Life After Arkansas

Posted on December 14, 2015 by jwj

Took all of two weeks after my return from Arkansas before I was driving down to MFQ once again, this time it was just Onyx and I making the trip. We arrived about 10 am and discovered one large blast pile right in the middle of the quarry, and two smaller piles remaining from prior blasts, one to the right and one over to the left in the coved wall area. This one was spread out extensively and covered the back road going around the crusher to the coved wall. It was huge and I photographed it from right to left in four photos….

Onyx and I got out and stretched our legs a bit and then as I was getting ready to hunt, he got in a couple of wind sprints and then returned to walk up the right side of the new pile with me…within fifty feet I started finding crystals and clusters laying all over the place….I was finding so many initially that I decided to drive my truck over to that side as well…

…and took this photo looking back at the front side of the pile and how scattered the rocks were toward the entrance….

…within a few minutes, I had two bags full of loose crystals and small clusters, many appeared to have a white sugar frosting poured all over them…and I started finding several yard rocks toward the middle of the pile as well…some I carried over to the far side and stacked them up on the edge of the pile so I could simply drive over and pick them up later. I didn`t take my camera up there with me, and just got them cleaned up this weekend so will snap some photos of them once the soggy rains stop in the next day or two and post them on here. I can safely tell you that I was afraid I wasn`t going to have enough room in the bed of my truck nor enough wrapping cloths to protect them either. As it was tho, I had just enough room in the truck, utilizing the front and back floorboards for many of the yard rocks. Afterwards, I drove over to the coved wall area….

…where there was a small pile remaining…very steep tho, so wasn`t gonna be climbing it up the middle. I was able to scramble up the sides tho and check the wall for pockets, and near the top discovered a few small pockets with some beautiful red colored calcite crystals that resembled hexagonal nuts rather than poker chip formations. There were also some pockets with the calcite that resembles cavelike formations, most of those I left there due to damage to them.

…I filled another bag here, giving me a total of six bags, five at the new blast pile…and many yard rocks…by this time I was ready to leave and head home to get a nap in and grab some dinner. First I had to drive back over to the western side of the new pile to load up the crystals I stacked up on the edge….

I was a bit soaked from the light rain that had begun to fall shortly after we arrived, and Onyx had stayed in the truck when I got over the coved wall area…by the time we were leaving, he was nearly all dry once again. I changed shirts and into my street shoes before leaving, planning to stop off and see a new miner friend on my return, not wanting to track mud into his house….he had some interesting pieces that I had not seen before, and I was able to pick up a few of them from him, one was a very small set of twin calcite crystals with malachite color at the base of the crystals. I`ll get a photo of it posted soon as well.

Thru the week, I received emails from Nathaniel and Chuck, both asking if I intended to drive down there again the next weekend…I had a couple of holidays to burn before the end of the year, so I took Sunday off to make the return trip. Nathaniel rode down with Onyx and I, while Chuck and his daughter Mackenzie, took the scenic route to arrive shortly after Nathaniel and I did. It was Mackenzie`s first time there and I think she was pretty impressed with the place. Nathaniel and I had only been there a short while before they pulled in, enough time for me to scout out some in floor pockets for her to check out, with some nice looking loose crystals and small clusters laying on the surface. She and Chuck started digging in when I pointed it out to them…while Nathaniel took off to check out the coved wall pile, which looked much the same as it did the weekend before when I was there. He climbed up the right side of the pile and was checking out wall pockets when I glanced over there about an hour later. For whatever reason, probably because I simply forgot, I did not take any photos at all that day, but I can tell you that we all did well…I only filled one bag with crystals that I found, but they were very nice crystals and plates from a few pockets that I discovered down the east wall…and after picking up a few plates, I called Chuck over and let him work the rest of the plates out of it. There were a lot of druse pockets along the wall as well and I pulled a few nice plates of those out as well as some druse pieces with poker chips attached to them….those always make beautiful sparkly plates to display…I have about four shelves of them at home…they glitter in the light like you would not believe, and are second to dogtooths in my book. By 1:30 pm, we were tired and happy, and headed up the road to see one of my miner friends to see some new material…both Nathaniel and Chuck wanted to get some nice Viburnum Trend minerals and we were able to do just that. I`ll get some of those posted soon as well. This weekend I took advantage of the beautiful unseasonably warm weather for December to move some rocks around in the backyard and made room for more. Today while it was raining outside, I high graded my crystals on the inside and made room for more that I have collected recently, including my Arkansas quartz crystals.

