below in between some big rocks so it wouldn`t tip over. I grabbed another bag full of cloths, emptied them out and then reached up on the bottom of the pocket opening and felt around the edges…next thing you know, I am pulling this beauty out of there….

…without any chipping required even…after this one though, I chipped a few more clusters out of that bottom opening wall, and besides the perk of pulling out some beauties, it also created some room for me to work the bottom of the pocket an hour later. After this, I decided to see if I could work on liberating some dogtooths from the roof and far side wall….

…including this nice guy just hanging there waiting to be liberated from confinement and exposure to those harsh Missouri winters….

…and here is another one that was attached to the far side wall….

…very pretty bubbley and sparkley gray druse is all over the inside of this pocket and where the bright orange dogtooth crystals are attached, they really stand out on that type of pretty backdrop. The next photo shows my view from the bottom lip of the pocket opening, down toward the bottom floor of the pocket, about two feet below me….

…and even closer down into the pocket looking toward the bottom of it….

…and finally at the bottom as I saw it that morning….

…and if you look at that big orange crystal sticking up from the bottom center of the photo above, that`s one that I pulled from the muck at the bottom a few minutes later…it was very pretty, and no, I don`t have a photo of it. I do however, have a photo of the cluster that I pulled out of the muck that was located a few inches below it…

…and the next photo documents the progress I am making, two hours after arrival…now have three bags full of wrapped goodies on the floor behind me, the bottom lip of the pocket opening shows chipped out and some crystals removed from the short wall to the right…

…and here are the three bags loaded down with goodies, accompanied by a couple of larger pieces from the short wall of dogtooth crystals….one beach ball sized one on the left and one football sized one on the right, covered by the towel….

…and the beach ball sized cluster up close….

…and another view closer up of the pocket opening…up on the right side, you can see where I had chipped a few clusters away from the wall holding them, but had trouble with that one large cluster of poker chips…they kept breaking off, so I decided to leave them where they were concentrated at….

…and I decided to stop here…three hours into the day, popped open a can of Arizona green tea for lunch and carried a few bags back to the truck, after moving it much closer than where I first parked. Since I also had a ways to carry the bags over uneven ground again, I learned a valuable lesson last week and not only moved the truck closer, but packed the bags about half full for the trip to the truck, then packed them full and freed up a few more bags in case I found more pockets…which….I did. 🙂

After a much needed break, I wandered down the west wall and then down the south wall, and after dodging a few falling rocks and pebbles, I spotted a pocket at the bottom of the wall….

…but I wasn`t prepared for what I saw when I looked inside…it was a dogtooth….. of a different color….

…I walked back over to my bag and grabbed my hammer and chisel and returned to free it, then wrapped it and placed it into my bag and continued along the wall…soon finding this pocket up high….

…and actually it turned out to be a double pocket, side by side….this one on the right more interesting to look at because of the obviously larger crystals at the edge and just inside…

…and that yellow icky gooey stuff on the outside of the pockets…not sure what it is, but it can be quite nasty sometimes when you reach into a pocket and come out with your hand covered in it…gloved hand that is…and here is the pocket on the left side closer up…can see some blast damage on the outside edge….

…I moved on down the wall and soon came up on another pocket, one that had apparently been opened by a recent blast, one that I wouldn`t have to do any chipping to open up at all, merely raking down some loose crystals at first….

..til I could get to these crystal clusters sitting up above the loose crystals in the back of the pocket…I was standing up on my toes trying to reach these guys with my mini mattox…one I am still getting used to after damaging my other one…

…here is a photo below with different color showing the clusters on the left side…and the loose stuff in front…I had to pull them down with the rake in order to get the clusters in the back to loosen up and slide down into my waiting hands….almost needed a bag to scoop them up with cause they came down in an avalanche each time…

…and this last cluster was sitting up high on the right side of the back of the pocket, obviously already with some damage to it…but it came sliding down as well….

the crystals that came from this pocket were a nice honey brown color with dark grey tips after cleaning them up last night. I didnt see any dogtooths in this pocket but it was a nice change from the other two pockets I had worked Sunday. I photographed several of the goodies cleaned up today, and will post a few more as soon as I get them edited up.

