After listening to the forecasters last night talking about rain all day on Sunday, I decided to head back to the secret spot again today to take advantage of the continued great fall weather…I checked with Kay before I left town, but she was restricted to wedding detail today and couldn`t make it, so Missy and I headed south a little after 11 am.

We arrived to find a very high wind and dust blowing everywhere….

…so thick as I drove across the flats, that at times I couldn`t even see the front of the hood on my truck….

I drove across to the far side and decided to see if I could find some druse first this trip. I grabbed a bag and my rake and headed down the slope of the upper location to see what could be located today…here is the view from the bottom of the slope…

After finding two nice pieces of druse right out of the truck, I soon discovered there were quite a few chunks of nice poker chips all over the slope as well as druse, and it didn`t take me long to find the first nice chunk of druse with poker chips attached….

..I no sooner stuck this one in the bag, than I turned around and saw the second one, very pretty and my first find of the day….

…this one about the size of a softball and very nice and colorful, despite having been out in the sun all summer….a few steps away, I found these two close together….

The 4th find, turned out to be my second surprise and second find of the day…it doesn`t look like it here, but following advice from Docia, I dug it out….

….and then I turned it over to see the other side….

…and I was like WOW…..carried that one up to the truck and wrapped it up right then….came back to within five feet of my bag, that I had left near the bottom of the hill, and found number five….

…a nice druse with hematite balls and a poker chip attached….and found these two pretties sitting in the sand next to the truck…

…then I came back down to the bottom of the slope and found Missy sittin pretty and looking out across the moonscape….

…then I turned and spotted another pretty….

…there was no doubt that fourteen was going home with me…very sweet poker chip here……and then I turned around and spotted these two close together….

…lets see if you can find number 17 in this mess…..it was easy for me…I almost stepped on it…why you have to watch where you step at all times in a rock strewn field like I was in….

..sometimes you never know where you will find them…this one was partially hiding on me under a big rock….

..and this beauty was pulling the out in plain site maneuver and sitting pretty in the sand when I spotted it….

…while number 21, a nice druse plate with a poker chip or two attached, was nestled in some rocks while I was walking back to the truck…I actually spotted 22, 23, and 24 and sat my bag down next to 21….

…and I found this nice little number as I was getting near the road…large druse chunk with multicolored crystals….large crystals on it too….well I loaded all of these up and then decided to drive down to the lower spot, I had had enough of the dust blowing around and wanted to get out of the wind for a while and check out the pockets again….

the upper pocket into the slope is the pocket I worked yesterday and again today at first….after removing poker chips and nice druse plates from the upper pocket, I discovered the pocket going deeper and back toward where I was sitting….on top of yet another pocket, hence the lower pocket where you see my red hand rake sitting…I pulled some nice druse plates with big poker chips attached to them…you will see them in the next few photos….

and one more a little closer up….

…all in all a great day weather wise and finds wise….now they are calling for morning showers tomorrow and clear and sunny skies in the afternoon….hmmmmm wonder what I could find to do tomorrow….

Since I had a short night last night at work, I  got up this morning about 9 am, loaded up the truck with Missy and we set out for the secret spot again. It was going to be a beautiful fall day, 75 degrees and sunny most of the day, clouds to roll in by evening for rainfall from a system in the Texas panhandle, but we have been so dry so long, I wasn`t going to hold my breath…and  I was actually going to look for druse to finish out my front foundation wall, but once we got there, I decided to drive down to the lower location and see if anything had changed.

On the way down, we passed thru a thick haze of smoke that smelled alot like someone being super dumb and burning leaves…I say super dumb, cause we are five inches short on rainfall this fall season, and its super dry and was super windy this morning, translating into super dumb for someone to be burning leaves today. I felt sorry for any fire department that had to be out battling a brush fire in these conditions…I was out with my department earlier this week and let me tell ya, it was hot out there…I backfired the line while two guys ahead of me created a wide line with the leaf blowers, and when I backfired back up the hill, it didn`t take long for the flames to get going high, hot, and fast….the wooded areas around Steelville are no different than the woods around Sullivan, steep hills and deep gullies….hot fires and tired feet after a long battle with brush fires…I wasn`t able to detect the source of the fire so I kept driving and hoped no one was called out to one….

Arrived at the lower location and it looked the same…..

so I grabbed my bag and rock hammer and rake, and decided to walk around a bit and see if I could find anything I had missed before.  New angles and sunlight can make all the difference in the world…and sure enough, within a few minutes, I had the bag half full of poker chips and druse combos….I walked up toward the top of the slope and found a few larger chunks of chips and decided to take at least one of them home with me, so carried the bag down to the bottom and set my rake down, then returned to pick up the chunk and take it to the truck.