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

Pleasant Surprise Found at MFQ Saturday…

Posted on February 12, 2015 by jwj

Missy and I arrived at MFQ mid morning Saturday, driving down to check out the clearing activity that was going on per my buddy Jim, who I called Thursday evening on my way to work. The forecast was for a very nice warm and sunny day, temps in the 70`s, but by the time we arrived at 9:30, it was still cool enough to require my blue sweatjacket. As we pulled into the upper parking area from the highway, I spotted the clearing activity on top of the hill….

…I then looked toward the back center wall, however I was unable to see the back wall due to a very high pile of rock crushed into chunks suitable for support and driveways….as we drove around this huge pile of crushed rock, I came upon a nicely sloped pile of untouched goodies blasted down from the upper bench…needless to say I was estatic because my buddy Jim was unaware of any recent activity, most likely due to his view from the roadway being blocked as mine was, by that huge pile of crushed rock. The pile was wide enough that it required four photos to show it….

…after quickly letting Missy out, I changed into my boots, grabbed my mini mattox, and made a fast walk around the front edge…it was obvious the only thing workers had done since bringing the wall down, was to clean up the front edges with the dozer. I didn`t find anything pretty out on the front edges, so I grabbed a bag and headed for the back wall, as I was able to spot some pockets from the truck. Within moments, I had spotted several nice druse pockets like this one….

…and from this one pocket came some very nice druse pieces like these two guys….

…after filling one bag full of wrapped druse plates, I moved on down the wall to the next several pockets, many of them similar but a few had some nice poker chips attached as well…as you can see from the next images, this wall was full of pockets…..look below the green line….

…and at one spot along the wall, I looked up, as I normally do, and spotted some beautiful black druse pockets way up there…about fifteen feet higher than I could possibly begin to reach….

…the next pockets I had to climb up to the top of the stepladder to access….right under that green/blue line….

…the material in front facing me, was loose, so after pulling it back with my mini mattox, it looked like this…

…I was cleaning away the loose stuff, looking for an opening to a pocket and oila !! one appeared….

…pulling a few nice plates of druse and poker chips out of this opening, resulted in finding yet another pocket right behind it….

…and pretty soon, I had yet another bag full of very pretty druse and poker chip plates. I went back to the truck to get yet another bag and to check on Missy. I no sooner returned and was down in the dip along the back wall….

….searching for yet another pocket that could possibly turn into four pockets like this one did, when my buddy Jim showed up to visit….I walked down the pile toward my truck to meet him about halfway….

…and where we both came to a stop to talk, I looked down and spotted some beautiful pieces of black druse and some black dogtooth crystals just laying all over…

…what a great meeting spot Jim selected to talk to me at…I owe him big time I would say. After we talked abit, he left to go work on cutting some more wood, and I looked around a bit more, picked up several more black and brown dogtooth crystals, and druse pieces, filling at least two bags full. I then looked to my left and spotted these two huge boulders with vugs of poker chip crystals inside each one….

…I decided to take a water break, and then returned with more wraps and another bag, as well as my hammer and chisel, and proceeded to get a good workout in, removing some nice clusters of big gray colored poker chip crystals from these vugs….

…and then I returned to the wall, where I found a few more pockets that contained those nice gemmy plates of druse and poker chips. I filled two more bags, my last ones even, of these plates. I then walked around the back side of the pile where I located some nice gemmy green poker chips, some with dogtooths, and some were small and some large yard rocks style….and set them up on a nice flat boulder….I ran out of steam about this time, and loaded them up last before heading for home….sure was a nice day.

