More Pockets at MFQ Yesterday

Posted on July 15, 2013 by jwj

Missy and I returned to MFQ yesterday, driving down early morning to beat the heat, plus the fact that for whatever reason, I couldn`t sleep well the night before, so got up and headed that way. We had a good trip, Missy perked up in the seat when we had three deer come out in front of us ….she was alert and looking for more deer after that…the sun was coming up across fields of fog and it sure was pretty in the farmlands area….

We arrived at the quarry about 8 am and the cloud cover provided a nice and cool morning shade all over. It was cool enough there, I left my long sleeve blue pullover on til about 9 am.

I did an all over search at first, located a few nice larger pieces, and then explored the knob that Ray and I had been working on the past few weeks.

Someone had been there since we were last there and rolled out a huge boulder from the beautiful large brown dogtooth pocket halfway up the pile of the knob. I didn`t see much of any thing good on it so I climbed on up to the pocket and saw where they had explored all around and above the boulder…but they missed one spot…I reached back in the space behind where the boulder had been sitting in the pocket and pulled out a beautiful black poker chip with a gorgeous bright golden brown dogtooth on the top of it !!! EUREKA !!!!!

I pulled out a few more smaller crystals and then moved over to the wall and worked my way around to the pockets I had found near the base of the coved wall and started checking for more crystals to each side.

After a small cave in of rocks and gravel mix from above, and not finding much more than druse plates, I decided to move to the right and look along the wall for more pockets. I moved about fifteen feet over and found three pockets of calcite druse…

….we always check these because they are often associated with poker chips as well. These three were only druse, but it pays to check them. I moved over to yet another knob area…..

…and found a couple of areas where someone had dug into the wall, high and low, looking for pockets…upon looking closer at the lower one, I discovered that whoever had worked it, didn`t do a very good job, cause they left a whole lot of poker chip crystals in the bottom of it…

….so many that I was able to fill three bags full of wrapped specimens and pull out two gorgeous clusters of green and brown poker chips nestled in sparkley calcite and dolomite druse !!!

I spent a good two hours cleaning this pocket out…I took out all the crystals that were left in plain site, then reaching back, discovered two more pockets behind this one, one going left and one going right…both of them chock full of small green poker chip clusters and some with some golden calcite druse all over them as well. I had to move some small boulders out of the way to get to them but believe me, the small amount of effort was well worth it !!

It was 10:30 am before I finished cleaning it out and by then I was not only tired but famished as well, not having had any breakfast other than a can of Arizona green tea on the way down. I drank some more tea and then decided to check the pile on the right of the cove, where the machinery had been removing some of the base of the pile, and I started finding black poker chip singles, and small clusters all over the place, most with very little damage, some with some matrix attached. I filled my shirt up, as I hadn`t brought a bag with me, and then carried them to the truck, wrapped them up, and headed home.

We got home about 3 pm and after unloading my goodies, Missy and I collapsed and had a great three hour nap. Another good ending to a great day of collecting.

here are some of my finds that day….

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….

BE Clement Museum Gem Show and Dig Celebration 2013

Posted on June 6, 2013 by jwj

Several of us had a good time in Marion, Kentucky this past weekend, despite a lot of rain and storms pelting the area Friday morning before our arrival as well as later into the night before finally ending late Saturday morning, turning everything at the Eureka Mine into a gooey muddy mess.

I arrived at the museum around 2 pm on Friday afternoon and found Tina supervising a busy crew of helpers, that were assisting dealers and vendors at Fohs Hall in setting up their booths and preparing for the rock and mineral show on Saturday and Sunday. I transported some more grab bag material, and some druse/poker chip pieces for their silent auction as well and they helped me unload that too. Tina`s daughter, Jesse, took me back to get a quick look at their new display room in the museum while there, a project that Tina and a few members have been working on since the first of the year and let me tell you, they have done a great job with the new display cases that were built by the Amish community handimen to the north of Marion, and they look great, they have each one holding specific crystals and minerals of a specific type/category, nothing is mixed up any longer. their cubed display glass cases were moved out away from the wall and their new maps were placed up on the back wall for easier viewing. this room is near the back, one before the black light room.

As I walked outside the museum with Tina, I ran into Lamon Flynn, who had traveled up for the gem show with his grandson and they were unloading their Kentucky agate to sell and a large display case that holds his agate keepers, to show off as well. We talked for a bit, he was asking about Ian from Colorado, and Peggy of the Twister Sisters and if she had survived the latest round of storms in the Midwest. I found out his grandson had just graduated high school and was preparing to attend college and become a police officer.

After chitchatting with them a bit more, I headed to the hotel at Kuttawa and got settled in there, and then had a great supper at the Oasis Steakhouse next door. I heard from my mom, who told me about the bad storms that struck the Oklahoma City area once again, we have family members there, and then the St Louis area later in the day, at least three tornadoes. I then watched the local weathercasters, who were calling for the storms to move southeast and hit the Marion area around 3 to 5 am, with rain then forecast to fall much of the morning. I wasn`t sure how bad it would get the next day, so I retired early to get as much rest as possible.

