Docia and I returned to the secret spot yesterday, four weeks since we had last dug there, and anxious to see what new treasures we could unearth and add to our collections.  As Missy and I were driving down the interstate, we saw a westbound train hauling what appeared to be ten Bradley Tanks….

Docia and I met at our favorite location about 8 am and drove down to the lower area to find that an even larger area had been exposed by heavy equipment and dug out for the clay mixture of rock and dirt…we still have no clue what they are taking it out and using it for, it still looks like a landing strip for ET….

We walked around the new area, but decided since the sun wasn`t above us yet, it would make finding anything sparkly difficult, so we drove on down to our favorite spot and began looking for pockets, or I should say I did…Docia decided to investigate her last big pocket there for more dogtooth calcite crystals…

so I walked back to the back looking for signs of poker chips, found a likely spot, and sat down to dig down and see what I could find.  I should also back up here and say that Docia found me a nice mini mattox while I was down in Kentucky…I have been looking high and low for one, couldnt locate one at Lowe`s, or Orschelin`s, or even Walmart, dont know where she found it but I very much appreciate it. It def makes it easier to move alot of rock and dirt around. Here is where I started my day out…

I began digging down and soon discovered that my pocket was going to be one of those subterannean pockets, it was down at least ten inches if not more, and while a ledge seemed to appear on both of the horizonal sides, the chips started appearing under the ledge and then up in behind the ledge as well…I wasnt finding any druse plates to speak of either, just some boring gray and red shale with icky clay mud attached to it. Thats what I dug down into at first until I found the first chip about a foot down…

..then I started finding some crystals laying at the bottom and those led me to the pocket sides and weird ledges with crystals tucked under and behind them…

…so my pocket size continued to expand from side to side and grew in size within minutes, as I was finding pocket after pocket on the sides all the way around the hole…

I kept looping back to the main pocket though, as its the one that looked to be deep, and as I came back to it each time, I was seeing this nice cluster of poker chips and druse at the entrance, and it kept looking like it might break loose on its own…here it is in the upper left hand corner….

and here is my pocket from the end where I started digging, showing the other end which appears to be the pocket headed for the deep…

and a few of the combos I have already found in the pockets so far…

..and gray druse plates that have come from the pocket so far as well….

As I was digging along, Docia decided to take a break from all the heavy pounding on the sledge hammer liberating more dogtooth crystals, and walked over to the wall behind me and right away, discovered a pocket of poker chip crystals….

You can see the crystals inside the pocket under the heavy plates of druse and some are even attached to the druse…this was a good find for Docia…she spent a few minutes removing the overhang and then started gently digging in and removing some beautiful crystals…

and here are some of the crystals she removed from this pocket….

and some of her finds including the chunks of druse with chips attached to them…

So then I returned to my pocket, after that short break which really helped my back and legs a bit…and as you can see, my pocket has expanded a bit….

…so I began digging again, this time concentrating on the nice big druse/chip combo at the entrance to the deep pocket and I was fortunate that it decided to break away on its own…less damage for me to inflict…

and I dug out a few of the plates of shale at the entrance to the pocket, there was actually a small mountain of it piled there…and then set my camera down and took a photo of the pocket, to get an idea of how deep it was…

needless to say, that really didnt help tell me anything about the depth of it at all, due to so many pieces of shale in the way even further back, and the dome of rock on top of the pocket was so thick, after about five minutes of chipping away, I could tell it was going to take me all day or I would need a jackhammer, both of which I couldnt afford, so I started pulling what I oculd out of the pocket from where I was sitting, reaching in and feeling around with my hands…the first few out looked like this….

…after a few minutes of this, it became quite apparent to me that this pocket was extending back at least thirty six inches deep, if not more…underneath and behind me…so I decided to lay down on my stomach and reach back into the pocket….

..this gave me more leverage, but I had to pull myself forward to hold on with my right hand here, for balance, while reaching back with my left hand into the pocket, and once I had my hand back in there, I had to twist around in order to feel for crystals on the sides and back and floor of the pocket…pulling whatever was loose out and setting it in front of me and then reaching back for more again…a process that required about thirty minutes as that pocket became deeper and kept going further back on me…by the time I finished cleaning it out, what I could reach inside it that is, I would guestimate it was at least four feet back and prob kept going, I know I never did touch the back wall of it…here is the pile of crystals in front of me that kept growing and growing, there are even some twins in there….

and a few of the clusters I pulled from the pocket as well….

and…

..I got out of the hole and decided to stretch my legs and fill my bags and wrap the really nice ones up…and took a look at the other side where I first began, and saw crystals under a ledge there too, so I started digging and soon after, a fourth pocket opened up in the same original hole I started in….