Feb 23rd…..Due to two winter storms the last two weeks, I was unable to get out and hunt, so as promised, here are some of the dogtooths and druse pieces all cleaned up…..

MFQ on New Years Day

Posted on February 3, 2015 by jwj

What better way to spend New Years Day than go rockhunting ??? I couldn`t think of a better way to spend the day, specially since I was off the night before, and could get some good rest before making the drive down to hunt. Missy and I woke up and headed down early, photographing the dawn`s early light on the way down there….

…Missy and I arrived about an hour later, the air a bit crisp at that time of the morning, and from where I parked near what was left of the blast pile, I could again see pockets up high, so I grabbed my stepladder and began exploring…..

…this first pocket above and below, working out to be a very good one. I filled two bags with beautiful wrapped plates of calcite druse with poker chip blades that sparkle and shine in the sunlight….

…more of these puppies….

…and of course while I was cleaning those pockets out…there were a couple of smaller ones on either side of that large pocket…Missy was content to roam around the quarry and check things out….

…we headed home about 4 pm, with four bags full of goodies. all in all a great New Years Day and great start to rockhounding in 2015.

Large Dogtooth Chunks Found At Secret Spot

Posted on February 3, 2015 by jwj

And while I am adding photos, let me add some photos of a few larger chunks of bubbly druse with big yellow dogtooth crystals spread out all over them….pulled from a few of the larger pockets I found this year…..

Holie Cow Pocket at New Secret Spot

Posted on September 8, 2014 by jwj

Wow what a weekend it turned out to be…great weather, much cooler…temps down in the upper 70`s and lows in the fifties, nice break from the high 90`s and humidity last week. I got an email from a mineral dealer friend that was going to be driving up to the Denver Show this weekend and wanted to stop by and see what I had that he might be able to purchase from me. He said he would be by on Saturday afternoon after stopping off in central south Missouri to see a good friend of mine who is also a mineral dealer of Viburnum Trend minerals. Knowing he wouldn`t arrive here til at least mid afternoon, I decided to drive down to the new secret spot and see if I could find some more dogtooth crystals. I always pray for a safe drive and also asked for less horseflies and a few dogtooth crystals as well this time…I believe in the power of prayer and let me just say that my prayers were heard and answered.

Missy and I woke up early and got on the road in the cool predawn darkness, arriving about 7:30 am to a cloudy but cool day. I had on a long sleeve shirt that felt pretty good til I started working along the north facing wall….

and within an hour, I had found a small pocket of poker chips and druse combos…the top three in this photo are the first ones I dug out of the initial pocket in the wall….

…and after pulling those three out, the pocket basically just closed off to me…so I began looking to the right and above and below…and finally to the left side a few feet, I struck paydirt once again…pulling some brown dogtooth poker chips out of some loose sandy matrix….

…so I began digging around in that area and soon located an opening, that continued to grow and expand til I had a pretty large opening in the wall. In the next photo you see the initial pocket above the bag and the new pocket to the left about seven feet, just to the left of my green mattox handle….

I was initially pulling out some brown dogtooth crystals, so I knocked out some of the rock above the opening and took out the sides abit more, and looked inside….

…and the first thought was HOLIE COW…another big pocket….and immediately thought back to the time my good buddy Ian Merkel was here visiting…I had found a pocket that day at the secret spot quarry, similar to this one, except that in that one, there was a huge pocket inside and above my head and everytime you jostled a rock inside, crystals would come falling down like a big slot machine…and after I had cleaned it out as much as I wanted, I turned it over to Ian…later looking back to find him with his head and shoulders in the pocket, digging it out even more…however, this pocket contained alot more than that one had and in even bigger form….little did I know at that point what lay ahead….I started reaching in and pulling out several singles right off the bat…

and then found out that there were some big clusters buried upside down in the mix like this one….a real sweet one….

…so I would carefully pull them out, a few of them with the tips already chipped off, likely from either the blast damage, or resulting from the fall from above to their current position upside down in the mix and broken off from impact. Once I had several pulled out and lined up on the ledges of the wall where I could place them, I would pick up the better ones and carry them to my truck tailgate. This would enable me to take a water bottle break as well…and once I had the tailgate lined with them, about an hour later, I stopped to take some photos of the clusters on the tailgate….I set my mini flashlight down by them to give an idea of size reference….

