After a couple of weeks of hard rain and thunderstorms, I decided to return to the new druse spot and see if anything nice had been washed out of the clay, and boy am I glad I did.I also wondered if we would find any color on the trees remaining, and as we drove into Steelville, we saw a few beautiful maple trees in full bloom….

Missy and I arrived to find alot more erosion, this area one night alone had about four to six inches of rain in just a few hours and you could tell the water had done some serious carving in the clay when I walked up on it. Luckily it wasnt too muddy when we arrived, but I tried to give Missy some instructions on staying out of the mud pit while we were there…apparently those instructions fell on deaf dog ears, let me tell you, cause within about twenty minutes she ran up to me pretty much covered in sloppy red clay mud from her stomach down…I was not a happy camper and she sensed it…dogs are pretty smart sometimes…they realize you arent happy any longer and they walk away and leave you alone…luckily for both of us, she came up with a great idea and went somewhere nearby and found a clean water source and cleaned up before she returned to my presence. I wont elaborate on my thoughts while she was gone, but I can safely say I failed to bring an extra towel for the back seat and I was not very happy with the situation. I soon got busy picking up beautiful pieces of bubble druse all over the place, filling three bags within the first thirty minutes….this is what the site looked like when we arrived...

…and here are a few photos of what all I found that morning there…picking up some pieces in the heavily eroded areas of the photo above up on that hillside…my first trip walking over to it and very impressed with what I saw and found there…the following photos show the druse all cleaned up and lots of bubbles…

…the last photo above, shows a very large druse chunk that I found on the first trip there…weighs about one hundred fifty pounds, took me a few trips to get it to the truck, covered on three sides by bubbles….I stayed for a few hours, filling up six bags full of druse, uncovered those nice chunks above that were covered in bubbles and carried them to the truck and wrapped them up, before heading home and stopping off at the secret spot on the way……I was very happy with what I found at the druse spot, and only covered about a third of the ground there this trip.

On the way to the secret spot to expand the new pocket, we came up on this beautiful tree that was past peak, and leaves were falling off it in the gentle breeze….

…within twenty minutes of arriving, I had the area around the pocket cleared back to the rock wall behind it and started bailing water….

..eventually I cleared the area around that big rock on the right side as well, but didnt find any soft spots that would indicate another entrance to this pocket and didnt pursue it any further…I might do that the next time I`m up there since I`ll have more energy then. I took a break after cleaning it off and retrieved my hammer and chisel as well as another bag….

…after bailing it down, its obvious to me that this pocket goes under the big wall in front of me there, and I`m not going to be able to pursue it any further. My best bet will be to either look to either side for more openings, which will require a lot of cleaning of piles of rock gravel, or simply going and finding another pocket and starting all over. Within the first few minutes after bailing it down, I was able to liberate a few pretty combos…

…and the next photo shows the crystals at the edges of the expanded pocket…

..what you don`t see is that I was able to liberate a few small twins and triples and small clusters of crystals from the bottom of the pocket on three sides, mainly the big base in the foreground here. I`m thinking I`ll prob dig the original pockets back out when I return and see if they lead anywhere on either side and back behind me, and then maybe look for more pockets.

I had the weekend off once again, after returning from my trip to Colorado and decided since I didnt get to do any rockhunting out there, I would head back down to the secret spot and see if I could expand that new pocket some more. It seemed to be deep and going in about three different directions, and I wanted to see if I could open it up some more and see what it might hold. Missy and I loaded up and took off down there about mid morning, cause this time it was a bit cool and I wanted to give it a chance to warm up a bit before I arrived. I walked in and started digging with the mini mattox after clearing off some of the loose gravel mixture surrounding the existing pocket….within minutes I had worked up a pretty good sweat and took my jacket off and went to get my bailing bucket and some more tools and bags…..

 …the pocket was full of water and it was obvious at some point today, I was going to have to bail some water…but I decided to clear more surrounding gravel and rock and see if I could find more pocket openings instead…

…and it didnt take me long to find a soft spot once I had some area cleared back toward that back wall….