I woke up about 6 am and discovered the rain pouring down outside my room, not sure if you can see it in this photo, but it was coming down in sheets, I could only hope it would clear off by noon as the forecasters were calling for…

…and after grabbing some donuts at Miss Neta`s Donut Shop in Eddyville, I headed to the Eureka Mine…..and arrived about 7:30 am to begin pumping down the pit. I had contacted and offered to help Bill Frazer and free him up from his many other tasks for this weekend, and he accepted my offer. I pulled up to park near the mine and found a muddy mess all over the place….

Apparently between Friday morning and Saturday morning, the pit area received about five inches of rainfall, so when I arrived, there was an additional two to three feet of water in the pit more than normal, and as a result, it was almost noon before I was able to pump the pit completely down to where diggers could even access and dig in the pit. For the first three hours of pumping, I wasn`t even sure the water level had dropped at all.

By 10 am, diggers started showing up…Mary from Ohio, was the first to arrive and soon after, several more showed up.

By noon there were approximately 35 diggers at the Eureka and while many stayed on top and worked through the three tailing piles, a few ventured down into the pit. I can safely say, it was the sloppiest gooey muddy mix I have ever seen there, every step on top was about ten inches down in the wet sloppy mud and down in the pit, you were lucky if you didnt lose your boots or shoes…even those with the pull on galoshes were experiencing problems keeping them on.

Around 11 am, a carload of geology students from the University of Illinois at Champaign showed up and began digging.

A few of them were brave, daring to move around the muddy mess barefoot…..

They were walking up to take a look at what Robin had found in the tailing pile back behind them, what was left of the huge pile on the north side of the pit last year, and had been turned over a week before the show and dig. Robin had found some nice cubes and showed them what they should be looking for in the mud….

…and Robin had found some nice ones by the time the geology students arrived, one of them a nice small set of cubes seen here close up in his crate….

…including that green bottle that I found in the mud that morning at the top of the pit…I hollered out, ” who collects bottles ” and he answered ” I do ” and got the bottle. I have discovered people collect different things these days in addition to rocks….

Diggers were looking through the tailing piles on both sides of the pit, this guy checking out the pile on the south side of the pit…

and you will notice he has his rain gear on, as many of us did, until around noon or a little after, when the sun came out finally…some went without rain gear deciding a little wet wasnt gonna hurt them at all since they were gonna get muddy anyway…..

…and the mud created hazards on its own, making balance very important…

….and getting back to looking for fluorite everywhere…this next guy John, one of the Maryland crew, I found him down in the muddy water pit about an hour later, looking for crystals…I think he figured it was worth a shot since it was near the backfilled area…

…and here are a couple more of the Maryland crewmembers, washing off crystals in the outflow from the pump….

…but no matter what, people still showed up and continued to dig all day out there, in all age groups too….

…..above is Ohio Steve clearing out after searching all morning down by the creek bank, he actually found a rockhammer down there buried in the mud…..and below is my buddy Steve from Memphis, walking around looking for treasures on the north side of the pit….

…and more afternoon diggers shown and raingear set off to the side as the sun was now out and it was humid as well….

One of the geology students, Cody, stood out when he showed up completely prepared for any type of weather in waders, and by the time he left for the day about six hours later, he was muddy from the front toes of his boots to the very top of the waders, looked like he had gotten down into the pit and rolled in it, but I can tell you Cody was one happy digger by then, having a few large yard rocks and some smaller cubed clusters as well for his muddy adventures. He was also happy because some rockhounds from Maryland….yes I said Maryland… had given him some instruction and assistance in hard rock mining as he was trying to tackle a pocket he found in the saddle in the middle of the pit. After learning how to hard rock mine some cubes, he was quite happy just to have learned the method, even though he really didnt extricate any cubes from the pocket. He was working over on the south side of the pit when Robin and Sandy joined me on the north side to take a closer look at the old tunnel entrance…..

….we tried digging it out to see if there was anything worthwhile in the mix, but didnt find a thing in it. After I explained the saddle to Cody, he moved to it to try and work the pockets, we then moved over to the south side where I began moving mud away from the base and digging down to the bench level and pulling out some small clusters of fluorite cubes. After a bit Tammy Bromley and her sister joined me on that side, staying up on top and sifting thru the tailing piles, after looking around on the north side all morning. Steven and April Gibbs arrived around 1 pm and stayed up on top working the spoil piles as well.