I walked back up to a pocket I had found way back in the late spring this year, and had filled four bags and removed five basketball sized chunks covered with poker chip crystals from….when Virgil brought his club members up to visit, I had taken one of their young members over to the pocket and showed him what he could potentially find there…he and his uncle worked it for a bit before they left…it was pretty hot that day and they may have just decided it wasn`t worth the effort due to the heat that day…I sat down and spotted some honey brown poker chips sitting near the pocket opening and decided to dig in and see if there were more there…soon enough I had my answer…there was either another pocket opening up behind the original one, or the pocket I had handed off had never been exposed to its true potential….

I walked down and picked up another bag at the truck and got my hand rake as well…and walked back up and began raking around and was finding single crystals right and left…within a few moments, I found a few clusters and then a few druse plates with poker chips on them and the color changed from honey brown to white…I started raking more to my left and pretty soon had opened yet another pocket and was able to see some larger plates of druse hanging upside down….I apologize for not taking my camera up there guys, but there was some overhang above me and I decided I might have to move quickly and its a little tough to do with a camera around your neck.

After a few overhead collapses, nothing major, I wore out and decided I had done well, two bags filled out of this pocket alone and four medium sized chunks to take home as well as the prior bag too. Missy and I loaded up and headed home. Saw a little bit of fall color up on the hill, was brown in the valleys…

As we got closer to Steelville, we could see the haze and smoke had increased, four hours later, and soon after I met a brush truck and pumper headed toward the haze, but they werent running lights or siren, so I naturally thought perhaps they had been there already to assist them on a fire and were returning home now….but soon after, as I was driving through Cuba, I met a brush task force of seven brush trucks and they were running code through town headed toward Steelville…I picked up my cell and called my department, and was told that Steelville was battling a one hundred acre brush fire and had called for a brush and pumper task force…our brush truck was already there on the second alarm…soon after I met the pumper task force on I-44 east of Cuba and headed that way, also running code…seven pumpers…now I`m sitting at home as I write this wondering if they have the fire under control or if they will be calling for more help later tonight….I might wind up back down there if they do…

Docia called me a couple of weeks ago and said lets go check out the reclaimed area and see if we can find more bubble drusy quartz….I decided to see if one of my close friends could go,  she works full time as a florist and has just a few days free, but decided she could spare a few hours that afternoon and my mom joined us too. It was threatening to rain but I hoped it would hold off just a little while and allow us some time to find some nice stuff.

We arrived over at the reclaim area and only got about 45 minutes in before the clouds opened up and it started raining, plus we didn`t find much there, and Docia decided she was going home…but I took Mom and Kay with me over to the new druse location and just as we arrived, the rain stopped…so we decided to take full advantage of whatever time we could and see what we could find. Watching my Mom and Kay was like watching two kids in a  candy store for the first time….

and then Kay found two pieces of druse and the look on her face matched the look when she found her first single poker chip crystal a few minutes later all on her own….

I should prob stop here and explain that Kay is a daughter of a lead mine and iron ore miner, she isn`t a newbie to rock and mineral collecting but is a rookie to druse hunting and now I think she has converted to drusy quartz collecting as well, lol.

After about 30 minutes of collecting, we could see more rain and lightning approaching so we finished up and got out of there fast….

A few days later, Missy and I loaded up the truck and met Docia over there again, and found a pocket of blue druse…

and much of it was eroding out of a clay bank and bubble pieces too…

and here is one of the larger pieces we collected that day….

..more on this location later….

Docia decided to join me Saturday and check out the new location near the secret spot that I checked out two weeks ago…I had told her it was a druse hot spot too and she was chomping at the bit to go when she heard that, even though she discovered another druse hot spot just the other day on her own.

I was going to go to the Eureka Fluorite Mine in Kentucky, but my weekend plans got turned around so many times, and then it rained cats and dogs the few days before thanks to that hurricane making its way on to land in south Texas and turning our way…I decided I really didn`t want to go down there and sit in the mud and water and dig up fluorite. I have so many pretty pieces from there, but I also like to help Bill Frazer and Tina and Ed with their efforts to provide places to rockhounds to dig at too. I decided I would try and go to their public dig in October instead and maybe it would be dryer then. Prob prettier then too.

So Docia and I decided to meet about 11 am and Missy and I drove down and met her on the road….and then drove on over to the new location.