…and then I proceeded to carefully continue to pull them out of the pocket…eventually having to stop and expand the pocket a bit more in order to be able to reach in and bring them out without bumping the host rock in the process….

and when you look at the expansion photos above, you`ll notice a dark area at the top…that pile of rocks in front of it, consists of several medium sized clusters laying upside down with dogtooths all over the place on them…once I had carefully picked each one up and removed it from the pocket, after cleaning out all of the crystals from in front of the pile of upside down clusters first…then that dark space opened up into the back of the pocket, filled on the bottom floor with even more single crystals and small clusters….even more WOWs and HOLIE COWS coming from me by mouth and thoughts….I had planned to only be there a few hours, intending to get back in time to clean up and get a nap in before the mineral dealer friend arrived, so about an hour later, I had pulled all I could remove from the pocket, and took a water break, and then wrapped up what I had and filled five bags full of wrapped crystals, with all of those you saw on the tailgate, wrapped separately and placed in my floorboards of my truck. Here are the rest of the crystals I removed, after a good rinse at my house later in the day….

and some pretty druse pieces…..

…the next day, I decided to return and clean out the pocket if possible…when I had left Saturday afternoon, the opening pocket was fairly cleaned out but I suspected there was more in the very back, which was a pretty good reach for me…and there was a turn to the right that I could not reach as well. Once there, I decided to knock out some of the rock on the right side that impeded my reach and once I had that out, I was able to reach in pretty good…but I had to hold my flashlight in my left hand and still couldnt reach in with both hands, so I then widened the opening some more so that I could get my upper body inside and then more freely grab crystals and pull them to the area just inside the opening. I laid down a few empty bags to make things easier on me and then proceeded to empty that pocket out as much as I could…

…I worked it the same way I had the day before, pulling out severa and setting them on the ledges til I had the ledges full, then carrying the bigger ones to the truck tailgate and wrapping up the smaller ones and bagging them. here is what the tailgate looked like once I had it full again….

…and after three hours, I had it all cleaned out…after removing the rock on the right side, I was able to get inside and pull more clusters out that were buried in the ground floor rubble, while holding the flashlight to see by….and there was a pocket that opened up to the left from the pocket on the right side, so in all, there were actually three pockets within….I`ll leave you with some closeups of the finds yesterday….

…one of the best pockets I have found there….all in all a good weekend too. 🙂

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

Armadillo Day at MFQ

Posted on July 28, 2014 by jwj

As usual, I am behind again on my posts and so am taking the time to catch up today. I worked on editing images all afternoon and then had to rest my eyes for a bit before taking up the task of putting the story together with the photos. In the past six weeks, I have been busy with some family matters , work issues, and yardwork while we had rain. I have also traveled a bit to do some rock collecting, and except for one day a few weeks ago, I didn`t find much of anything worth writing home about, until yesterday…when I had a great day of rock hunting and collecting. Today was rest up, recover, and catch up day, and so I did.

Friday afternoon, Missy and I drove down to Arcadia, Missouri, to check out an older collection of Doe Run minerals, that a resident there wanted to sell. I had been in contact with the guy for a few weeks, trying to work in a time when I could get down there and he would be available to show me his collection. He told me that he had about eighty pieces in his collection, and I had seen a few photos of the collection and liked what I had seen, so I was a bit excited as I arrived there. Once inside however, it was a different story…for one thing, I only saw maybe thirty pieces in the display case and they were covered in dust and very dirty, even cobwebs were strung out all over the minerals on the shelves, making it very hard to see exactly what was even in his collection. He had a few pieces with chalcopyrite, but they had oxidized so badly, I couldn`t see any color at all, even what little pyrite I saw was dull colored. He had inherited his collection from his grandfather who worked in a couple of the Doe Run mines, and I quickly found out the value he placed on it was sentimental value alone, which no one can afford. As it was, after making the drive down there, I did purchase a few of his pieces, but that was all…..I was quite disappointed and almost felt as if I had wasted my time.