…so I began lightly scraping down with the mattox and pretty soon, I had signs of another pocket beneath me opening up….

…and pretty soon, this pocket really started to open up….

…and you can see the growing pile of crystals from this new pocket above and close up below….

I took a water break and then cleared some more rock and gravel away and decided to do some serious digging in the new pockets on top of the week old pocket….

…and closer up…

…you see that somewhat round piece that my chisel is pointing toward up above ?  I took that out and it turned out to be a nice chunk of druse hanging upside down with some poker chips attached…but first I`m going to show you that top pocket closer up…

…as well as a close up of some of the crystals lurking under the surface water in the bottom pocket….

…and here is the growing pile of crystals and plates…

…and the floor of the week old pocket is laced with crystals as well…

…and in the mouth of the pocket as well….I was reaching in and pulling as many out as I could…a bit hesitant at first, remembering what Docia told me when she said she couldnt make it today…and wishing me lucky reaching into the cold pocket water. What was really funny was that the water in that pocket turned out to be fairly warm, not in the least bit cool at all, and I was pulling several crystals out, and many were firmly attached to the walls and floor of the deep pocket too…this one seemed to be at least ten inches deep, I was often in up to my elbows…

…I turned my attention to the week old pocket and while pulling some of the crystals from the bottom of it, I ran across yet another small pocket off the floor of it…

…and closer up you can see crystals lurking inside it as well…

…I followed this one til it deadended into a wall and then decided to stop here and return in a couple of weeks and see how much further I could go in the wall direction. I covered up the other end with some flat rocks to keep any stray stuff out…..

…I was curious to find out how deep this pocket was going to turn out and whether I would be able to widen it and bail it down to find some clusters to chip out…guess we would find out the next time I was down…here are the ones I wrapped up to take home…some nice druse plates of gray and some pretty ones with poker chips attached, I also pulled out several single and twin crystals….

I found a pretty sunset on the way back home…first in downtown Steelville….

and here in the Meramac River Valley just over the hill from Steelville along Highway 19….

and here setting over the Meramac River and the reflections in the water….

…and at Cuba when I hit 44 for the last leg of the trip home.

Sorry everyone…I took the latter part of September off to drive my parents out to Colorado so they could see some beautiful fall color and ride the steam train at Durango, as part of their 50th anniversary. They no longer like to make the long drives and after everything they have done for me, I volunteered to do the driving for them. I had taken the last weekend off at work, back in January when we pick our shifts to work, and thought then that I would attend the gem and mineral show in Joplin again….it wasnt held last year due to the catastrophic tornado that ravaged the entire city. My mom and I were talking over dinner one evening and she remarked to me that she and dad would love to travel out to Colorado and see some beautiful fall color and once again ride the train at Durango…it has been 45 years since we rode it…and I only remember bits and pieces of it…but they couldnt handle drives any longer than five hours. I told Mom I had taken that weekend off, giving me a week off, and would love to take them out there instead, so we started planning it out back in August. If interested, you can check out that story and the photos at my other blog site,  http://jwjphotoblog.com

I went rockhunting two times before the Colorado trip and even took a couple of care packages out there with me, one for my second cousin Emmie, who is an aspiring geologist in Denver and just started first grade this year….and one for my geologist buddy Ian Merkel, who is in the Evergreen area and works for the Henderson Mine Company. I took them some Missouri druse, poker chip crystals and clusters, some Arkansas quartz, and some western Kentucky fluorite.

So on this Sunday, I decided to go back to the secret spot and check out an area in the pile that I had a sneaking suspicion that there might be a pocket lurking nearby…I had crisscrossed this particular area a few times and seen some sign, plus there was a huge boulder there that had crystals on it…everything just seemed to add up and I just needed to do some physical researching to see if it truly would add up.

Missy and I took off early that morning to avoid the heat….arriving about sunrise….and what a pretty sunrise it was….