It was still cloudy from the storms the night before, but we could see breaks in the clouds and knew we would have some sunshine as we started finding some goodies. We made a surface search along the outer edges  and then came back to the pile of rocks and Docia started looking for druse while I searched the pile.  Right away I spotted a very large boulder that had some poker chips on it….

…so I went up and cleared away all the little rocks around it, and actually found two small ones to keep that were breakoffs from it…but these pics are the after I cleaned around it photos….

…this was one very large boulder, folks…knew I couldn`t even begin to budge it, plus it was pretty far up in the boulder pile, so without a backhoe, this puppy wasn`t going anywhere fast.  My only consolation was photographing it for now.

I walked on up into the boulder pile and very quickly spotted a yellow chunk of druse, and as I got closer, I bent down and picked it up and dusted it off, only to discover it had two yellow poker chips laying on top, two on one side, and hemitite or limonite balls on one side at the base of it…and I said out load ” oh yeah, I like this one ” and Docia walking by, heard me and asked me what I liked, and I held it up and showed it to her…she liked the looks of it too…I took a photo of it with my phone camera but apparently lost the battery soon after and the photo with the battery power loss….so I photographed it when I got home yesterday and here it is…

...so continued through the boulder pile, found a few nice bigger ones but decided not to take them home this trip, and wait to see what we found in the druse location first. Docia walked back to get her suv, said she had found a few big ones that she wanted to load up and I told her I would make one last search of the boulder pile and then be on up there. I found a few more nice ones buried underneath alot of heavy ones and a few that I might be able to chip off later on…including this corner piece….

As I started back to my truck to head up to where Docia was, I spotted this one glimmering in the rocks at my feet, glowing….

…and I should say, glowing like this, but I couldn`t get a very good shot of it glowing there, so I reshot it yesterday evening glowing on my hot tub cover….and here it is in natural light….

…I had also spotted this one in the rocks before I stopped looking around the pile, pink and yellow druse with an older poker chip attached to it…

…well I drove up to where Docia was parked and she had her blazer loaded down pretty good, she said all her collecting bags were full, five of them, and she had a couple of pretty good sized druse pieces in there as well. One I had seen her carrying down the road and looked pretty heavy…she said later it only weighed about ten pounds but I would beg to differ, lol. She had them loaded up and I couldnt see what they looked like, so no photos available of them.

I grabbed a blue bucket and we started down the hill and there were pretty plates and small pieces of druse sparkling everywhere you looked, it was a druse mecca. I started putting plates in the bucket right and left, some pretty pink ones like this one….

…and while it had some damage to it, it was still just too pretty to let sit there…and then I spotted these two large pieces of druse, and one really stood out…had hematite balls all over it…with some pretty druse peeking out occasionally….and a bubbly gray druse near it….I called out and Docia came over to look at them….

…and then I turned it over to see the other side….

…and then not very far down the hill from those two, I found this one…

…gray druse bubbles with hematite balls all over the face of it…and I was digging it out when Docia started yelling ” HOLIE COW,  its my DREAMPIECE !!!! ” and told me to bring my camera and come look and see what she found…later I think the story was retold to be ” see what she almost stepped on and found “, lol. I got down to the bottom of the hill and up aways to where she was dancing around, and I was like, whoa, that is something else….very nice large round smokey colored quartz crystals in bubbles all over the face of it, sitting there facing the sun and waiting on someone to come along and take it home….

She dug it out and started up the hill with it and I told her to stop near the top and hold it up..against the cloudy blue sky, she and her DREAMPIECE looked pretty good….

…but even when it was sitting there in the dirt, it looked pretty nice too….

…although it almost blended in well with the dirt…I can see now how she almost stepped over it and missed it…lucky for her she almost fell over it, or she would have bypassed it….

I asked her to keep her eyes peeled for another one of similar color, while I continued picking up plates on down the way…and actually I was finding alot of poker chip attachments in this area as well…

…like this one, covered in yellow druse and three poker chips….

..and this one which was covered in dirt, but I was able to see two or three chips sticking up out of the dirt so kept it with me and here it is cleaned up at home…then Docia yelled at me to bring a digging tool, she found another one just like hers….so I lugged my full bucket up to the truck and grabbed a rake and headed up her way again….lo and behold, she did find one of similar color to hers and a little smaller too…I didn`t photograph it there, by that time we were both getting worn down from all the material we were finding and carrying up to the trucks…so when I got it home, I cleaned it up and here it is…

and lit by flash since the sun was on its way down by the time I got it all cleaned up….