Missy and I got up early Saturday morning and drove down to MFQ, after I received a call Tuesday night at work from my buddy Jim, who told me that there was some new activity there earlier that day, near the coved wall. I was looking forward to seeing what could be found, as that wall has produced alot of pretty crystals in the past couple of years. Usually it starts getting light about 5:30 am, but each time I glanced to the east, all I saw were a low line of dark blue clouds as we traveled down the road. Only as I got close, did the sun finally make a beautiful appearance, in the form of a large fireball from the clouds…if you look close, you`ll notice the crescent moon just above the sun as well…..

…then a few minutes later, there were sunbeams as well….

We arrived shortly after, and after gearing up, I started walking around the base of the new pile, which was smaller than I had anticipated, but I had to stop and remember that this happened Tuesday morning and staff had been working the pile since then…

I had actually let a few of my rockhunting buddies know about it as well, and a couple of them had considered making the drive up there as well. After walking around the new pile for about the first hour, I texted them and told them not to waste their time because in that hour, I only located one single crystal and no wall pockets either. I`m not saying there were no crystals there…it`s likely there were, but they were prob buried underneath all the rubble, too. It was starting to look like a bust for me, which would be the first time since I have never had a bad day of collecting down there yet. I took a water bottle break and then drove over to the prior pile…which they had used to create a ramp up……

….to the benched top of it….

I had been up on that bench a few weeks back and found just a few pockets with some nice calcite druse and poker chips mixed in, some of them had some nice dogtooth crystals as well…. on a Saturday, and then the next day I drove down to a location that a good friend of mine had told me about last year…I refer to it as the new secret spot….a location that has proven to be a very good place to find some great clusters of crystals, especially dogtooth crystals…on that particular day a few weeks ago, I def found something worth writing home about, but have chosen not to until recently when I told a few close friends about it. Suffice to say, I had a field day that day and brought home several canvas bags full of wrapped goodies, clusters, singles, twins, triples, all bright orange dogtooth crystals, from micro size to beachball sized, many of each. It`s been a few weeks and I am still cleaning many of them. I`ll post some photos of them when I get them cleaned up…I had a few of them cleaned up and on display when some new rock collecting friends showed up last week for a visit, and they were pretty impressed with them as well.

I decided not to climb up the bench ramp again this time, and walked around the base to see if I could spot any crystals that had rolled down the walls, that might indicate a pocket nearby. Within a few minutes, I spotted a couple of boulders embedded in the sloped wall, and it appeared that someone had found some druse in a pocket under the left boulder. I did some exploring and suddenly discovered some poker chips under the boulder on the right side….

…I dug down and around the bottom of that boulder and tried to dig out the right side, but the upper slope material kept sliding down and getting in the way, so I moved to the left of it and pulled bigger rocks and loose stuff away to find a large opening between the two boulders, which opened up into a large void between the two large boulders…

…it appeared to me that someone may have dug under the boulder on the right, but didn`t follow up…. in my estimation, since I soon began pulling out some beautiful plates…here is the opening between the boulders…

….I went back to the truck and brought back my flashlight and when I shined the light down into that pocket, I saw very shiny calcite druse all over the ceiling and walls and lots of pieces and plates with the same druse all over them, including some with poker chips attached to them….here are a few that I was able to reach as soon as I spotted them with the light….

…I then stuck my camera down into the cavern and snapped a couple of photos to show you what the interior of it looked like…the photos you are about to see do not do it justice….

…that big one at the bottom that you see in the photo, I had to pull it out thru that opening so that I could pull out some more plates that were located behind it…by this time I had removed more of the loose dirt and rock underneath me so that I could more easily, reach into that cavern and grab more plates…soon my arms were all scratched up and I felt more like an armadillo, digging my way in between those boulders…which by the way, were firmly entrenched and embedded into that sloped wall, deeply entrenched and attached to the wall behind it…the void appeared to be about six feet long and four feet wide and every bit of thirty inches high. The big piece you see above, was very pretty on the side facing away from me, covered in calcite druse with a big poker chip attached to one corner of it. Here are some more of the goodies I pulled out once it was clear of the void…

…one of the prettiest plates I pulled out was sitting right in front of the big one that was blocking me, plate sized and a few inches thick with calcite druse in three colors and poker chips embedded in it….