…and a few minutes later, as we were climbing up a hill from a valley floor, we spotted several very pretty deer in a field to the left of the road…I pulled over to photograph them in the early morning light….they stood still for one shot and then….

…their flags came up and off they fled toward the woods and I mean…FAST….

..we headed on down the road and arrived soon after…I checked the sloped area I had found the massive chunk of poker chip crystals, and discovered another slide had occurred while I wasnt there and the chunk was apparently buried…

..I didnt have the energy required to clean it off to look for more, so I opted to go over to the pile and look at another area that I figured had a pocket as well…another area I had criss crossed several times and always found crystals nearby…mainly at the base of a large boulder covered on one side with crystals.

and the next photo shows a few of the crystals that I picked up out of the surrounding rocks and dirt after digging down around the base of the boulder above….

…giving further confirmation that there could potentially be more nice stuff below or around it…so on I dug, in behind the boulder as well as I could. I tried to be as careful as possible with a lot of bigger rocks up above me and this pocket….it could slide down and bury the work I had done so far anytime….

….and as soon as I started digging in behind the boulder, this pocket luckily opened up pretty quickly…I was able to pull enough small crystals out to give me hope there was more in there, prob just further back which meant more careful digging. I began removing some of the bigger rocks above and around it, creating a couple of diversionary slide directions for it to go if it decided to…and as the pocket opened up more from above, more crystals started showing up inside….

…as it opened up, a few chunks of matrix with crystals attached, fell out of the back of the pocket….

Well I kept on digging and this pocket started to go deeper, down and further back…I was pulling out small crystals so that was motivating me to keep on digging….

…and pretty soon there was calcite signs everywhere inside the pocket…on the walls and ceiling area and floor of it…

…and within minutes, another pretty pocket opened up….

…and since it was so pretty looking, I decided I didnt want to damage it, so I began clearing rocks from above and around the pocket, so I didnt have another controlled, or worse, uncontrolled slide….at any rate, I managed to clear out the pocket and clear out the surrounding area….

 …and as soon as I began digging around the cleared edges, I stumbled upon yet another pretty pocket….

and this one started producing some bigger chunks of crystals…I was beginning to think this would be a lot more fun if all the rock hanging up above wasn`t….

…and this is one of the druse plates that came out of this pocket as well…

…and here is a pile of crystals that came out of these pockets….

 …and then the inevitable occurred….only this one was a controlled slide…I did it to clear it off and hopefully get into more pockets, however….

…I didn`t plan for the really big one that came down…and it was so heavy I couldnt even move more than one end of it at a time…so that is where I stopped for the day.

I had the weekend off last week and nothing going on…had a chance to go to southern Arkansas, near Mt Ida…one of my favorite second cousins got married in the Gulf in July and was hosting her reception for family and friends who couldnt make it down for the nuptials…if she had held it in September or October when cooler, I prob would have attended, but Arkansas is normally very hot in August, and on my weekend off, I would have been pushed for time, so I opted to stay home and rockhunt instead.  I wish Cassie and her new beau the very best, hopefully they will be at the family reunion in November and I can visit with them then.

Missy and I loaded up the truck early Saturday morning and headed to the secret spot. I figured I would check on that blue hole pocket from a couple of weeks ago and see if I could find another opening to it, see if I could find a few more  crystals in it. However, soon after arriving, that all went out the window. I decided to look around up on the pile first, it looked like it might have been recently disturbed, so I did a fairly brief walk around and while I didnt find any freshly disturbed pockets, I did find a nice big chunk of druse quartz and was able to walk it down off the pile and down to the floor. I loaded it up last before heading home.

I walked back to the truck and grabbed another bag and headed to an older pocket that appeared to have a pocket exposed…thought I would check it out and see if there was indeed a pocket there or a dead end….on the way to it, I scratched around in another one, shown below on the left side….

…the only thing I found in this pocket that was new to me was a perfectly round hole as I dug down into it….