…very pretty and I like it alot, my favorite color in quartz and druse is smokey….. Thanks Docia !

So I had to work the weekend this year, and boy were we busy…most holiday weekends, with the exception of July 4th, we dont run a lot of extra calls, and normally Sundays are a very relaxed night, especially after 10 pm…but boy, this year was anything but relaxing for our crew….Friday night was steady all night long with all types of calls, then Saturday was kind of slow all night long, and Sunday night we got busy from the get go, which starts about 7 pm for us, and we had four robbery calls spread out all night long.

I came home and decided since Monday was a holiday and I was off, I was gonna get a few hours rest and then head to the secret spot, so I napped a few hours and then Missy and I loaded up the truck and headed south.  On the way down we met several campers headed home from the weekend and even saw a few floaters on the Meramac River…either they were on vacation, retired, or didn`t have to be back til Tuesday evening, lol.

Got down there and decided I really didn`t want to do any digging on a few hours rest, so decided to check some other areas where the rocks had been spread around to and maybe find some nice large pieces of druse for my flowerbeds too. I checked a couple of areas on the way in and found a few small druse plates that were nice enough to take home, then drove on over to the other side on the smooth road in. I got to the turnoff on the other side and then decided, what the heck, I`ve never been to the far side, so lets just go over there and check it out and do a quick surface collect. Famous last words.

Drove slowly over and didnt see too much on my side to stop and check out, got to the other side and turned around at a rocky drop off, drove back up the hill about a quarter of the way and stopped. I let Missy out and left the truck running and the ac on, really figuring to be back in it relatively soon, it was a bit warm out after all and if nothing else, Missy might get hot before I did and she would def need the ac too.  I looked over at a pile of rocks and spotted a large druse real quick from the sun shining down on it and decided it needed a more thorough inspection, so I got my gloves on, grabbed my rake and walked over to check it out more.

Folks forgive me, I didn`t grab my camera too, but here is a photo of it where it now sits in one of my flower beds….

…it now guards my lillies, and although its hard to tell here, it actually sits about fifteen inches high, measures about 30 inches long, and is about a foot wide…don`t ask me how I loaded it by myself, cause I cant actually remember but I can safely say I was the only one there and Missy didn`t help me at all. I just knew I liked it and wanted it in my flowerbed and got it into the truck just fine.

As I was walking back over to the pile to look some more, I spotted some nice pieces of druse and poker chips all over the place…so I grabbed a bag and started really looking closely at the ground and then climbed up on the pile and made a closer inspection…I spotted several pieces and chunks all over the place up on the pile, and only took one or two of them home with me. I know it sounds like I`m being picky, but anyone that knows me well, can tell you that I am not a very picky person when it comes to rock collecting, my criteria remains very simple, if its pretty and I like it, I`ll take it home…but in this case, Docia wasn`t here and I wanted her to see how much stuff was here cause I knew she would like it too….I will say that I filled three bags with druse and poker chips tho and didn`t really check the whole area there either. Plus I didn`t do any major digging either.

I was looking across this newer area and was walking over and checking out the sparkles I was seeing as well as the white places, which would normally indicate calcite and possible poker chips…I spotted one sparkly chunk and went over to look it over, I was seeing alot of bubbly druse which I like, and as I walked up on it…it was sitting up on a rock, I looked to my left and spotted a beautiful set of poker chips in a basketball sized chunk sitting down within the rocks. 

Just to the left of the rake head is the bubbly druse chunk I spotted and to the left of the middle of the rake handle you can see the top of the yellow poker chips chunk…for whatever reason, my eyes and brain were focused on that bubbly druse first….but I have this rule that once I find something, once I arrive at its location or dig it out, I stop and look around the immediate area to see if there is something else there that is as nice or nicer…and that is what I was doing when I spotted the yellow poker chip chunk….

I`m sure Docia and Virgil and a few others who know me well, can prob get pretty close to knowing exactly what came out of my mouth about the time I spotted this prettie….course on the other hand, I could have easily been speechless too, but one thing is for sure, I was very excited when I spotted it….it was quite beautiful….so I carefully removed the rocks around it….

…now I`m going to shorten the story here and show you some of the smaller ones that I found there as well as one or two like this, druse with limonite balls all over them….with two plates of pink druse in between them….

…and some of the smaller ones I found too…..

…this was a nice small plate of druse, and the next photo is the other side of it…

…and more combos of druse and poker chips...

….and then there were a few chunks of poker chips besides the yellow one  brought home, like these two, this one with multicolor chips on it….