…a few of these plates even had dogtooth crystals on them…the following image shows about half of my haul from this pocket alone…

…after two hours on this pocket, I was ready for another bottle of cold water and I decided to wrap everything up and load it in the truck bed, and then evaluate to see how tired I was….the temps were climbing by now and the little shade I had by the boulders was just about gone and I had cleaned out the pocket quite well. After wrapping them all up, I had three bags completely full and then wrapped up ten large ones as well, basketball sized. I decided that I had a little more energy left and moved further east along the wall, looking for more potential for pockets…and soon found an area that I had once found several pockets, some filled with druse, but beautiful druse and sometimes when I find those druse pockets, I find poker chips attached to the druse as well….yesterday, I found two more pockets of the druse with poker chips attached…I had to do a bit more burrowing in like an armadillo again, but managed to do so safely again and filled two more bags with goodies, before finally wearing out…the temps had to be near 95 now and the humidity was getting bad as well. Jim and his wife stopped by to chat for a minute, they too were tired of the heat and headed to the river to sit and soak in it. Missy had been inside my truck in the ac for the past hour and I soon joined her.

I drove to the top of the parking lot and called a friend of mine, who is a mineral dealer nearby, he specializes in Viburnum Trend minerals, and I asked him if he had any new material. He said he did and I decided to drive up to his place and take a look. Boy, am I glad that I did drive up there because he had some gorgeous green and yellow calcite crystals attached to the blackest rock I have ever seen, many of the crystals were double terminated and some even skeletal looking, some with phantoms inside them, spectacular and breathtaking at the same time…they had come from the Fletcher Mine and since I didn`t have anything in my collection from the Fletcher Mine, I purchased a few from him….

…and this next one features a single calcite crystal attached to a chunk of dolomite covered by a quartz druse and some galena cubes spread out in the quartz….

…and this gorgeous piece of chalcopyrite that has multiple colors and is covered by a fine dusting of quartz as well…

…he had several of each one…most of my chalcopyrite has large chunks of it on the matrix, but this stuff was more like a dusting of smaller particles of color and covered with a dusting of quartz as well, just spectacular pieces, bit and small. I brought home a few boxes of material from him and so yesterday was a great day of hunting and collecting for me. I can`t wait to add these to my new display cases, but for now that gorgeous chalcopyrite piece is sitting here next to my computer for me to visually enjoy for a few days. 🙂

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

Deep Pocket at Secret Spot

Posted on June 10, 2014 by jwj

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…including this nice combo plate….

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

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

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

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

…and some nice crystals as well…

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

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

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

Last Week of March Vacation

Posted on April 15, 2014 by jwj

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nice Combo Pocket Found

Posted on March 17, 2014 by jwj

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

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

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

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

…after pulling several poker chips out of it…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rockhound Buddy Ray Roth Visits

Posted on September 27, 2013 by jwj

True to his word, Ray Roth came up to see me on his way to Keokuk, Iowa last week, and stopped off for a few days to go rockhunting with me.

I had a rough week before he arrived, tooth pulled on Tuesday, thought it was gonna be cut out but the oral surgeon was able to get ahold of it and it came right out…or at least it felt that way…after all I was very numbed up and could only feel the pressure thankfully. The week before that, somehow, I re-injured my right arm…yes the arm that I injured in a fall while rockhunting earlier this year, but also injured it thirty some odd years ago as well while at college, and still have no idea how I re-injured it two weeks ago..memory isnt what it used to be any longer. Original injury was a tendon injury, from helping a trooper friend chip out his ice covered driveway so he could get his patrol car out, treated back then with a sling and tylenol, and doctors orders to rest as much as possible for two weeks…so I treated it this time with pain meds, arnicare salve, a tens unit, and lots of rest when possible…I say possible because the tendons are in my elbow joint and I have to use my arm everyday, and no matter what you do with your right hand or arm, the tendons come into play no matter what you are doing, whether you are moving your fingers like typing, or moving your wrist or arm. Between the arnicare and pain meds alone tho, if I had something I had to do with it, both products sure made it feel quite normal….course when they wore off, it was quite a different story.