…which turned out to be a drill hole, nothing more….so I ambled on over to the original pocket I wanted to explore more, and dug it out…

…and here is the ledge with what appears to be a pocket underneath it…what originally caught my attention…..

…I reached in and pulled out a few loose poker chip crystals and figured what the heck…lets chip it out and see where it goes, if anywhere….

…I started chipping out this corner, as it opened up a small pocket when I started hammering and so I started here and cleaned it out first, only pulling one or two small crystals out. I then broke open the roof and pulled out a few roof plates and this pocket opened up underneath….

…so I decided to explore further and see what I could find. I pulled a few loose crystals out and it appeared that there might be another pocket on behind this one….but I concentrated on pulling the loose ones in this clay matrix out first….

…and so I decided to peel back the top of the pocket as far as I could and see where it led…

…and found yet another pocket behind it….as I had thought.

So I decided to clean this pocket out and then peel back yet another roof layer….this time not one pocket hole opened up, but two and then shortly after, three holes were before me…

…things were starting to get interesting now…I cleaned around and peeled back yet another layer to make things easier to get to the pocket holes…here you can see inside one of the holes and see the crystals waiting inside for me…..

…hiding under druse plates that were very solid feeling to my chisel and hammer….so I concentrated instead on peeling back more of the roof layer….no easy task in itself believe me…as you can see the protective rock layer is getting thicker and thicker above the pockets….by now I was swinging my four pound hammer with both hands and giving it everything I had to break them apart….

…and now, as you can see in the photo above, another hole has opened up and this one appears to be deeper than the others…

I reached into this one and pulled out a few loose crystals and a few small plates of pretty druse with some bubbles and soda straws on them….and a few nice combo plates of druse and chips as well…you can see the initial finds from this pocket alone in the next few photos….some with hematite balls on them….

I widened the opening to this deep pocket entrance and took a few moments to move the growing pile of plates and crystals farther to the right and then moved some bigger ugly rocks further back…..

…and here is a close up of the growing pile above….

…..I then took a break, grabbed a bottle of water and a brownie that my mom had made…she makes the best brownies I have ever ate….bar none…she made me a big bowl of them a couple of weeks ago for my birthday and then made some more recently.

I came back and looked into the larger entrance to the deeper pocket and saw several crystals inside it….

…I removed what I could and then peeled back the roof plates once again….

…and about four fairly large roof plates came out of this, but one or two with damage, as this next photo shows…they dont always come out nice and pristine….

…and after looking down into the pocket, I could see there were yet more roof plates in the pocket that would prevent me from getting to even more crystals, so once again I pounded the thick protective rock plates out of the way…boy was I getting a workout today….

…however now you can also see that there were crystals lying in the bottom of this pocket all over the place…some were attached to the bottom and some were loose…you can also see yet another thick roof plate inside the pocket on the right side that would have to be removed….

…and here are more photos showing roof plates and crystals removed from the pockets so far….

..I ran into the back of the pocket soon after so I moved a few feet away and scratched down only to find some shallow pockets with some holie druse, but no crystals….

…after spending about twenty minutes scratching and digging to find this out, I took another water and brownie break, and then walked up to the blue hole pocket to check it out. I didnt find any new openings around the existing pocket I had found a few weeks prior, so I moved over about ten feet and scratched around and still didnt find anything new. I stood up and stretched and looked up and saw some crystals loose in clay dirt, on a short sloped pile that I had studied before and never checked into any further. This time I climbed up and started digging around and pretty soon a nice loose poker chip crystal tumbled down into my hands…I started digging more and pretty soon I had about eight crystals sitting off to the side. I walked back to my truck, pulled it up closer and grabbed two more bags and some wrapping material for just in case my hunch turned true…

…I dug down some more and little did I know what was about to come….I triggered a controlled slide of a line of rocks above….

…and as soon as the dust cleared and I was able to clear the loose debris and rocks in front…….lo and behold, right in front of me, were two nice football sized chunks of solid poker chip crystals in a pocket that literally just opened up and fell down with the controlled slide of rocks….