..and here is an overview photo of the small druse plates found, cleaned up on my carport…

….and the larger ones I found as well….

….and the two larger ones all cleaned up….

Well Docia decided the weather had broke and cooled enough that she could join me on another revisit to our friend the secret spot, so we met down there one morning at 8 am, to beat what heat there might be, and yes it did get a little warm, but Thank GOD nothing like it has been like lately. I took the long way in and found her there, not waiting on me, poking around up on the pile already. I snapped a couple of photos and turned Missy loose, then grabbed my bag and headed up to see what was being found.

We searched all over the main pile which is seen to the left of our vehicles in this second image, and didn`t find much, so she walked over to the east side and looked for drusy quartz plates….

…while I found these two combos of druse and poker chips laying on top of the smaller piles…

….and this big one…

…I then decided to see if there were anymore pockets to be found in the area of the pockets I found a week or two ago…and Docia decided she would help me search…

…everything was beginning to look like we were heading toward that big boulder in the upper end of the image, and I told Docia, if it goes that way, you get to move it out of the way…she looked at me and said, yeah right…we`ll leave that one for Floyd when he gets back on vacation…

Lucky for us, both of the new pockets we found, didn`t get that far...

…the one on the left was full of poker chips and druse plates and the one on the right was mainly druse and some poker chips…we only found a few of the dark center spot gray and blue ones this time, found a few orange and honey colored ones with brownish reddish coloring…some nice doubles and triples and combos….

….and if you look closely at the closeup of the deeper pocket, you can see the poker chips clinging to the walls…

….those are like little cave pockets they are in, surrounded by a three to five inch layer of dolomite, that can take a while to chisel down into, let me tell ya. I use a four pound hammer and chisels that Mike suggested I get, two pointed tips and two straight tips…someone suggested I get a bigger hammer, could do more with it…well let me tell you, you also need more energy to do more with a bigger hammer, cause they weigh more too…lol…I can wear myself out and do just as much good in just as short a time with the four pound hammer as I prob could with a bigger hammer.

I could prob do just as much good and maybe less work for me with a stick of dynamite too, but I can already hear Virgil saying ” yeah and just think how many poker chips you would damage too “….lol….and I would never hear the end of that one, believe me !

Well I did go get my hammer and chisel and chip a few smaller pieces out…after we pulled several little crystals out loose from the pockets….

…and plates of druse too….I walked over to get my hammer and chisels and took a pic of Docia resting by the pockets real quick….

….while I chipped out some poker chips like this one…

…she walked over to the bluff, by then in the nice shade, and poked around and found a few pockets in the bluff wall right at eye level and slightly lower…

…she filled up a bag of chips and druse and decided she had had enough of the heat, had some nice new pretties and took off for home. After chipping out what I could from the new pockets, I decided to take a look at the pockets in the bluff and see what could be seen inside them…very pretty pockets indeed….

..with little druse plates and poker chips laying all over inside…

..and after finding these two small dogtooth crystals, one the size of a quarter and the smaller one the size of a dime, with a little bit of poker chip formation….

…I decided I had had enough as well and headed home to clean up and rest up….so I`ll leave you with the pretties taken home on the tailgate of my truck and three bags full in the bed…

Hey I finally got a chance to shoot some photos of the beauties I found Sunday afternoon, and was able to get the blue and gray colors to come out in the crystals pretty good too…let me know what you think….

Well after a long hard week at work and here at home dealing with a local tragedy, I decided to take a break yesterday with the cool down and drove down to the secret spot to get away…I had decided it wouldn`t matter if I found nothing, just the opportunity to go would be enough for me…but as I have said in the past and still believe, when I`m out rockhunting, especially there, I feel a higher power guides me around and shows me where to look…and felt that way again yesterday. Some call that a special talent and I call it a special blessing or gift, just as life is a gift.

I found a few nice pieces of druse on the way down, it was hot when I first got out of the truck but not sweltering hot like it has been last several weeks, when you felt like you had a blanket wrapped around you…there was a breeze yesterday too, which felt good. I really didn`t intend to stay long, mainly wanted to check and see if they had been working the slope again and if there were any new disturbances to look thru…I really wanted to check on other areas to see if I could find some poker chips that had been moved around.