Well since I had a good nap earlier today, I decided to go ahead and edit up the photos of the goodies I cleaned up last night, so here they are, hope you enjoy as much as I am….I posted a few on FB as well…

Now a few of the larger clusters I found inside the pocket…..

and some more smaller ones….

52 Single Frosted Dogtooth

A Dynamite Dogtooth Weekend

Posted on February 20, 2013 by jwj

Last weekend I hosted rockhunts at two different locations for members of the MAGS Club, Memphis Archaelogical and Geological Society, based in Memphis, Tennessee…a club that I joined a few years back on the recommendation of rockhound friend Docia. They like to come up here in February to look for druse quartz and this year we added poker chips and dolomite/calcite druse with a trip on Sunday to MFQ, a location they had heard of before, but never been to.

I got up quite early on Saturday morning and dropped Missy off at my parents house, since the location I was taking the members to to look for druse quartz, was new and gets quite muddy, plus there is a water pond there that Missy likes to bound through and comes out soaking wet and covered in red clay mud from head to tail…something I have never figured out since she absolutely seems to hate baths. My mom likes to take a few walks each day and Missy likes to go with her, so I knew it would be a win win for both her and me.

As early as I got up, I was going to have an extra ninety minutes before the club group was scheduled to arrive at the high school, so I drove down to a private quarry farther south that I wanted to check out since I had been told there was a recent wall blasted there for new material. I arrived and made a quick walk around the blast pile, and found what appeared to be an obvious pocket along the wall within a few short minutes. Since I knew I would be pressed for time if I found something good, I didn`t take my camera with me. I started pulling extra rock away from the opening of the pocket and soon started seeing bright orange dogtooth crystals in the muck. I made my way back to the truck and grabbed two more bags and wrapping material, and then returned to the pocket and began removing one dogtooth cluster after another, stopping only briefly to wrap them and place them in a bag. Let me tell you, forty five minutes went by very quickly and soon I had three bags full of crystals…I`ll let you be the judge of what I found with the following photos….taken after I cleaned them up Saturday night….

Some very pretty stuff for sure….but wait til you see what I found the next day….

Sunday morning I got up early and headed south once again, this time to meet the MAGS group, and lead them to MFQ. This time Missy went with me, the quarry has a large open floor and she likes to explore and get some good exercise doing so, plus I never have to worry about her getting muddy at this location. It`s all rock here and even the few waterholes here consist of water and rock only.

About 2 pm, everyone headed home from MFQ, happy with their goodies located there, and Missy and I headed home. Despite getting a good workout in, I decided to take a detour and return to the SSQ before going home. By the time I got to the secret spot, I felt somewhat revived by a good can of Arizona Green Tea and some rest in my comfy truck seat, and since I had at least three hours of daylight left, I opted to drive over and check it out once again…

…the photo above showing the left side of the blast pile…….and the photo below showing the right side of the pile….

…I started walking around the left side and once I came out on the right side of the pile, I glanced across to the south wall and just about fell over in shock….if you click on the photo above and enlarge it, and with your eyes, follow the shadow below the square hole at the edge of the L shaped shadow, you might be able to pick up on the opening of the pocket as quickly as I did….if not you can try to find it in complete shadow in this next photo, about twenty feet above my mini mattox….

and a bit closer….

…with a nice short wall of orange dogtooth crystals on the right side of it as well….more to choose from I guess…. as if the choices presented already, were not enough. ..and even closer as I walked over and climbed up on the slippery slope of loose gravel and saw loose single orange dogtooth crystals laying all over in the mix…

…what caught my eye looking across the way, at first, was that wall of bright orange dogtooth crystals…they just jumped out at me….

….they were even more impressive up close and since some of them were a bit loose, I was able to remove a few of them from a small pocket at the base of that short wall as well…..

After that, I began working my way toward the pocket, starting at the base, mainly because of the extremely unstable material at the base, hundreds of loose single dogtooth crystals floating in and amongst the muck at the base, and it was all sliding downhill and literally into my hands the whole time….

and some to the right at the base of the short wall too….

