Category Archives: Druse and Poker Chips
Protected: Missouri Rockhounding November 12th, 13th, 14th, 2021
Protected: MAGS Annual Trip to Missouri May 2019
SSQ During October
During October, I had a few nice visits at the SS Quarry, one visit producing a few unique combos from pockets….
….one producing some nice sunbeam photos….
…and then after some surface collecting, I decided to stop at another place to check for druse quartz…and discovered some nice plates of bubbley smokey quartz druse plates…
…I grabbed up several nice ones and then washed them off when I returned home, so I returned to the same place the next day and picked up several more…
BEAUTIFUL STUFF !!
Abigail Comes to Visit
I received word that drilling activity was happening during the last week of July and that blasting could take place by the end of that week, and after letting all my nearby rockhound friends know, I started hearing from those that were interested in going…namely Chuck Reed, Nathaniel Reid, and even Abigail Evans from Nashville. Abbi believed she was healed up enough from her serious back injury that occurred back in December, and decided to drive up on Saturday morning, July 28th to visit and go rockhunting with us. Chuck and Nathaniel could not go on Saturday, so we decided to meet at MFQ on Sunday morning early…and I took Abbi to the Secret Spot Quarry on Saturday morning. She and I had a late breakfast at Cracker Barrel and then headed out…..by the time we headed that way, she wasn`t feeling very well, possibly due to eating food not approved for her diet. I told her just take it easy and if she needed to leave for a bathroom break, that would be fine.
We arrived about 2 pm and once out of my truck and looking across the water hole at the wall, I noticed even more rock pulled out from the base of the wall since the week before. I also noticed what appeared to be several openings in the wall near the base of it, and all along the length of it…
….what appeared to be several pockets including one potentially large one in the middle of the wall at the base…seen above in the lower left hand corner…below in the middle of the wall…. just staring back at me….
….and I began to get excited about what type of day it was going to be. I had my boots on and all I had to get was my apron on as well as grab my mini mattox, wraps and bucket and start that direction…I took the right side along the edge of the water, and as I neared the area of the wall where I found a nice pocket a few weeks before, I nearly stepped on this cluster….
…let me rephrase that…this beautiful cluster…and since I am in the habit of looking around when I find something this nice in amongst a lot of ugly rock, I did exactly that, made a 360 degree turn and look movement, and immediately spotted two more large clusters like this as well as multiple single crystals and some twins and triples too…EUREKA !!!! I looked around for Abbi and spotted her heading my way but slowly and surely, but once there, she didn`t stay long, as her stomach was not doing well so she headed for the nearest bathroom spot. She left me her bucket and I began to fill it with many crystals just in case. I looked up on the wall above the area of crystal filled debris and spotted what looked like a potential pocket to me…top of the next photo where the hole in the wall is located…sure looked like a pocket to me…and crystals outside it and just below it really just cemented the idea for me…
…in fact, there were crystals dangling along the rock wall all the way down to the debris pile below, that I was standing in the middle of….you can be sure I was very careful where I stepped and how little I moved around then….I stepped back to the edge of the water figuring it would be safer there, but then looked down and spotted several small clusters in the water, pulling them free and placing them in our buckets for safekeeping.
I also dug down into the debris pile and rescued several small clusters and combos for about 20 minutes, then began to work my way up the pile and along the wall to the base of the potential pocket….
…notice the druse on the left side in and around those big rocks on the left side ? make note of that and in a few minutes, those will be come clear to you as well as it was to me….I climbed up on that debris pile after setting a few pieces of the dolomite up there to stabilize my footing, and then began to dissect the opening of the pocket…
As soon as I opened up the entrance to the pocket, after picking up all those loose crystals at the base of the opening, I knew I was going to have my hands full. There were gorgeous poker chips attached to beautiful bubbley gray druse that was in turn, attached to the walls and ceiling of the pocket….