Ray was on the road most of Saturday and stopped off in Van Buren for the night…he told me he would be off the road by 6 pm and eating supper while watching the LSU football game, lol….so we made plans to meet in Eminence on Sunday morning around 8 am. St Louis Ray and I got up early Sunday morning and drove down to meet Ray at the junction of Hwy 19 and 106 in downtown Eminence, and led him to the quarry. It was a little froggy when we arrived….

…but it soon burned off and we were left with a gloriously beautiful day of normal temperatures and sunshine all day long, with nice cool breezes as well. As we pulled into the cove area, we discovered the knob that we had been working the past several weeks, was all but gone…..

……now just a few piles of rocks left at the bottom of the wall…we checked the piles first and found a few remnants of clusters, then checked the wall pockets and St Louis Ray spotted a pretty crystal cluster sitting about ten feet up in situ matrix…and was able to climb up and retrieve it without any problem. For the next couple of hours, we scraped along the wall and found a few pockets of small clusters….

After checking this wall, we moved on down to the east to the other blast zone and while St Louis Ray wandered down to his special place further east, to find more vugs in boulders, Ray and I searched the remainder of the blast pile and found some goodies…Ray checked along the edge and I up the slope a bit, found a pocket that had apparently blasted down from the high wall intact, and buried near the top of the pile. After pulling half a dozen small clusters out from under some small boulders, I went back to retrieve a few bags and wound up filling two with wrapped goodies alone ! After another hour of this, we decided to head to the secret spot and see if we could find anything there…Ray had never been there but had heard about it from several of my posts. It hasn`t been blasted in a while there now, but we were able to liberate some goodies from some older pockets there and found some vugs in some boulders that had some nice druse and poker chip combos as well. The water spots there made for some great reflections late in the day there, too….

After digging all morning and into the afternoon a bit at Eminence and then a few hours at the secret spot, Ray and I wore out by 4:30 pm and decided to call it quits….my right arm was ordering me to stop now….I hadn`t overdone it again yet, but it was telling me it was time to stop for the day and I decided to listen. We were covered in dirt and dust, and had several goodies to clean up yet from our digs, plus Ray needed to check in at the Wagon Wheel Motel in Cuba and get cleaned up for supper. We checked with St Louis Ray and he was ready to call it a day as well, so we loaded up and headed home.

After taking St Louis Ray back to his truck at my place, I cleaned up quickly and headed back to meet Ray at Mo Hick for some fantastic BBQ in Cuba. I had to stop off at my parents house and drop off some goodies that Ray had brought up with him for them…cooking goodies and some great brownies from a company in Louisiana too. When I got to MO Hick, he was already sitting inside admiring the beautiful cedar wood interior that the owner had made on his own.

The next morning, Ray drove down to my place to get one of his tires fixed, he had picked up a nail somewhere along the road up to Missouri and while it wasn`t leaking, he wanted to get it repaired before driving on up to Keokuk and then back home. I took him over to Harry`s Tire Service in Sullivan, where I always get my tires serviced at, and after about 20 minutes, the guys there had him in good shape once again and ready to travel. We decided to head to my house so he could see my collection and while there, decided to have breakfast at Cracker Barrel before heading out to hunt more. My parents met us at CB and paid Ray back for the cajun cooking goodies that he had brought up with him and given to them the day before. After a great brunch, Ray and I headed to the new druse spot to check it out…it had rained pretty good a few days before and as I told Ray, that`s the best time to search there.