I cleared off some level areas about six feet to the left to set my first three bags and some wrapping cloths…I didn`t want anything to slide on down that slope and roll down to the base of the wall and get damaged along the way. It was extremely slippery up there the whole three hours, I was constantly trying to clear off areas I could safely stand on without slipping but it was a constant battle to do so, plus I was fighting the loss of time and daylight as it got closer to sunset.

After about thirty minutes of constantly raking down base material and picking up multiple loose crystals, I finally made it to the base of the pocket and began to focus on removing the loose material in the mouth of the pocket itself….

you can see how much matrix rock was sitting on top of the crystals in the mouth of the pocket above…thin sheets of rock and then those heavy chunks in the right hand corner heavily weighing down on the clusters below that cannot be readily seen here…not to mention that big plate of gray bubble druse in the middle, laying face down on top of some huge poker chip crystals…it was like eeney, meeney, miney moe in figuring out what to move first, and unfortunately I didn`t make the best decision the first two times, cause much of it came crashing down into my lap right off the bat…soon I had it stabilized though and was able to gently rake some of the thin loose sheets of rock off the pile a little at a time after that. Here is a closer view of the pocket opening….

The first batch of crystal clusters that I pulled out and sat on the side to be wrapped up are pictured below….

…you can see in the next photo just how loose some of the base material was, after I worked over the pocket at the base of the short wall…

Since I was fighting time and daylight from here on, I didn`t take any extra time to document this clean out process with my camera, even though I had it up there with me. I had to make a few fast trips back to my truck to get more bags and wrapping material as well, and believe me, I didn`t walk back and forth…I ran….and wound up filling ten bags with wrapped goodies, as well as removing six large clusters of bubble druse & dogtooth crystals and two clusters of druse & poker chips…I hand carried the two larger clusters of druse & dogtooth crystals under one arm with a bag of wrapped crystals in the other hand, and it felt like I was carrying a porcupine under my arm each time I made a trip over uneven ground to the truck. I did take photos of these nice clusters after I got them inside my sunroom yesterday and here they are….

this is goodie number two above and below is the other side of it…

and some closeups of this one in greater detail….

The next three photos are of one beautiful cluster of large poker chip crystals that were in the mouth of the pocket with a cluster of dogtooths at the base….

These next two photos show a top view and side view of a yellow bubble druse cluster of poker chips with some dogtooth crystals embedded….

And the next one was pulled from the pocket by its base…when I pulled it out, I was disappointed to see that it had suffered damage on the top side of the huge poker chip crystal, but elated to see the cluster of poker chips at the base that did not appear to be damaged at all….

…and showing it from the back side….

The next two photos show an unusual piece I pulled from the backside of the pocket, just tucked away into a back corner, it had some damage but some different features as well, like the poker chips in an obvious pocket underneath the piece as well as one right smack dab on the bottomside of the piece….

The next few photos show a neat shiney, sparkley gray bubble druse chunk with some poker chips and dogtooth crystals attached, and a buddy said this first photo makes it look like an elephant sitting down….

…I was like…an elephant with how many legs ??? wondered what he had been drinking before he said that….lol…but it def is unusual looking for sure….

So I got all of those out of the pocket and the bags all packed with the smaller wrapped goodies and down to the floor of the quarry and then started making several trips over to the truck and loading it up, as the sun was setting and light was leaving me fast…I said a quick prayer for extended daylight and strength to get all the goodies to the truck and still have enough to drive home on…cause I was getting exhausted really quickly now…and on my last trip to the pocket, I took a few photos of the pocket cleaned out as much as possible…I was too exhausted to try to do anymore and ran completely out of bags and wrapping material too….

this pocket measured about 36 inches across from side to side…and top to bottom was about 30 inches….it was one of the deepest pockets I have ever seen, a person could have literally crawled down into it and had lots of room to spare….

…and I no sooner got in the truck and headed home than I saw this stunning sight when I reached the top of the long hill climbing out of there….

…all in all, a beautiful ending to a great and amazing day….

Three AMAZING Pockets at MFQ

Posted on January 27, 2013 by jwj

Earlier this week I was watching the weather forecast, thinking about making a drive to MFQ on Sunday, which is today, the 27th, with a new rockhounding friend joining me as he was off on Sunday and could go that day……however as the forecast began to change, it became obvious by Friday that I would be changing my plans to Saturday instead.