…and then there is that pile of loose crystals inside the pocket along the floor of it…I knew I would have to carefully pick thru that to fully collect this pocket the correct way…time consuming, but it`s a good thing I did it that way, as there were several small dogtooths in amongst that pile of crystals and pieces of the roof plates that apparently came down during the blasting. Here is the second video I shot soon after this….
BTW, here are the two entrance rocks that were guarding the pocket opening, note the gray bubbles of druse that match up with the druse you saw a few photos back….
…it was a while before Abbi returned from her bathroom break and when she did, she stayed close to her suv and wandered along the edges of the piles surface collecting only.
…and she photographed me and Onyx a few times as well….
I remained and collected the pocket and continued to wrap and put some in her bucket as well as mine…here is another look inside the pocket…you can see I had sorted thru and cleaned out the initial pile of crystals at the front of the pocket interior, now I was back to a second pile and once I sorted through it, I was barely able to reach the third pile at the very back of the pocket…down to my fingertips on the reach, so I decided to take a break, go back to my truck for another bucket and more wraps, some gatorade, and get my handrake which would give me an extra foot of reach….
Soon after I had my bucket filled, so I took it back to my truck, and took a photo of the pocket from there…Abbi`s bucket remaining below the pocket….
This large crystal in the image below, was nearly at the very back of the pocket, I wrapped it up after pulling it out with the aid of my hand rake, and put it in Abbi`s bucket…I have so many large crystals like this, I figured she would prob love to have it for her collection….
It took me another hour to reach the back of the pocket and pull out the remaining loose crystals that were inside, using the hand rake to reach and pull many of them out…there was one huge cluster of bright yellow poker chips attached to a big and heavy plate of large bubble of pretty gray druse, here it is all cleaned up…
…and this next small plate with dogtooths attached at both ends of it, came out of the second pile of loose crystals inside the pocket….
many of the dogtooths found in the pocket as well….
here is a flat of the combos I pulled out of the pocket when I was sorting thru the second pile inside the pocket….many attached to that bright gray sparkley druse….
…and several others attached to a yellow druse….
….here is the pocket emptied out…it only took me a few hours to clean it out….
Abbi wandered over about the time I finished cleaning out the pocket to see what was inside her bucket…I photographed her from the truck as I was putting some yard rocks in the bed of my truck….
we got out of there shortly after, and headed back to town…after checking into the hotel, she decided to drive over to CB and get a light salad for her supper. I headed home to clean up and then went to our Mexican Restaurant for a late supper, and then bed…we were going to be getting up early to drive to MFQ and would need all the rest we could get…I could only hope she did the same. Here are some of her beautiful photos from that day….
Great Photos Abbi !!
The next morning, after I got up and was nearly ready to go, I looked out front and saw Abbi parked in front of my house, dome light on and she appeared ready to go as well. I got my truck packed, Onyx inside and away we went, stopping only for gas at the Phillips 66. We made good time getting down there, arriving just ahead of Nathaniel and Chuck, they were 10 to 15 minutes behind us. As we pulled in, I parked to the right of the new blast pile on the east side of the quarry….
We all spread out and began searching the pile for pretty crystals…Chuck and Nathaniel wandered over to the west side of the pile, which stopped on top of the little hill behind the main rock crusher…Chuck found some huge boulders over there full of green and brown poker chip vugs and was able to harvest some for his collection. Nathaniel worked his way over to and down the wall to the west side of the coved area, where he found a new dogtooth pocket, he came and borrowed my ladder so he could get to it more safely. I found a nice vug half way up the pile on the east side near the wall with a nice set of black dogtooths inside, called it to Abbi`s attention but after awhile she did not think she could get up there to it, so I let Nathaniel know and he never came back to even look at it. I should have just taken it out, but I wanted to go up to the second level on the west side and see if there were any new pockets up there instead. On my way up there, I found Chuck over by the big boulder pile working on extracting some large brown dogtooth calcite crystals attached to the side of a large boulder….