…and behind them was a MASSIVE chunk of poker chips….and I mean MASSIVE !!!!

this thing is probably three feet high and solid…and yes its still there…gonna have to do yet another controlled slide to get to it…I pulled so many crystals out above and around and below it though….enough to fill three bags…yes I had to go back to the truck and get another bag and more wrapping cloths…I had triples and twins and clusters and combos just all over the place around this massive chunk….I was quite happy and pretty soon it was evident that it was not only getting warmer but I was wearing down…so I stopped digging and started wrapping. After about twenty minutes of wrapping tho, I looked up and saw yet another pocket of crystals imbedded in the dirt….

…so I gathered more energy from that and removed as many of them as I could and wrapped up even more….here is the last photo of the crystals from these two pockets before I took off for home about mid afternoon….

...as you can see, a very nice selection of crystals and even some druse plates of bubbly gray druse, that were in with the crystals…all in all another good day`s haul….stay tuned for the MFQ story tho….

I wish I could say I found yet another blue poker chip pocket for two days in a row, but I cant, cause I didnt.  I did find yet another pocket the very next day after the blue hole though and on the other side of the lower level.  As we were driving down there we came across this nice scene in a valley nearby….

…and once we  arrived, the clouds were once again very noticeable…and even though it was a little warm, there was a nice breeze blowing through thanks to the clouds.

…I had decided to try and dig down into that pocket and see just how deep it would go and if anything was in it…I stopped in Steelville at Casey`s,  and purchased a cheap flashlight, having gone off and left my really good one at home again. As it was, I didnt need it for this pocket, cause after digging down a little ways with the mini mattox, I bottomed out real quickly….

…so I backed off and tried a different route, thinking maybe there was a deeper pocket there nearby and I just wasnt sitting in the right spot for it. I dug down into every hole I could see and never did find a deep pocket anywhere, just lots of little shallow pockets and a few crystals.

..so I took a break after digging there for a couple of hours and drank some water, as it was starting to heat up again, and then decided to move about ten feet north and try my luck again….

…and as luck would have it, after scratching around and finding some signs of calcite….

…I soon had another pocket scouted out and quickly taking shape…

…and I no sooner had a small pile of crystals growing than  the pocket started moving in that direction and I had to move them to the right about three feet…as it was, I had to move them twice to the right….

…this pocket formed up fairly fast, with a large and extensive base plate that had a couple of clusters on it, but each one was about six inches thick and then attached to a thick shelf of rock underneath. I tried chipping out the clusters just to make it easier to access the holes leading to what I figured was a deeper pocket underneath the clusters, but the rock and calcite the clusters were attached to, wore me out fast. I finally decided to just go on and dig out around the edges more and see where that might lead to…

…holes were opening up all over the place when I was digging and scratching around. you can see a hole above, this one only led down to the side of the cluster there, but then when I got down to the side of the cluster, another hole opened up, leading me to think there was either a pocket underneath the cluster or off to the side into the rock….

…so on and on I dug…sometimes stopping to pull out a plate of druse or a poker chip….

…and pretty soon, more holes along with ledges, were opening up so I was exploring more and more, thinking eventually I might find a big pocket somewhere nearby that was chock full of crystals.

…I wish now I had had my little paint brush with me to sweep away the loose dirt and gravel, that would have made things much easier, something else to put on my list of things to bring along…in the next few minutes, a huge cluster revealed itself to me and a large hole opened up next to it….

…I reached down into this hole, it was pretty big…and I pulled out a couple of nice crystals…so I naturally continued to dig some more...it would have been nice to remove this huge cluster, but as I said before, it was firmly rooted to the base of the pocket with thick calcite. I hear so much about calcite not being very tough, only having a hardness of four, but let me tell you, when you start driving a chisel into it, you would swear it was more like a hardness of eight ! Wears you out real quickly.