Originally they were talking about a cold Saturday and warm Sunday, but by Friday, the Sunday forecast started with freezing rain at daylight to rain all day after 9 am, so I opted for the cooler day to go hunting this weekend. As it turned out, it was alot warmer yesterday than they forecast, and after finding so many nice pockets full of gemmy material, it turned out to be a win-win day all around.

I had set my alarm clock to 6:15 am, figuring to be on the road by 7 and arriving about 9 am, but my fire dept pager went off about 5:30 so I opted to get up then and hit the road a little after 6 am. It was an ems call and our full time crew could handle it just fine. As Missy and I drove over to Mc Donalds to get an egg and sausage biscuit for breakfast, there was a nice full moon coming up in layers of pretty clouds…I shot these on the move so I apologize for the blurriness….

I arrived at the quarry a few minutes later, meeting no traffic until I climbed the hill just above it, and pulled down into the parking area below the west facing bluffs. It appeared to me that only about thirty feet of sloped loose rock had been removed since Ian and I were there last, and a subsequent trip after that as well….

I no sooner had my boots on and laced up, grabbed my mini mattox and bag, and started nosing around, when I spotted this number and took it back to the truck tailgate….chocolate brown poker chip triple….

…I remember thinking, as I walked back over to the loose rocks and began to look for more gems, that this might shape up to be a nice collecting day after all. I walked down the wall to the left first, seeing if I could locate any new pockets in between the ones already found, and while I found a few smaller pockets, they turned out to be shallow and only pulled a crystal or two out of each one. I then moved over to a chunk of solid rock wall, that nosed out a bit, with a crevice separating it from the rest of the wall, a crevice wide enough that a person could easily climb up into it and up between the two walls of separated rock, the nose of rock is seen below to the left of my blue bag….

As I climbed up into the crevice, I came up on the very large boulder that was there the last time, only farther up that crevice the last time I was there, it was even there when Ian was here visiting…the last time I was there though, it harbored several large poker chip crystals, some the size of the one now sitting on my tailgate, and some even larger than that, several that I was unable to pry out of the pile due to that large boulder and some that were attached to it. It was obvious that while it didnt appear that much of the pile had been disturbed and removed since I had last been there, after a close examination of that boulder and the area around it, much of those crystals were gone and removed, some possibly having slipped through a hole under the boulder and slid down the pile to the waiting jaws of the quarry front end loader and taken to the crusher, where their fate was sealed.

I was able to get down and look under and around the boulder this time, and was able to pry and chip a few crystals from the bottom of it as well as pluck a few out of that large hole under it where some crystals were lodging and laying there waiting to be found. I figured that is where the tailgate poker chip had come from as well. There was still a lot of material just sitting above that boulder, that I didnt want to take a chance on dislodging to slide down upon me…there would be no escape from it as there were no areas to jump over to out of the way from it, so I left it alone. I could see a few chips exposed on the right side of the boulder, but no where safe to stand and work them loose from.

By this time of morning, it had warmed up considerably, now likely around 50 degrees, so I removed my coat and placed it back in the truck. I then returned and turned my attention to the wall of the main bluff to my left, and after a little searching, found a few little pockets that I was able to get to and remove a few crystals from, enough to fill one bag anyway. I then moved around to the right side of the nose of rock and began finding smaller single crystals, and even a double crystal, that had rolled down from a pocket above, so I began searching along the left wall of this side…which by the way, was sloped alot less steep and easier to climb as well…..

…right above my blue bag, in the photo above, you can see where I found my first pocket….I was seeing evidence of crystals exposed along that wall…..and began pulling some loose rocks away and OILA…a pocket became exposed…and boy what a pocket it turned out to be !! There were two parts…a top part with a very pretty partially exposed golden brown poker chip laying sideways in it, and the bottom open area of the pocket revealed edges of another golden brown poker chip inside it….…you could only see the crevice shadow above of the bottom pocket, but the next photo shows the golden brown poker chip I saw in the top pocket, just beckoning to me like a lighthouse beacon….