As I drove in, I saw some new stuff sitting around, or what appeared to me to be new looking, it had been a few months since I had been there so wasn`t real sure if new or not, but appeared to be new. It also looked like more material had been taken out, so I stopped to do a surface check and let Missy out of the truck as well to wander around. With this weather bubble we had been locked into the past two months, she hadn`t been runnning around outside much so this was a good opportunity for her to stretch her legs also…

I got up on top of the first pile and looked around, and spotted one at the bottom that needed a closer look….but as I was climbing down, I spotted two more that were very nice looking…

..the one on the left yellow colored with small straws rising up off it, but one big bubble chunk by itself…the one on the right a reddish bubble chunk too…both sitting close together up on the pile…half buried by the rocks and dust but sticking up enough to spot…

Well with my hands now full, I decided to walk them back to the truck and grab my camera and take some pics…and go back and check that one at the bottom of the pile that looked very nice…I was about to find out just how nice, nice was….

…figured if there was a pretty one like this here….

…see the blue bag above ? I found the pretty center prize poker chip and druse about ten feet to the left at the base of that pile, just left of the yellow bare spot center spot….I looked down at that center spot where I was standing when I picked up the beauty…….and started seeing small poker chips right under a thin layer of dust, that yellow dust you see there…..and decided maybe I should scratch around a little with my hand rake and just see what might be there…figured maybe there might be another nice prize there lurking…sure never figured to find what I found though…

…and as I dug down, I started finding even prettier stuff…

…I moved my bag up out of the way of the direction the pocket started to take and spotted this pretty druse to the left of the bag….

..and had yet another nice bubble druse piece to take home….so then I started to gently dig down into the pocket with my hand rake…

..and as I got down into the pocket, I began to see poker chips sticking out all over the place…plus I was seeing small plates of soda straw druse as well…

…they were hanging upside down in the shelf to the right side of the pocket and while a few came out easily, most did not…but one of the first small plates I pulled out had a poker chip attached and was quite pretty….

..and the pocket started expanding even more…toward the pile of rocks I had my blue bag sitting on…so I moved the bag and started working the pocket toward the clearing right behind the bag……and as I kept digging and expanding the pocket, I kept finding more druse and more poker chips…

…I started pulling more druse and poker chip combo pieces out like this one….

…and this double chip crystal on matrix….

..but nothing prepared me for what I started finding five minutes later as the pocket expanded from a second honey hole….

….to a third honey hole….

….and all of them full of dark blue poker chips with a beautiful gray or black center….

..and here is what they look like up close, although this one is a bit brown colored and I have some better ones now cleaned up…

..and as I was digging up above the third pocket to see if anything else was there, or if the pocket went further, I saw this football sized chunk and in the upper right hand corner, although it was turned over and facing down when I first saw it, I turned it over and this is what I pleasantly found…

and the final one of it…right before I left the quarry with two filled bags and several this size and larger.

What a nice day !!  

Well I had to make a trip to the secret spot to see if I could locate some nice drusy quartz before I left for Kentucky a couple of weeks ago, so I drove over one evening and walked up to the clay bank where Docia always finds some nice stuff eroding from the red clay dirt. I wasn`t disappointed when I saw some nice stuff laying around up there…

I carried a bag and my trusty rake/hoe digging tool with me and began to see some sparkly drusey quartz plates sticking out of the clay dirt so I began scratching around and out popped a few druse plates with soda straws on them…

…within about ten minutes I had one bag completely stuffed with soda straw druse quartz plates and got up to stretch my legs and go grab another bag or two.  I grabbed my camera on the way back as well.

As I got back up to the spot, the sun disappeared behind some clouds and I looked up to see this nice fluffy cloud backlit…couldn`t resist so I snapped it…I like sunbeams as well as sunsets…

Pretty soon I was working on filling the second bag when my rake end snapped off my trusty tool, so I walked one filled bag back to the truck and grabbed my handrake instead…and saw this pretty butterfly on the way back…

Well I filled four bags within about 90 minutes full of druse plates, and then decided with what daylight I had left, to drive over to one of the erosion control roads and see if I could find any nice poker chip pieces…I sure was glad I made the choice to do that…I was driving along and watching the pile on the side of the road and low and behold, I spotted this one on top….

calling my name and asking to go home with me…

and so it did get to go home with me…on the way home, with the sun shining into our eyes, I looked over at Missy…she was kind of glowing….

…apparently she went swimming in a clay mud hole while there…lol….

…and here is a nice sunbeam we saw on the way home.

On the way home, they were talking on Y98 Radio about a huge thunderstorm parked over the city of St Louis and just dumping alot of rainfall on the entire area…when I hit I-44, I spotted it from the Bourbon area, about 75 miles to the west of St Louis…

and another one nearby…