After filling my bags and walking them to the truck, I decided to try one last place…Docia drove up to the new place to look for druse plates, so I started digging in the place I had dug in four weeks ago….

..and I only found one small pocket with just a few poker chip crystals inside….

and on the way home, I spotted some beautiful fall foliage…another reminder of why this is my favorite time of the year.

I did a little cleaning this afternoon, helped me work out alot of my sore muscles from digging yesterday, maybe I wont need as much tylenol tonight. Enjoy the results :

this is a pretty druse chunk Docia and I found up on the overburden pile….pretty smokey colored druse bubbles…my fave color in druse.

these next three photos show the cluster I pulled from the entrance to the deep pocket yesterday when it finally broke free on its own….

and the next two came from Docia`s pockets, some she didnt choose to take home with her…

the rest of these goodies came from my pocket…

After a solid week of 09-11 activities, I decided to get away from it all and drove down to the secret spot for some R and R, otherwise known as Rest and Relaxation, aka Stress RELIEF, and see if I could find another nice pocket.  I really liked those poker chips found in the limonite pocket, and while I would love to find another pocket of them, by this time, I decided I would be happy with finding anything pretty.

As Missy and I drove down to the lower area, we discovered a new road in the field on approach and decided to check it out…and discovered that it led to a place near the lower spot where some new dig activity has taken place recently…digging into a hillside of clay where we have found some nice druse plates in the past few years…so we stopped to check it out. I grabbed my rake and a bag and set off walking around to see if this new area of disturbance would produce anything…

Within a few minutes of walking around, I located a pocket of smokey quartz colored druse plates and sat down and dug for about 90 minutes and filled two bags with druse plates, big and small…I didnt take my camera with me, so can only show you some plates, like this one….

and this one….

and this one…

and then I dug out this big boulder covered on two sides with smokey druse….

..so after that, I decided to drive on down to the secret spot and see if I could find a pocket or two before I wore out…parked and took my tools out and walked around a bit, then decided to see if I could find anything else at the last pocket I worked at, in the floor near the mudhole…when I had last been there, it seemed to me there was more there. I started scraping around on all sides and pretty soon, I discovered another ledge and a few crystals popping out…

…you will prob notice the aerosol can there…it was for the pesky bees that kept hanging around and a horsefly that wanted to bite a lot…yes, I eventually tagged them and no I didnt bury them properly.

I started digging in the ledge above and crystals started popping up right and left…as well as a few small druse plates….

…I had the feeling they were going to continue to produce, so I took a break from digging and moved the big rocks surrounding the area, back about ten feet and raked the smaller boulders back as well…then with the digging tool, I discovered a small depression on the other side of the ledge….

..that turned into a nice pocket of its own…producing these initial goodies….

and closer up of the nice one on the left above…

and you can see in this next photo, this pocket had been under these big rocks before I pulled them back….

and this next photo shows a pretty druse plate that came out next….

and more druse plates and crystals after that….

..and this photo shows even more crystals inside the pocket…

and one of my extractions lead to yet another pocket within the pocket….

and even more nice crystals pulled out…

the following photos show some of the druse I found today….

and one showing the druse and chips found…..

My next trip was to Kentucky to join with some rockhound friends from Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and South Carolina to collect more fluorite, Kentucky Agate, and some Kentucky Geodes…

The heat wave that has dominated much of our summer weather this year, finally relented a bit and we were able to go rock hunting mid afternoon without encountering sweltering and dangerously hot temps for once.  I met my parents and my sisters family at Red Lobster last Saturday for lunch, to take my Dad out for his birthday, and then drove back to pick up Missy and go rock hunting…Docia was confined to mowing acres of grass while it was dry, so we went by ourselves, set to meet there the next morning cause it would be wet and she couldnt mow then.

Missy and I arrived around 2 pm and I immediately went up into the pile area to discover that the remaining pile was gone and they had cleaned if up right up to the wall on both sides, even scraping down into the floor a little bit…

…and I looked to the left and the rest of the windrow on that side was gone too…the only thing left behind were the big boulders we couldn`t do anything with.