…and the bottom pocket was just as inviting looking….

I decided to work the top pocket first, after bringing my bag up there with me, clearing off a nice level spot for it and placing a couple of towels above it, to set the crystals on it as I pulled them out. One of the very first ones I pulled out was a narrow two inch long piece of gemmy dolomite druse, brown on one end and bright yellow on the other with a poker chip attached, just glistened in the sunlight…I was just dumbfounded as to it`s sheer prettiness, and after looking back in the pocket, I decided I should go grab two more bags, full of wrapping cloths, and really get ready to work that pocket open. I took that gemmy little druse combo back to the truck with me and grabbed two more bags before returning to the pocket.

After pulling a few smaller crystals out, I latched on to that big one in the middle, the golden brown one and boy was it pretty when I got it out in the sunlight finally, had some real sparkly dolomite and calcite druse covering the base of it, just absolutely beautiful…..

Within moments, the pocket was open and more were waiting in the back to be removed as well….

…more like these crystals….

and this one….

…I then turned my attention to the bottom pocket, wanting to try and remove that facepiece first….

but had to remove alot of loose rock around it that was holding it in place….

…and after removing that facepiece, the slab of rock on the left side covering the pocket to protect it, I saw that I wouldnt be able to remove the pretty golden brown chip behind it, the one you see in the photos above, because it was embedded into the rock behind it, and there was no way to get around it and chip it out at all, without damaging it. I opted to leave it in the pocket and then turned my attention back to the top pocket again. After removing a few more crystals from the top pocket, I started working on removing the cluster…tried chipping it out and tried prying it out, but it seemed to be hung up on something bigger behind it, and I couldnt get a good angle in order to chip at it or pry on it, so I opted to leave it as well….

…when you see what all I pulled out of there, later on when I get them all cleaned up…you`ll see it was no problem for me to leave that bottom crystal and top cluster in there and walk away. I started scraping around the face of the rock with my mattox and lo and behold, another pocket opened up about a foot to the right of this one !! At first, I pulled out a few shards of limestone sitting at angles and then behind it, a few chunks of dolomite druse….

…then after clearing them away, I was rewarded with the sight of yet more poker chips nestled in the druse…

..prime and ripe for the plucking…..

…so after cleaning out AMAZING pocket number two, I wrapped up the crystals and took those three bags to the truck, returning with yet another couple of bags and more wrapping cloths, just in case I stumbled upon yet another nice pocket…I was feeling good and lucky by now. I climbed on up the slope, but didnt see anymore crystal signs, so as I was returning to the bottom, I caught a glimpse of some exposed crystals on the side of the rock wall near the base. I decided to scrape and see if anything was loose, and all of a sudden, the rock wall just collapsed inward, exposing dolomite druse and a few poker chips along the upper edges, surrounding a large chunk of rock that was loose on three sides that I could see. I stuck the mini mattox in and pried back on one end of it and it came back to me very easily, so I grabbed both sides of it and pulled it out of the pocket it was protecting, and turned it over to see the pocket side completely covered in sparkly dolomite druse, with some hematite balls mixed in, and three poker chips attached at various spots, one on the top end had a nice partially exposed dogtooth crystal even…it was fabulous looking….

As you can see in the first of these four photos above, this third pocket was in a direct line below the other AMAZING pockets above, and I was about to find out just how AMAZING this pocket was going to turn out to be, surpassing the other two pockets combined !!

I looked inside the pocket after removing the big chunk, and there were poker chips laying around inside it all over the place !!

Or at least, I thought many were single chips, but once I started poking around inside there with my fingers, I soon discovered that many of them were small clusters, and after pulling about ten small clusters out of there….

this large one the first one I pulled out….

….I decided two bags were not going to be enough, so I grabbed the big one and headed to the truck with it, returning with more wrapping cloths and more bags…..so I brought back two more bags stuffed full of wrapping cloths, and wrapped up what I had pulled out so far…..

then reached in and began pulling more crystals and clusters from the third pocket….

….after pulling the crystals out that were showing, I reached back in and saw several laying just out of sight under a thin layer of dirt and rock dust….