We walked up to the top of the hill as seen in the photo above, first…as I explained to Ray after arriving and getting our boots on…I have had better luck finding beautiful bubbles up there. We each grabbed a couple of bags and tools and headed up the hill with Missy in hot pursuit. I stayed to the left and walked up a trail that had been drastically eroded by heavy rainfall and Ray went up the little road going up the hill to the right….within thirty minutes, I spotted a pile of dirt and on closer inspection, found several plates of smokey colored druse quartz…one of my favorite colors there…I walked back to the truck to get more bags and wraps and returned to wrap them up.

About two hours later, we both had three or four full bags each and were a bit tired, but we managed to take a water break, then walk over to the other side and check the drainage ditches and filled yet another bag each. By this time, we were both done in for the day, and we headed back to town. After cleaning up, I met Ray over at our Chinese Buffet Restaurant and we had a great meal there…Ray topping off his meal with two huge dips of ice cream. Here are some neat sunbeams I shot on the way to the restaurant….

We were gonna go horseback riding the next morning, but my friend who has the horses, got called into St Louis Tuesday morning so we postponed to Wed morning instead and spent the day goofing off and cleaning up our finds from previous days. Ray decided to also give his suv a good wash and then re-arranged the rock load so that he would be sure to have some room for geodes once he got to Iowa.

Ray came over to my house bright and early on Wed morning…ready to go horseback riding…..I asked him where his jeans were cause he was wearing shorts, and he said he figured he would be okay in shorts…lol…he rode with me up to my friend`s horse farm out of Bourbon, the Meramac Farm Bed and Breakfast Horse Farm….its a Century Farm, over 100 years old, they have a few horsebarns there, one is over 125 years old and built with wooden pegs instead of nails…you can see them in the huge loft beams. They have several horses there and easily accomodate groups for trail rides with over 900 acres of farmland and forested hills. This is a view of their farm back in 2009 from one of their hilltop views….

...and it shows both barns and the original farm house where my friend Carol, has lived much of her life, the farm in her family for many generations. Tragically in 2010, during a severe storm, the farmhouse was struck by lightning and burned to the ground despite the best efforts of several fire departments who responded. Despite the tremendous loss, Carol and her family and staff, bounced back from it and built a new farmhouse, a North Carolina style farmhouse, complete with a bright copper colored metal roof…

…and a beautiful white picket fence surrounding it….it`s like a bright beacon from the roadway and is just as pretty on the inside as it is on the outside. We arrived at the farm a little after 10 am and found Carol and Jerry saddling up horses for us…Ray was no sooner out of my truck and walking across to meet Carol…..

….when she asked Ray, if he had any jeans to ride in….I just chuckled when he gave them his answer…they shook their heads and said, okay…they were waiting on a lady that wanted to go riding that morning as well and she was running late, having trouble finding their farm. Carol pointed out an Eagle perched high in a dead tree top way across their north field, about three hundred yards…I put my camera lens on it, but it was still way over there…

and my lens wasn`t able to pull it in sharply at all….

We signed the releases and got saddled up while waiting for her to arrive. Here you see Jerry adjusting the stirrups for Ray as he is sitting on his horse….

…and soon after, we were on the way…we rode down into that north field first, as Carol wanted to see if we could get closer to the Eagle, but as soon as we got into the bottom of the field, we saw that the Eagle had flown off. This is a pretty pasture, I go there often in the spring when bluebell flowers bloom all over the place on the river side….

…and we soon were up on the main road, on our way to the back side of the farm where more pretty trails awaited our arrival…here you see Ray and Jerry bringing up the rear of the trail ride….

…all in all, we had a great two hour ride…it had been ten years since Ray had gone horseback riding and only four years for me. He texted me the next day to let me know he was out looking around and finding geodes, but was being picky as to what he was going to take home with him due to the restrictions on space. He was a bit sore while up in Iowa geode hunting, but had a great time while here.

James 🙂

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Category Archives: Druse and Poker Chips

Life After Arkansas

Pleasant Surprise Found at MFQ Saturday…

MFQ on New Years Day

Large Dogtooth Chunks Found At Secret Spot

Holie Cow Pocket at New Secret Spot

Armadillo Day at MFQ

Deep Pocket at Secret Spot

Last Week of March Vacation

Nice Combo Pocket Found

Rockhound Buddy Ray Roth Visits