As I stated, there was an entire group that traveled down from the state of Maryland for the dig at the Eureka Mine, a club outing for them and after talking to them a bit, discovered that they do this quite a bit, and are planning now for an upcoming trip out to Utah to look for geodes red beryl, and agate. They had made the drive down here straight thru, and it required around fifteen hours. They stayed the entire day with us at the Eureka and around 4:30 pm, Bill Frazer came down the road to warn us of a dark storm cloud approaching from the northwest…we could see it coming down the valley but couldnt tell much about it due to the restriction of the trees blocking our narrow view of it, but as it neared our location, it suddenly changed direction and headed in a more easterly direction toward the highway from the pit. By that time though, all of us had bailed from the pit and decided we were tired and muddy enough to retire early for the day. The Maryland crew decided to stick around and take advantage of the waterfall under the bridge to clean up at before heading out, while the rest of us headed back to the hotel to clean up and go to the steakhouse. As I got to the intersection of Hwy 60, I could see the cloud that concerned everyone and saw that it was a roll cloud, a very long reaching roll cloud, several miles long and neat looking as well. They can be quite scary looking when accompanied by dark colored clouds. After a brief stop at the museum to talk to Tina, I headed to the hotel and stopped briefly near Fredonia to photograph the pretty horses that are always in the field next to the highway……

…and then I headed on south to the hotel to get cleaned up and then meet Steve, April, and her mom at the Oasis for a great meal and catch up on old times. They are great rockhunting friends from Memphis and I hadn`t seen them for about a year, so we caught up on events in the past year through supper. They are creating jewelry with their treasures these days so they were going to the show on Sunday morning. I had brought them some agates and other gems as well.

Sunday morning dawned early for me, it didnt seem like I had gotten enough rest and I had a long day in front of me. I arrived at the mine about 7 am this time and started the pump, the water level back down to its normal level this time and so it only took about 90 minutes to pump it down. I stopped after about an hour though and diverted the flow to the water hose and washed off the bench in case there would be any hard rock miners this time. Even though there were no hard rock miners there in the morning, there might have been some later on. Tammy and her sister were the first ones to arrive after Mike the host, and I put them down in the corner pocket I had been working the day before….

….and after helping them for a while, I took off for home, stopping off at the museum to give BJ the gate key and then walked over to the gem show to visit a bit. I bought a few pieces of agate from Mr. Flynn and he invited me back to hunt with him anytime in the Irvine area and I told him I would def do that. As he said, springtime is better as far as less leaves covering the ground, but early fall has its advantages as well, as the deep creek holes are usually drier by then too. These days with the recession still making things difficult for many people, there are many more folks out hunting for it and selling it on the side, so you have to be careful as some of them are a bit on the shady side.

I soon headed home from there, taking Hwy 60 to Paducah due to the restricted roadway and construction stupidity on I-24 from Eddyville to Paducah. I stopped in Paducah to fill my gas tank, gas there 3.37 a gallon and then headed west on Hwy 62 and 286 to Wickliffe, crossing first the Ohio River and then the Mississippi River on the twin steel structure bridges near Cairo…..

….as I entered Charleston, Missouri, I encountered the lowest priced gas pumps seen so far on the trip, at the truck stop there, 3.25 a gallon and kinda wished then, that I had filled up there instead. Oh well…

On my way home, I made a pit stop at a great location that a buddy of mine told me about in south central Missouri, and filled my entire truck up with beautiful clusters and single crystals of calcite and druse, some that were several inches in diameter and length, and in many colors including some pinks and greens. I had several huge clusters in the front passenger seat and the entire back seat filled up, as well as the bed of my truck…I had to leave several behind because I simply had no more room to put them. I found some gorgeous orange dogtooth crystals there as well, and carefully wrapped them up and placed in several of my blue bags.

Hopefully they will still be there in a couple of weeks when I return with a rockhunting friend from the St Louis area. I was very tired when I finally got home about 11 pm Sunday night, but also very happy. It looks like my next few days off will involve alot of crystal cleaning and catching up on my blog site as well, as I now have about a dozen bags of wrapped crystals to clean up. As soon as I get them cleaned up and some photos taken, I`ll post them then.

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

Guided Druse and Poker Chip Hunt, April 2013

Posted on April 27, 2013 by jwj

Last weekend, a friend of mine came up from the Atlanta area after arranging with me in March, to take him and a couple of his friends to some good locations to find druse quartz and poker chip calcite crystals. They definitely wanted to go to MFQ and they wanted to find some druse quartz in varying sizes, so I took them to two different locations for the druse and we spent all day Saturday at MFQ. We had a few days of wet weather before they arrived and all the creeks and rivers were way up when they arrived Thursday evening. They were thinking of visiting Peck Ranch to see the elk herd being restored by the Conservation Department of Missouri, however they were not traveling in four wheel drive vehicles, so I suggested they avoid that area, as the roads there crossed several low water bridges and could be flooded easily. As it was, a good buddy of mine who works for the Conservation Department, advised me that the area was closed because additional elk were being brought in to add to the herd.