I took another water break and then started trying to dig this cluster out, see how big it was, and in the process I discovered yet another pocket to the right of it, under a ledge of rock….

…and yet another hole opened up on the left side, right by that cluster of crystals…

…by this time, I was starting to wear down from the heat and the digging….I had tried to break into the clusters and chip them out and that alone wore me down…and I was going from hole to hole exploring and trying to find a way down into what I assumed was a pocket off to the side of those clusters, but I wasnt having much luck getting into any pockets yet. I started scratching around again and low and behold, an even bigger hole opened up right in front of me and not near the cluster either…

…I went back to the truck and grabbed my new flashlight and aimed it into the hole and it appeared the hole was fairly deep….

…so I started digging out the pocket on the left side and making my way toward the hole in the pocket to the right….

…and as I did, more ledges and holes appeared. I started pulling more crystals and druse plates out right and left….

…including one very nice large twin….

…the pocket finally joined up with the other pocket, and sure enough, it was a deep one….

…I kept pulling large crystals out of it and chipping off the roof to move it back…prob moved it back at least two feet before I ran out of gas….

…I laid down on my side and set the camera down on the floor of the pocket and using the flash, shot this photo of the interior of the pocket….

..it was jammed full of large poker chip crystals…no I did not leave those inside the pocket intentionally…yes I ran out of energy, but if at all possible, I still would have reached in and removed them…had Mother Nature let me…they were firmly rooted to the bottom of the pocket like superglue…so that is how I left them….for another day.

On the way out, I shot some beautiful sunsets of the thunderheads overhead in the sky….

I decided to take my short day off the first weekend of July, after a long week of brush fires and a fun filled week at work, and drove down to the secret spot again to see if I could locate another pocket.  Missy and I arrived and I decided to do a little walking around to see what I could find in the rockpile first. I found a huge boulder with some pockets on it right away….

…but I didnt attempt to liberate any.

I moved around to the other side of the rock pile and looked around at some areas where the foliage was growing and decided to start digging into those areas to see if I could find another pocket. We have discovered that the foliage usually takes root in some deep pocket holes,  and they have led us to some nice pockets in the past. I started digging here first…

I started digging down by this small bush…

and within a few minutes, I had found some signs of calcite off to the side of it, so I moved over to the area of the roots….

…and within a few minutes of intense digging, I pulled out these two plates, which is a better sign of a pocket very closeby….

I was surprised, not expecting to find roots so thick and long, and began wishing I had brought a saw or an axe with me. These things were long and getting in my way fast. I continued to dig and expand the pocket despite the long and tough roots….

…after expanding the pocket around the bush roots, I started finding little ledges down underneath and then some holes started opening up as well, usually an indication of a pocket underneath the ledges….

…so I started digging out the ledges and within a few minutes, I was rewarded for my efforts with this beautiful poker chip….

…after taking a short water break, I began the task of taking on the roots once again….

…and boy were they tough….couldnt even bend them to move them out of my way…

…I soon got tired of fighting these roots and so I moved to my left about five or six feet and discovered yet another pocket area and began working it…no bushes or roots to deal with there…and within about thirty minutes of digging it out, I had a nice pile of crystals….

…this pocket started on the left side, where I hit the calcite base pretty quickly and then it moved to the right where it went deeper….most of the crystals in the pile above came from the deeper end of the pocket…

…and I was pulling a variety of plates and crystals from it….

…and pretty soon I was wore out and ready to wrap up everything and head for home…it was hot and I was soaked in sweat and dirt……think those roots prob wore me out more than anything.  As I headed home, I began to see storm clouds forming to the north near the interstate and I sure hoped we would get some more rain soon after….

…and here is the storm moving east along the north side of the interstate as I am driving home…it did rain about 30 minutes later and we received about half an inch of rainfall. it was a welcome relief, but we definitely need more, as does most of the country. I have never seen a drought like this before. I sure hope we all get some good rainfall soon and a break from this excessive heat spell, too.