Nathaniel discovered the boulder and dogtooths attached, pointed it out to Chuck, who wasted no time in trying to remove some, while talking to Abbi about rockhunting….here is Nathaniel showing me a couple of small ones that he was able to remove from a vug in that same boulder…
…and here is the pocket of calcites Chuck is working on up close…
…and one of the vugs on the left side of the boulder, that Chuck said eventually tied in with the pocket he was working on…
Chuck sharing a dogtooth cluster with Abbi above….and then he hammered on….
…while Abbi admired the cluster…
When I got up to the next level, Nathaniel was up there looking for pockets already…he wasn`t having much luck tho, he said…most were up higher, so I asked Chuck to bring my ladder up when he could and we looked higher along the wall, finding mostly shallow pockets up there…
..he did manage tho, to find some very pretty druse pieces….
I went further down the wall from him and found a few small pockets like this one…
We took off soon after, Chuck and Nathaniel headed back to St Louis area, while Abbi and I drove back to the Secret Spot Quarry for another round up there…here is what the west side of MFQ looks like now all cleaned up…
and Chuck was hammering that boulder pocket and talking to Abbi at the same time…he was multi-tasking…
Abbi and I headed up the road to the SSQ to take a look at that again, since she was feeling much better today, as we left Chuck and Nathaniel working that boulder field full of dogtooths.
Abbi and I started taking a look at the pockets along the base of the far wall on the other side of the big water hole, I told her to check out the bigger pocket that I had worked at the end of the day before, and take home some of those big bubbly druse clusters that resembled the grape agate clusters you see for sale from Indonesia…the gray in the pocket resembled the purple color of the grape agate…so she was checking out that pocket and I was working the pocket where the yellow rain jacket is sitting to her right…it was raining when we arrived so we wore our rain gear for maybe ten minutes, then it became so humid we had to take it off…I left my camera in the truck due to the rain…
…so you can`t see all five of the dogtooth pockets I found to the right of her….but they were definitely there and possibly more.
Soon after we jumped on 44 at Rolla but stopped off at Missouri Hick for some great BBQ, Abbi felt her stomach had returned to normal by then and then we hit the hay, completely drained of all energy by the time we got back to town. Abbi headed for her home in Nashville the next morning after a good night of rest…she decided she was going to check into the KETO diet that I have been on and lost 30 lbs from in the past year, it`s alot easier to maintain and go by. Good luck Abbi, think you will love the results as much as I did and do !!
Secret Spot Quarry on my Birthday
My birthday is July 22nd and for the past fifteen years I have always taken my birthday off from work if scheduled and gone rockhunting somewhere…when it falls on a weekend, I always go to one of the quarries, this year it was the Secret Spot Quarry that I decided to go to. I let all my close rockhound friends know and Al was the only one that could go with me…I took it easy on him and we didn`t leave til around 6 am…we worked several pockets around the walls while Onxy did a lot of swimming in the water holes….
and we noticed the pile nearly removed from this section of the wall, so we worked our way carefully over to that section…as we did, we noticed that someone had been really nice to leave a large beach ball sized poker chip cluster laying next to the edge of the pile…I picked it up later and gave it to Al to take home as his very first yard rock. here it is….
After a few hours of searching and combing thru several pockets, we split up…Al stayed on one side of the pile when he found a large area of pretty white druse plates, he took several home with him…meanwhile I was on the other side and found a nice dogtooth pocket in the wall, and began pulling some clusters big and small out of the pocket. Al came over to assist me, bringing me some extra wraps and buckets, I let him know as soon as I had them cleaned up, I would let him pick some out to take home if he wanted. Here are a few of them all cleaned up with Iron Out a few days later…..
…and the one on the bottom in the image above, looked quite nice all by itself in the image below….
….and here is one of three larger clusters soaking in the Iron Out, has two large calcite crystals on it….
…I cleaned it up along with several pieces of wavellite that I collected back in March, while I had the Iron Out working for me…back to the quarry tho…we got out of there shortly after the dogtooth pocket as the heat was coming on strong..on the way back, despite his need to return home by 5:30 pm…he decided to stop off at Missouri Hick and buy me a late lunch for my birthday…thanks again Al !!