I walked up to the corner and began looking around the newly cleared area for left behinds,  and not seeing anything definitive, I checked the floor and saw what appeared to be some seams and decided to start digging there…

..it didn`t take long to find a shallow pocket of chips, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were covered in what appeared to be limonite…I wasn`t sure at first, cause it looked like clay, but it was solid rock and spotty in places and solid masses in other places, but the crystals themselves were gray or a yellowish green color and in clusters or combos…found out most of this later at home when I cleaned them up and was quite happy with them. I decided then to look for more the next morning when I returned to meet up with Docia…here is the pocket expanding and you can see more crystals in the bottom of the pocket…

..and here are some of them piled up…at this point you can see how they look coming out of the pocket and can prob understand why I wasn`t sure what exactly I had at this point, but I was clearly interested….

..and when you see this next one, you`ll prob really understand why I got excited when I pulled it out and looked close at it…

…through the muck covering it I can see I have a small cluster or triple at the very least and the crystals are a nice dark color…here is the other view of it…

After getting what I could out, I moved over to the wall and located another pocket fairly quickly…

..and the first thing I pulled out of the pocket after clearing the loose stuff away, was this nice gray druse with a poker chip attached to one end of it…..

…and that left this hole in the pocket….

..with a nice poker chip crystal front and slightly to the right of center, lol….I started clearing away the roll down material in front of me and came upon this small cluster in the rocks….

….and after cleaning all the loose material around the pocket away from it, here is now it looked….

…..and the next one that came out of the pocket was this nice combo….

…after that I removed a few small plates of druse and a few single crystals and that cleaned out the small pocket, so I moved on down the wall looking for more pockets…after ten minutes of further digging, the only discovery I made was this guy looking for a cool spot out of the heat….

…yes I admit, I jumped back a bit when the rocks uncovered him…it startled me because we have been rockhunting at this location for going  on a few years now and just in the past week, we have come across two small snakes. I dug a few more minutes at that location, a little farther away, and then moved to another location to search for more pockets. I found what appeared to be a promising seam of calcite about twenty feet away in the floor….

…but only found a few crystals here and decided to call it a wrap…as Missy and I were leaving, we spotted this nice cloudy view….

…I got home and cleaned up a few of those crystals from the limonite pocket and really liked what I found…

…this is that pretty one that was covered in muck above….it sure cleaned up real pretty….here are a few more….

Docia met me over there the next day and we both found a couple of pockets apiece…she found a couple in the wall that I missed the day before, and I found a couple in the floor above and below…the floor below was in one of those depression areas again and this one had some large poker chips….

….and then off to the side of this pocket, I hit a spot of hematite attached to the poker chips and calcite…never have hit anything like that before…

I bought a new digging tool last week and took it to the secret spot last week to try it out…as I drove down toward the lower spot, I decided to try out a new road….

….and glad I did. I drove down and turned around and parked and left the windows open and Missy decided to stay in the truck…within a few minutes I started spotting some beautiful druse and poker chips that had been spread around on this road for stability from flooding I`m sure…I decided to drive around to the other side and see what could be found over there first, and within minutes of arriving on the other side, I had half the bed of my truck filled with combo chunks and clusters of every size….here are a few of them…

…this one was peeking out from under this big rock…and here are some more that were just laying all over the place…

..and I found these out there as well….

…after loading up the bed of my truck, I drove on down to the lower spot and tried out my new hand rake digging tool…I only found a few poker chips and druse combos down there, but was very happy with the new tool….

A few days after we expanded the birthday pocket and after I found the neat deep pocket ten inches under solid rock, we returned and found yet another nice pocket, this one full of mainly nice large clusters of poker chips and druse/chip combos. After we parked, I told Docia that radar had showed a squall line about two hours away and some rain and storms behind it. So for the first two hours we dug in areas we thought there was potential for pockets. About 8 am,  Docia started raking the gravel back from the wall with her mini mattox, about three feet from the birthday pocket and next to the wall…..

….and I was up near the hole in the rock pocket, when I heard her yell out. I walked over to see what she found, and she was holding up two nice combos, with a pretty gray druse and large poker chips of a pale yellow color, sticking out of the druse all over each piece, both pieces nearly basketball sized. I told her to hold that thought while I retrieved my camera.