…these were clusters in the floor of the pocket near me…and the photo below shows how it looked like at the back edge of the pocket….

….including that gemmy little chip by itself in the middle near the back edge, or at least I thought it was the back edge…..

…but we`ll get to that part of the story in a few minutes….I pulled a couple of druse chunks out, one with a gemmy little crystal attached to the end of it….

…and after about thirty minutes of pulling out crystals and clusters and setting them on the white cloths again, this is what I had accumulated….

…pay close attention to the upper left hand side of the pile above…one of the crystals I pulled out had two small dogtooth crystals embedded in it, almost looked like fangs….

…and a few more of the clusters I pulled out this time as well…

…after wrapping these beauties up and taking that bag to the truck, I returned with another bag, filled with the last of the wrapping cloths I had, and pulled even more clusters out of the pocket….

…including this nice little cluster that had a dogtooth crystal poking out from one side…

It soon became obvious to me that I would have to chip out a couple of bigger clusters …so I retrieved my hammer and chisel from the truck and began lightly tapping and soon removed a couple of nice large clusters as well as a few more small clusters….

…and some druse pieces that appeared to contain some of the red colored dolomite druse I had seen from there before…

…as I was pulling this lasst bigger chunk of crystals out, I looked back into the pocket and saw that the remaining clusters were locked into the floor of the pocket and would require a hammer and chisel to remove the rock holding them in below the floor, so I set about chipping the sideplates and bottom rock plates….

…in doing so, I came upon yet another pocket…and it turned out to be mainly dolomite druse, which often accompanies poker chip pockets or surrounds them….

…after removing that plate above that is plain looking on this side, I could see inside the pocket better…..

…by chipping this side of the rock out, I was able to remove clusters from the left side of the pocket floor, shown in the next photo….

After cleaning out the left side of the pocket, I turned my attention to the large plate at the bottom right side of the pocket. I had scraped out a few plates of dolomite druse on the right side of that large plate and discovered it was hollow in the center spot at the bottom of it, and once I had pried it out, discovered it was pockmarked with little pockets of druse throughout the other side of it….which you can see some at the bottom of it in the next photo….

…and once I removed it, I discovered yet another pocket lurking behind and below it…this one full of nothing but druse plates and chunks, most of them rather drab and not pretty at all…this pocket seemed to tunnel back a bit further into the rock as well, and the further it went, the material was even less appealing. Its been my experience hunting there, that quite the opposite is usually true, the further into the rock you tunnel, the prettier the crystals and plates become…..but not in this case….

I also removed several small and large clusters after removing the large plate….

..including these two centerpieces that were on the center column holding the two sides together….

…by this time, I was fast approaching exhaustment…I took a break, carried two bags over to the truck and grabbed a can of Arizona tea, then grabbed as much wrapping material as I could find, having to utilize walmart bags and old t shirts to finish up my wrapping. I then added those last two bags to the truck, wrapped up the bigger chunks and clusters and placed them in the bed of the truck, loaded Missy and headed north. It was now 2 pm and I had just finished six hours of digging, hammering, and wrapping…I was tired but elated at what I had found, and decided to stop off and check out the new druse spot to see if anything new could be found.

I stopped off at the Viburnum fire station to check on a large cloud of smoke in the area of the airport, and see if they were in need of any help…Bill the dispatcher there, told me that it was a few acres on fire and they would have it under control shortly, burning up the hill near the airport runway. I visited with him a few minutes, he is related to one of our firefighters here as well. I then drove on north a few miles to the druse spot and checked it out, spotted a beach ball sized chunk of smokey colored druse and loaded it up in the truck and then headed home with it. All in all, it had been a very nice day to hunt and I was very happy with my finds.

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

JWJ Rocks

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Category Archives: Dogtooth Calcite Crystals

MFQ First of August

MFQ End of July

MFQ in June Part 2

MFQ in June Part 1

Spectacular Dogtooth Crystals and Clusters

Pocket of Black Dogtooth Crystals at MFQ

Poker Chips and Dogtooth Crystals…May 2013

Cleaning out the Dynamite Dogtooth Pocket

A Dynamite Dogtooth Weekend

Three AMAZING Pockets at MFQ