New Rockhound Friends in July
Wow July was a busy month for me and really this whole year has been at times…I no sooner started my new job at the golf course and almost immediately found out I had three bosses that liked rocks…Nate who is one of my supervisors and has never been on a field trip yet, really likes them so I helped him get his collection built up a bit more since I started…Shawn, my Manager, really liked the looks of the orange dogtooths that I gave to Nate and then told me that his seven year old daughter, Miss Abby, really likes rocks and possibly fossils too…and then Dave, my Superintendent, came to me one day and started talking about geodes after I gave Nate a geode or two, and told me that he had driven past the old rock and mineral museum up by Keokuk several years ago on Hwy 61…I had to think about that one for a day, then figured out he was talking about the octagonal shaped building that Tim Scheffler`s parents had built as a rock and mineral shop, that Modot seized through eminent domain through the courts and pissed every rockhound in the country off by their shameful way of handling the situation just so they could expand Hwy 61 from a two lane to a four lane highway…I say shameful because of the way they treated Tim`s family over that situation…they could have easily gone around that beautiful rock shop and left it standing for the many generations of rockhounds that followed, to enjoy for years to come. When I asked Dave the next morning, he said yes, that was what he was thinking of, and then I gave him a geode from the Keokuk area that I had found at last year`s Geodefest, with some extra minerals inside it.
I think it was June when I found out that the seven year old son named Logan, whose Mom is one of my favorite Cracker Barrel employees, was interested in rocks, so I took his Mom Heather, a flat of druse quartz, poker chips, and some other pretties so she could give it to Logan…I did that for Miss Abby and Nate as well.
Last month in July, I found out from a local firefighter friend, that another seven year old daughter, whose Dad is a local Firefighter Captain friend of mine, was now collecting rocks and minerals, so I took him a flat of crystals to give to her and told him anytime they wanted to go rockhunting with me locally, to give me a shout. A few days later, another firefighter friend contacted me on FB and asked where he could take his new girlfriend rockhunting because she was big time into it, so I gave him some info as well.
On the 2nd of July, I received an email from a guy named Al, who lives just north of the golf course I work at, and asked if he could go rockhunting with me, after reading my blogsite about my trips and travels…I let Al know that my friend Chuck and I were going to MFQ on Sunday, July 8th and asked if he would like to go with me and Onyx, warned him that we would be leaving quite early and he accepted the offer. That brings me to this next trip to MFQ…Al arrived at my house by 3:45 am and we transferred his digging stuff to the bed of my truck and took off by 4 am….we saw a bit of wildlife on the way down, which I always take as a good sign of things to find. We arrived around 6:30 am….
…..and Chuck arrived an hour after us, I had Al working on a pocket with some poker chip calcites inside by that time…
…working the wall now exposed at the ground level after much of the last blast pile had been cleaned up and away…..
…when I walked over there, I discovered a beautiful mosaic pattern in the dried clay mud in front of Al`s position along the wall, so I took a few photos of it, never having noticed anything like that there before….
…he was hard at it, trying to get those poker chips out of the pocket too…
….while I was checking on Al, Chuck climbed on up to the second level to look for pockets up there, as soon as I let Al know to come on up and join us up above when he was finished to his satisfaction with the pocket he was working on, I went up and found Chuck working a pocket up there already….
…we both worked on several pockets and searched through a pile of crystals left below that ledge where someone had left a bunch of them behind…soon Al came up and joined us as well…when Chuck climbed up on this ledge above to work a bigger pocket, I walked behind and past him to the left and opened up another pocket in the vuggy rock wall…at first I was pulling out some beautiful druse plates, then they had poker chips attached to them, and then they immediately graduated to dogtooths attached and some were curvy plates and some were clusters…Al came over, sat down and started helping me with the pocket..I would hand one to him and he would wrap it and put it in his bucket, then the next one he would hand to Chuck, and anything I wanted I would put in my bucket next to me…we worked that pocket alone for at least an hour that way…it was chock full of beautiful crystals and druse….Chuck took these next few photos of me and Al working the pocket I found, when he returned for some water, gatorade for me, and some buckets and wraps….