I had to work Thursday night all night, came home about 8 am and got a four hour nap, then took Missy to get beautified and arranged with my parents to pick her up afterward, and then I headed south to take them to a great druse quartz spot nearby. I pulled into the meeting spot and found Chet in his cargo van, sitting next to Don and David, in their smaller passenger van. After introductions and some small talk, we drove on out to the druse spot…..

We started finding druse quartz all over the place, with the aid of beautiful sunlight…it had been a few days since we had seen sunlight, and while it was a bit cool on Friday, the sunlight made it feel alot warmer and was a welcome sight. Granted, we needed the rainfall, but five inches in a day or two is a bit much in my book. As a result, I had warned these guys to bring boots and expect to get muddy, and so they did. I have been to this spot before when every step you took, you added four pounds of mud to your boots, and eventually it becomes a workout just to walk around there, let alone pick up druse quartz clusters.

I started out helping Chet, Don and David find some pretty areas of smokey colored druse and citrine colored druse, and then began looking around for a few pieces myself. Pretty soon they were immersed in a few gullies…..

….and I was walking all over the hillside spotting some bigger clusters for them and pointing them out when I did find one. This is a great place to visit after a good hard rain, cause most of these pretties just erode and wash out of the clay dirt….

We only had access to about half of the area as there was some work being done and we didn`t want to intrude or get in the way….

I found some beautiful seams of smokey colored quartz here and there all over the place, here is one below….

…and then I walked upon a chunk of bubbles that had eroded right of out of the clay dirt….

…pretty soon, I came upon David with his head down and burrowing uphill in a gully, looking for druse and finding it all up and down it….

he was following a seam of smokey colored druse in that gully….

I also found some pretty white druse plates laying around all over the place as well….

These guys had brought me some beautiful quartz crystal plates from Diamond Hill Mine in South Carolina, close to Atlanta, and I was so busy since last weekend, that I didn`t get a chance to unwrap them til today. There was also a very beautiful cluster of smokey amethyst and a nice small plate of smokey quartz crystals as well….

By the time 5 pm rolled around, I was wearing down pretty fast…the hill at this location isn`t all that big, but after walking up and down it several times and carrying bags of crystals back to the truck a few times, my four hour nap after a fourteen hour shift the night before, was soon catching up with me. By 5:30 pm, I was headed out of there and back to the house, stopping off at my parents house to pick up Missy and then heading home to get some supper and then to bed. I stayed up just long enough to catch up on emails and then hit the hay, as I was getting up early to meet Don and David at MFQ the next morning.

After dropping off Missy with my parents once again, I was on the road headed to MFQ a little after 6 am, stopping off to get some donuts and then back on the road. I made good time, running into very little other traffic and all the way down, kept seeing several squirrels and chipmunks on the pavement around every turn and over every hill. I had a good sized gobbler run out in front of me as I started down a hill…I had passed several turkey hunters on the way down, most of them were warming up in their trucks when I passed by….it was pretty cool that morning and still a bit damp wind blowing as well…. I can remember a few cold turkey hunts myself. The closer I got to the quarry, it seemed like the squirrels on the road just multiplied greatly…it was like driving an obstacle course at times, luckily I didn`t hit any of them, although a few of them were not moving very fast and I held my breath a few times.

I drove down the last hill on approach to the quarry entrance and spotted David walking the ditchline and as I pulled into the entrance, spotted Don outside their van pulling on his boots. David walked over and said he was looking for old bottles, another of his hobbies. We drove on down to the first bluff area and parked and I pointed out the area that Ian and I had worked for pockets of poker chip crystals with dolomite druse clusters, and they grabbed their tools and wasted no time in attacking the rocks….

Don decided it would be safer to work the point without that large overhang of rock above him so he first started working on bringing it down with his prybars….

It was apparent that the rains down there had been hot and heavy as well, due to the way the clay dirt had washed down over the rocky bluff there. I helped them look for some possible pocket areas, before driving on over to the newer area where the rock has been more actively worked lately….

I no sooner pulled up at the more recent spot, and stepped out, when I started spotting some beautiful dark grey and chocolate colored poker chips laying all over the floor of the quarry at the base of the sloped rock pile…..

….and pretty soon, I had the entire tailgate of my pickup covered with them…..

I grabbed my mini mattox and a couple of bags and walked down the small pile of rocks at the very base of the pile along the floor and continued finding some great crystals and even a few clusters, including a couple of green ones….

I decided to stay there and see if I could find some pockets for Don and David when they decided to amble over and work it. I followed a couple of trails of crystals that had rolled down from above, way up above even, and dug a few out of some loose roll down material from above as well. I spotted a couple of potential pockets in the walls and made a mental note to point them out to Dr Destructo Don when he arrived later in the day…Chet arrived about an hour later and after visiting with Don and David at the smaller bluff area, drove over to see what I was finding as well. He liked the color of the crystals in the fresher area and then drove back to the smaller bluff to work with David, trading places with Don, who came over to work the fresher area with me….