…you can see the dark colored poker chips inside the pocket that I am trying to free up and pull out…the opening in the center of the pocket goes around a huge brown poker chip crystal that was probably two or three crystals blended together into one huge crystal of calcite, and that opening quickly turned to the right and went up, behind that huge crystal, so I was trying to enlarge that opening to get my hand in there easier…there was also an opening to the right of the hammer that went up as well…here is the center opening closer up….
I`m going to try and post a video here of our trip, to view it, simply click on the DSC_0357 and then click on the link that starts out with http://www.jwjrocks.com/ and ends with /DSC_0357.wmv, then the video will pop up, or should, in a windows media player box and begin playing automatically for you.
I wore out shortly after that and Chuck came down and chipped that big crystal out for us, here is the video on that, we had to take it out in pieces due to it`s size and placement in that pocket…
we headed back home shortly after removing that big crystal, with about three bags full each from that one pocket. all three of us very happy with our finds for the day….I think this trip made Al`s day quite well, too, for his first field trip outing as a rockhound. 🙂
My Mineral Rock Gardens
I often get asked about my rock gardens, what I have in them and how big they get…last fall I planted several small beds of tulips and other spring flowering bulbs in all of my rock gardens and this spring I moved rocks around by type and location where found…and photographed the results when the spring flowers started blooming. This first image shows the rock garden on the west side of my shed, containing purple fluorites from western Kentucky, some of my wavellite from southern Arkansas, and many geodes from central Kentucky and the Keokuk area as well as a few quartz clusters from southern Arkansas mines…
…and as you can see, it mainly contains yard rocks…and some lillies at the top and on the west side as well….where my propane tank sits, I have Eminence yard rocks and some hybrid tulips….
the garden on the east side of the shed contains more flowers but starts near the shed door with a bed of lillies surrounded by a variety of beautiful crystals….
and on the far side of that garden is another bed of lillies surrounded by quartz clusters….
and just a little ways away in the curve of that garden is a nook of geodes….
…and more hybrids in yet another garden….
Hopefully that gives you a better idea of what my rockgardens look like. 🙂
Protected: MAGS & CAGMAGS Visit Missouri end of March for Druse 2018
Tyler Texas Gem & Mineral Club in Missouri July 2016
The first morning of my vacation in early July, I was standing on the front porch of a landowner`s bed and breakfast near Bismarck, Arkansas, talking to him and Andrew Stauber, new rockhunting friend from Conway, about an old lead and copper mine located on the property. The landowner was showing us photos of the old mine back in its heyday and telling us what could be found there, when my cellphone rang. Not expecting a call that morning, I answered it and found WC Mc Daniels on the other end, the club President for MAGS…the Memphis Club I am a member of…and he wondered if I might be available to take the Gem and Mineral Club from Tyler, Texas, out rockhunting, as they were going to be up in Missouri later in July. I told him what weekends I had free in the few weeks ahead and then he asked where I was right then, and I told him I was checking out an old mine near Hot Springs, something I am sure he is used to hearing me say these days. He said he would put the Tyler bunch in touch with me next week and let me go to check out the old mine there a bit more. We actually decided against walking up the hill to check it out that day, due to the weather being very suitable for copperheads and water moccasins, both of which the landowner said were very prevalent near the old mine lately..me being allergic to both, we decided to bypass this exploration til the fall time when it would be cooler and more likely not to see any of them.
A week later, I received a call from Fred Mahaffey, the Field Trip Director for the Tyler Mineral Club and worked it out that his group could come up the weekend of my birthday to go rockhunting with me. The following weekend they were going to be on the other side of the state at Lincoln, to dig for Missouri`s state gemstone, Mozarkite, however I had to work that weekend, so they decided to come up a week before and stay over. On Saturday morning, the 23rd, I was already committed to something else, so I agreed to meet them at the Caseys Store at 3:30 pm…Onyx and I arrived to find them compacted into two pickup trucks, and after introductions, we headed to a druse location.