I pointed out the mentally marked pockets and he went right to work with his bar, knocking down the loose stuff and working on the more confined stuff, to find pocket openings and soon found some nice clusters…..

I stopped to take a break and get another donut down, having worked off the other two already. As I was standing there watching Don work up on a shelf, my buddy, Jim Bay, pulled up in his pretty blue Dodge pickup, to see how we were doing with the rocks and see what we were finding so far. His girlfriend was with him and she was amazed at how we were working the rocks and what we were finding there. You cant see the pretty stuff from the highway when you pass by, so most people prob have no clue what type of pretty rock is actually there with the plain looking rock and stone that you generally see. They had been out turkey hunting early morning and then napped a bit before driving down to check on us. I had called him about an hour before that. After a bit, they headed on into town and we continued to break down the rocks and find some pockets. Don did a good job of pacing himself while I did a good job of wearing myself out. David ambled over while taking a break, took one look at the height of the walls and decided to go back to the small bluff area to work the pockets there…..

Don and I continued to work the fresher area for a couple more hours before I wore out….I wandered up to the top of the pile and looked around, but couldn`t locate any newer stuff…I did spot a couple of large poker chip crystals cradled up high on the wall, but impossible to get to…I commented to Don if we only had a long pole with a metal catch on the end like they used on light bulbs in gymnasiums, we could prob dislodge those crystals but then would need a large basket to catch them in with lots of padding in the bottom….Don wanted a rapelling rope. I headed home soon after that..my legs were sore as could be and I was exhausted as well. It was decided to meet at Davisville on Sunday morning and travel out to a second druse location where larger druse pieces could be found.

Sunday morning, Missy went with me and we headed down the road about 8 am, arriving in Davisville at the local Store just ahead of David, Don, and Chet…and then we drove north out of town to the other druse spot. I stuck around about an hour and showed them a few different areas there to check out, before heading home to help my parents with some more storm damage work. I heard from them later on, they had found several nice large pieces of druse and then returned to MFQ, discovering a pocket that they wanted to check out, had already been cleaned out that morning by someone else. All in all, I believe they had a good trip up here and found alot of nice material. I found some nice material, made two new rockhunting friends, and got some more beautiful Diamond Hill specimens as well…a very good weekend….

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

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

MFQ Once Again

Posted on January 4, 2013 by jwj

I didnt have anything better to do on the 30th, so Missy and I loaded up the truck and headed to MFQ. Snow had fallen on Christmas night and then again Friday night, and was deep an hour south of me, which is my traditional route there. I had called a friend who has a weekend cabin not far from the quarry and he let me know that they had a light snow Friday night and most of it had melted on Saturday, however the roads between me and the quarry, along my traditional routes, were ice and snowpacked and covered, hence my decision to take an alternate route instead.

There was a light dusting of snow in places on the rocks as I pulled down into the quarry parking lot…I slowed to check out the little bluff on the right as you enter, the area that Ian and I had worked for a couple of hours when he was here, and located multiple pockets inside it…it was covered with more snow than anywhere else so I decided to drive on over to the newer area and see what I could find there. The sloped pile there was halfway removed, and I no sooner got out of my truck than I discovered a very large chunk of matrix with a large green and chocolate brown colored poker chip crystal sticking out of it, sitting on the ground at the foot of the sloped pile. Before I could even get my boots on and laced up, I walked over and picked it up, using my legs instead of my back due to the weight of it, and walked it back to the bed of my truck. I dont have a photo of it yet, as it`s still in the bed of my truck…I left it there Sunday night as weight for the snow storm that was coming in on Monday mornng. I`m glad I did, because it was good weight and ballast for the bed of my lightweight truck. +

After lacing up my boots and grabbing some tools and a couple of bags, I walked down along the foot of the slope and then down the new wall…it looked like no one had been there since Ian and I had been there a few weeks prior. I was picking up some nice poker chips that had obviously rolled down from above somewhere. I looked up on the pile and saw a few potentials to check out when I got back from the wall walk, and made mental notes of their locations for my return. I even left one of my blue bags in place to mark the spot.

I had no sooner walked about ten feet down the wall from the edge of the pile, than I spotted a small palm sized plate containing bright orange dogtooth crystals…I was like, HOLIE COW…mainly because it was just sitting on top of a flat boulder like someone had left it there. While stunned beyond belief, I`m also not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I pulled out a wrapping cloth, wrapped it up, and then walked it to my truck for safekeeping…and no, I haven`t photographed it yet, but I will soon. I found several small poker chips down along the wall, some appeared to have fallen from way up, there were obviously some pockets about twenty feet up the wall that were entirely inaccessible, and within about ten minutes, I had completed my walk, and returned to the blue bag marking my return spot, with one bag filled with crystals.

I started climbing up the pile and hadnt made it very far up from the floor, before I found this beautiful green colored poker chip cluster….

…and after getting my footing after wrapping this one up, I started a little higher up and soon started seeing crystals all over the place, including this beauty…one that I had spotted earlier and was making my way up to…it suddenly dislodged above me and slid right down the slope into my waiting hands, and what had appeared to be a chocolate brown colored poker chip twin, actually turned out to be a triple….

…while it doesn`t look very chocolatey colored in the photo above, believe me it is….and I no sooner had it wrapped and placed in one of the blue bags, when I started finding chocolate colored dogtooth crystals all over the place up on that loose rock pile….

…within minutes, I had yet another bag filled up and I wasn`t yet halfway up the pile, so I slid down and took the full bag to the truck and returned with another empty one. I climbed back up the pile, checking out a couple of pockets in the wall on my left side as I did so, and then, after creating a couple of footholds with my mattox, I climbed on up to a very large boulder that had signs of crystals on both sides of it. The footing was more secure on the left side of this boulder, between it and the wall, so I climbed up on that side first and then nosed around with my mattox. Unfortunately, I knocked a few loose crystals down into a hole that opened up behind this huge boulder, and even more unfortunate, the hole was so deep I couldn`t even reach down into it to retrieve the crystals…and after cleaning off some of the loose material above and around the boulder, I discovered that there was a line of crystals, some small and loose, and some big and attached to solid stuff, all the way across the face and top of the boulder and extending about three feet on both sides of it. I soon found out, much to my disappointment, that I could not dislodge the bigger crystals from what they were attached firmly to. They were very pretty, some dark gray colored, some chocolate brown colored, and some were a bright green color.

I probably could have hammered and chiseled them out, but I probably would have still been there had I done that, buried at the bottom of the mass of boulders above me, too. Since I really preferred that not happen, I gathered up what I could in my bags and after carrying them to the truck, I grabbed two more empty bags and climbed up on the pile to walk up to the top and see what could be found up there. It seemed very likely to me that some of the crystals I had picked up on the pile, had rolled down from the top of the pile, so I wanted to walk up and check out that theory as well. I soon found that climbing up on that pile was not going to be easy…like when Ian was there, only now more difficult because I was a bit more tired now…I had to literally throw my bag and tools up on the ledge, then grab onto a rock that was partially buried in the muck above, and pull myself up on to the ledge…all while doing this, the lip of the ledge was giving way and disintegrating from the edge and rolling down to the floor below…fun, right ?? NOTTTTT….I was really exhausted now, once I got up there, I just laid there for a few minutes to get my strength and breath back…where was that Gatorade when I needed it….shoulda packed one in my bag for just such a deal….maybe I can remember to do that the next time.

So soon after I hiked up to the top where Ian and I had worked several poker chip and dolomite crystal pockets before…there was a guy there that day that went up to the top to see what else he could find after we finished working those pockets. I no sooner got to the top in that area, then I started spotting little clusters and twins and triples just laying around up there…I thought to myself…whoever left this gorgeous stuff here is even pickier than Docia and me combined…worse than Mike Streeter even….stuff like this one just laying there on top….

…and here are a few more of the nice ones I found that afternoon while there, some up above and a few on the pile down below….

…after filling up a bag full of the crystals I found on top and left laying around, and then prying a couple of larger clusters from the pocket, I wrapped those two up and placed them in the top of the bags and then carefully made my way back down to the edge of the pile. I decided to slide down the loose stuff on my butt from the edge, and boy let me tell you, that was some ride down the slide….with my hands and arms full no less….I dont think I will do that again with both arms full that is…gotta be able to steer….

Protected: Rockhounding With Ian Merkel

Posted on December 3, 2012 by jwj

Great Day of Collecting At MFQ

Posted on November 5, 2012 by jwj

Got word earlier this week that a buddy of mine from Colorado, would be coming to visit later this month, so Missy and I loaded up and headed to MFQ to check and see what was new there. I had told Ian about this spot before and since it had been several weeks that I had been there last, I wanted to see if there had been any new activity there. I had checked in with Docia on Friday and found she and Floyd would be deer hunting with their bows this weekend and unable to join us. I got a late start Saturday morning, the forecaster the night before was calling for a cool morning and possible rain, so I didnt get started down there til 9:30 am, putting me there almost noon. Lucikly for me, the forecast was for the St Louis area only..turning out to be a very nice warm and sunny day.

We arrived and I parked down at the bottom of the entrance hill, and after changing into my boots and grabbing a couple of bags and tools, I walked over toward the point that we had often worked before.

You will notice my blue bag on the right side above…I actually started on the left side of this point, on the other side to the left up there…thinking I had found a pocket, but went back to the truck to get my hammer and chisel…on the walk back, I skirted around a small pile of fall down rocks and actually found a few pretty crystals in that pile…took them back to the truck and set them on my tailgate…came back and walked farther down that pile and over to this clay red muddy area and started seeing even more crystals that had fallen down from above, so I walked up to find out where they had originated from. Low and behold, I discovered a pocket of poker chips and dolomite druse within just a few minutes of checking this wall on the right side of the point. I cant tell you how many times we have looked along this wall and found nothing at all, pocket wise. While walking up to that wall, I spotted this beauty sticking up out of the mud partially…the only thing I could see were the crystals sticking out of the mud…..