It was extremely hot out there, and I had already been outside much of the morning, but had kept hydrated and was hoping the heat would relent a bit or provide us with a bit of a breeze, so we could do some decent hunting out there. Alas, that did not happen, and while there was drusy everywhere to be found, and they found plenty of it, we only lasted about ninety minutes in the heat. I had taken them an assortment of crystals from Missouri, Arkansas, and Kentucky, from my travels, and let them go thru them and pick out whatever they wanted to keep. The rest of the material was placed in the truck of one of the members to take back to the rest of their members. Everyone headed back to their motels and campgrounds, some were staying in Rolla motels and some were staying at a campground near Steelville…we decided to meet at 6 am the next morning for the MFQ trip.
Onyx and I got up early Sunday morning and drove up to the meeting spot…and found the Texas rockhounds waiting for us and raring to go hunt on a much cooler morning. I had brought them some more material, in case we didn`t find anything at the quarry this morning, which sometimes can happen, and I also brought them a nice quartz cluster from my favorite mine in the Mt Ida area, for their club collection as well. We drove thru heavy fog along the way at various lowlying areas. I figured we would find fog at the quarry as well, but was pleasantly surprised to only find a cool shade waiting for us there…..
I told them as long as the shade stayed with us, we would be much cooler, but when the shade disappeared, we would need to as well, cause that sun would be unbearably hot by then…everyone spread out and started looking for poker chip crystals…a few of us walked down to the western side to check the recent blast area but found very little…and then we wandered back to the walls inside the shaded cove area…
Kenny, the guy in the blue shirt and hard hat above, and I, walked over to the east wall of the cove area and I showed him some of the pockets that I had worked there two weeks before…Fred wandered over and looked them over as well. I told them how you can look into older pockets along the wall and sometimes other openings and pockets will open up in the walls behind them, hiding even more pretty crystals and sometimes some neat looking dolomite and calcite druse plates and pieces too. We started working the area I had been in two weeks before….
…while some of the gals were working the berm piles looking for crystals…which a lot of folks take for granted, but a few months before when MAGS was there, we were finding dogtooth crystals all over the place including those berm piles…..
..Kenny and I worked a few pockets there and did a little clean up along there as well, then when we finished, Fred came over and started working some pockets up higher as well….
…and here are a few photos of what Fred was able to extricate from the walls there….
…while Fred was working his pockets, the rest of us were taking it easy and cooling down with water and snacks…I took a few minutes to look over the flat of Texas agates and black palmwood that they brought me from Texas….
…and a few minutes later, when the shade left us, we left as well, driving over to see my buddy Dave, to show them what Viburnum Trend minerals look like, including the fab double terminated green and yellow calcite crystals encased in pyrite that have been coming out of the Fletcher Mine lately…they were very taken with the minerals and crystals he had on hand and purchased several from him. On the way up there, I had a buzzard take off in flight from the road right in front of me as I crested a hill…feathers flew and there was a pretty hard thump, and he spiraled up and over my truck and to the grassy shoulder on the far side of the road…I stopped a few miles down the road to check my grill, thinking I might have a damaged headlight…but to my surprise, I had no damage to the headlight or the grill. From Dave`s house, they headed back to their motel rooms and campers, and Onyx and I headed home…took a nap, and then I drove up to MO Hick to meet them for supper there. I invited them all down to my house the next morning to look at my collection and they decided to come down about mid morning. Like everyone else, they thought my house looked like a museum and really enjoyed my rock gardens. They were going to stick around a few days and then drive over to Lincoln to look for Mozarkite.
I heard from Fred a few days ago, seems they had very good luck at Lincoln, their guide there had just dug out an electric line underground to his house, and they were able to find some nice stuff in that ground cut. He also asked if they could join me on my vacation trip to the Hot Springs area in November, they are interested in getting some nice quality quartz crystals and novaculite for cutting material…so I am sure I will see some of them down there then. 🙂
If anyone else is interested, give me a shout at jwjphoto7@gmail.com