….and after cleaning it off this morning with the water hose, I was pleased that I had brought it home with me…though there is some damage to some crystals, there are several crystals and dolomite druse that are very pretty…

Here are the ones I found and set on the tailgate before I started digging into the pocket in the wall….some that someone else apparently didnt want to take home or just rolled down from a pocket up above….

…the big one on the left side of my tailgate, had crystals on both ends and just a few small pockets of dolomite druse in the middle….

….so I decided to pull a Mike Streeter and do some cobbing down to save this end with the neat dark colored poker chip crystal embedded….

…so I walked back over to the right side of the point wall and began examining the pocket up close and deciding what course of action to take…using my mini mattox for about thirty minutes and pulling out some nice crystals and clusters….

…some like this beautiful poker chip nestled in some dolomite druse….

and pried this chunk of crystals out of a pocket inside the main pocket….

..my pile of crystals so far was a bit small, but the day was young yet and I was just getting started….

I had finally reached the point where I needed to do some hammering with the chisel, so I walked over to the truck, took a short water break, and returned to start getting some extra matrix and rock out of my way so I could get into a few pockets that were visible but slightly blocked out. Once I was able to free up the pockets, believe me, I started pulling crystals and clusters out right and left. Since I had arrived mid day, I didnt take time to photograph and document my progress much. Within another hour, I had reached the point where I could go no further….

…even with one pocket staring me right in the face…

…dont get me wrong, I cleaned out this pocket as much as I could and then stopped to wrap up what I had pulled out, which was quite a bit….

…to go further with what was still there, plenty of potential sign for more pockets by the way, would require moving a lot of rock above and I didnt want to find out exactly how much rock that would wind up being…

I spent about thirty minutes wrapping and high grading, leaving some pretty stuff for someone else to find, taking more spectacular stuff home with me. Trust me, I took alot of pretty stuff home, I have a lot of friends who cant travel around like me and find stuff, so I always like to share with them, like to see their faces light up when you hand them stuff like this….just makes my day and usually theirs too.

I decided to walk up to the upper bench and see if I could find any fall down crystals up there, so I grabbed two more bags out of the truck after securing Missy inside the truck with the ac on for her, and hiked up above. I also checked the wall for more pockets, but alas, they were high up on the wall, where we had originally found them when I was there shortly after the blasting. There were no pockets to be found down at the new walking level. I did find a few single crystals here and there, but that was about it. I walked back down to the truck and drove across the lower level to a newer area to check it out.

…where after a few minutes of walking around,I found this beauty just sitting in a small pile waiting to be found…

I quickly returned it to the truck and walked farther up in this new area, and walked upon a beautiful poker chip triple in a dark chocolate brown color and a few in a deep green color. I also found a few chunks of a pale pink color calcite, but nothing in poker chip form. Most of these had some matrix attached, but was very pretty and all of it went home with me. I was walking around up near the top, and walked right up on this huge cluster of crystals, partially buried, waiting for me….

…shown above in my backyard after cleaning. I was completely amazed….I turned around in shock, and found this one right behind me….

…now I was really in shock, two large beauties like this within ten feet of each other, possibly from the same pocket and blasted down from above. If you want to know exactly how big they are, think of a beach ball under your arm and you`ll have a good idea how big they were to me, when I stashed each one under my arms and carried them to the truck.

I was very happy when I found both of them, specially after I was able to dig them both out with ease….both of them big, both beautiful, both with some damage…but thats to be expected when looking in a blast pile…put yourself in their place…how much damage would you have it you were suddenly dynamited out of your safe secure position in a limestone wall and landed in a blast pile among many other rocks, some bigger than you.

Despite the damage to each one, there were several smaller pristine crystals attached to each of the bigger crystals. The second cluster had obviously been sheared off, but there was a perfect set of twin crystals attached to the other side…I`ll try to photograph the other sides of each one tomorrow and add them so you can see what I`m talking about here.

I no sooner walked back up to take another look, when I spotted a pocket along the wall and stopped to investigate it more…with my mattox I was able to pull a few plates of several shades of colored dolomite druse crystals, even a few with dogtooth crystals attached to them and what looks like a smattering of marcasite on a few of them. I had two bags with me filled with some wrapping cloths and put them to good use…emptying the pocket required about thirty minutes, cutting into my leave before it gets dark time…and then I decided to make one more walk around…and found a huge chunk of green poker chips embedded in the ground….it makes a good yard rock but thats about it.

After loading the two bags of dolomite druse from the pocket and the three huge chunks of poker chips into my truck, after wrapping them all up, Missy and I headed for home. I was quite tired and looking forward to an extra hour of rest…even though I didnt get it due to a bad trailer fire call around midnight. Nothing beats a good nap the next day though. 🙂

MFQ Again…

Posted on August 27, 2012 by jwj

Well I am late once again in finishing the two part story from mid August…this time I have a semi good excuse though…we had a pretty bad storm roll through here last week that caused some wind damage and some lightning damage to alot of computers in our area. My computer didnt want to work well the next day, kept locking up on me and then would only work in spurts, so I limped along with it til Monday, then had my telephone carrier come out and check all the lines and when it still didnt want to work, I took it down to my computer repair folks at A to Z, and after a couple of hours on the diagnostic table, they found it was a bad spot on my terradrive instead. Chris was able to fix it and its been fine ever since, but I also found out while there, that terradrives only last about a year, due to their size…he said I would be better off with a 500 gig hard drive instead, even an external drive would be better. If I had known this drive was only good for a year, when I purchased it last year, I def wouldnt have bought it. Food for thought.

Missy and I got up early on Sunday the 12th and headed to MFQ…arrived about 8 am…to find a cloudy sky instead of a sunny sky…meaning the weather people got the forecast wrong once again, and this time a pleasant mistake instead. I can live with these types of blunders, let me tell ya…65 degrees is much more pleasant to start digging in than a humid 85 dgrees…any day and twice on Sundays. 🙂

This time I drove on over to the middle of the north wall, since it was directly below some of the new upper bench and wanted to see if there were any pockets of dolomite druse or poker chips over there as well…I got out of my truck and snapped the photo above looking south and slightly west, and the photo below looking east along the north wall…

…and after getting my boots on, I looked west and began to think I had better get a move on or I wouldnt be doing much digging at all…

…at least not staying dry while digging…as it was, it only sprinkled a few times and that was all…I actually wouldnt have minded having to stop and wait out a good rain shower down there, am sure they are in just as much need of moisture as we are up here. I got my boots laced up and grabbed my mini mattox and a bag, and walked over to an area of fall down material, that had some shiny stuff about midway up it….

I could see some seams of calcite here and there, and after climbing up a bit to the left side, I was able to find just a few poker chips in some matrix, but that was about it. I checked the walls up and down both sides and then went up to the upper bench where I was able to fill yet another bag with some beautiful fall down material in both druse and poker chips. After spending about an hour up there and filling two more bags eventually, I came back down to check out the pocket on the north wall that Docia had pointed out originally to me and that I had already worked on once before…

…I wanted to check on it at least once more, when I left it the last time I knew there were more crystals inside but it was gonna take quite a bit to get to them and get them out. I was definitely out of energy the last time I had been there but was ready to tackle the job this time. As I was scoping it out though, I noticed a few signs of crystals on the left side of this hanging ledge, and so I started cleaning off that side and sure enough, I found a pocket of some poker chips and dolomite druse over there as well…

The photo below shows a close up of the pocket that turned out to be fairly shallow and I was able to remove the dolomite druse pieces and few poker chip clusters in about twenty minutes…

..and then I moved over to photograph one of the areas of poker chips that I left attached to the interior wall the last time there, and hoped to be able to remove this trip….

…as I did so, I noticed that the sun had finally come out and was beginning to warm things up. I decided to get a quick water break in and then return with my tools to see what goodies I could remove from inside the main area.

As I was walking to the truck, I looked west and noticed Missy had finished her running around and was now chillin out in the shade from the North Wall…..

…I returned with my hammer and chisel and another bag with some wrapping cloths in case I was able to remove some really pretty ones. The photo below shows the area I am about to dig into and explore more, to get to the pockets of crystals that are inside it.

This is actually the base of a large hanging curtain of rock….

..attached to the main north wall…I say shelf, because its vertical and not horizontal, and this curtain of rock that covers the main pockets inside, is about six to eight inches thick, three feet wide and about ten to twelve feet high…as you can see in the photo below….

…and you can see in the closer up photo above that I have chiseled off some of the base support in order to create an opening big enough to reach in and remove several pockets of goodies inside…and yes, it worries me each time I have chiseled off more and more base rock. I have removed about seven bags full of goodies from there so far. I`m hoping that curtain of rock comes down on its own before I return there the next time.

Within a few minutes of removing the last crystals, it had warmed up to about 92 degrees and I decided to pack up and head home. I`ll add some photos of the cleaned up crystals and clusters that I found there that day.

On the way home, we spotted these old barn buildings next to a creek on Hwy B that were nice to look at….

…the trees framing them really set them off well….

JWJ Rocks

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Category Archives: Dolomite Druse and Poker Chips

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MFQ in June Part 2

MFQ in June Part 1

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Guided Druse and Poker Chip Hunt, April 2013

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MFQ Once Again

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MFQ Again…