By the time I returned with my camera, she had put those two on the ground and had two more nice druse plates pulled out and they had poker chips attached to them as well….

Well she went to get her mat and set it down for her knees so she could get ready to pull some more nice ones out…here is the pocket she was working…

…and here is a photo of one of the gemmy poker chip / druse combos pulled out a few minutes before, with some other druse plates nearby….

..and this one came out right behind that one…also gemmy looking…

Within a few minutes, Docia pulled yet another large cluster out of the gravel pocket….here is one side of it….

the first photo shows a solid cluster of poker chips on one side and the second photo shows gray druse and poker chips on the other side of the chunk….about this time, we looked up and saw the squall line coming up on us from the southwest and knew it would be storming soon….

…we were still pulling nice ones out when the rain caught up with us and started getting heavy…I grabbed my camera and headed to the truck and she soon followed…we sat it out in the truck for an hour, watching the lightning popping right and left, intense pink flashes lighting up the sky all around us, until the skies finally lightened up and the rain started to slow way down.

We got out and returned to the pocket and saw that the rain had washed off some of our pieces nicely, and we started digging once again, and again began to pull out some nice pieces, plus we soon hit the solid poker chip bottom of the pocket about eighteen inches down, and then found a pocket on the left near corner, and one on the right away corner. Docia decided to explore the pocket on the right and I took the pocket on the left. We explored our spur pockets for about twenty minutes before hitting solid rock and decided to stop there for the day, since it looked like more rain might move in. I didn`t have my camera with me for the latter part since it was still threatening to rain more, but I did take some photos of my bring home goodies….

….the three photos above show the one that Docia was holding up with two sides to it, solid cluster on one side as the third photo shows and druse / chip combo on the other side as the first two photos show.

..and here is another one, that has two sides, side A above and side B below…

..and here are a few more combos from the pocket….

..and one of the druse plates we found…sorry its a bit blurry….

…and yet another cluster that came out of the pocket…

…and even more clusters and combos….

…and just so you don`t think that all we took out of this pocket were combos and clusters, here are some of the twins we found in there as well…

Quite a nice haul for having to sit out an hour waiting for the storm to pass by….

Docia emailed me two days after she discovered the Birthday Pocket and asked when I could go back and join her to expand it even more, think that pocket really got her going. 🙂

I decided I could go again on the 30th and we decided to meet down there early morning once again, to avoid the heat and humidity, which was getting old really quick. By arriving at 6 am, though, we could get about four good hours digging time in before the heat and humidity would run you off. We arrived to find a nice cloudy sunrise and more material removed…..

…so while waiting for a little more light, we walked around the new area and found absolutely nothing. Docia grabbed her tools and headed for the pocket, I grabbed the heavy sledge and met her there. Here is the pocket as we left it the other day…

Using my heavy sledge hammer, I gave the roof of the pocket a few good whacks and then she was able to chip some material off the top with her three pound hammer and chisel…I repeated the heavy whacks a few times and then set off to see if I could find another pocket or two. I moved up the wall about twenty feet away and soon enough, I had found a promising spot….

..with this druse combo coming up and out pretty quickly from the handrake scratching…

..I came up against these walls pretty quickly and plates and crystals started popping up all over the place soon after…

I looked over to see how Docia was doing and could see she was making progress on her pocket opening…almost had her shoulders inside it now…

In the meantime, my pocket started moving to the right and as I was clearing off loose gravel and dirt to the right, I began praying that the pocket didn`t try to go under either of the two huge rocks to the right, as both were probably five hundred pounders and I knew we wouldn`t stand a chance of moving either one…..

…luckily for me, another prayer answered, cause the pocket stopped just short of the big rocks and I was able to pull out more plates and crystals from the pocket walls…

I kept scratching around and the next thing that popped out was this beautiful poker chip twin….

…and pretty soon the search led to this ledge and small hole in the corner….

I looked over to check on Docia after getting up to stretch my legs and rest my knees, and saw her still expanding and filling up at least one bag so far….

Returning to my ledge pocket, the hole in the corner of the ledge led to a few pieces of druse and then it turned into a dead end fast. I loaded up half a bag of crystals from this pocket and moved further to the right, on the other side of those big rocks, and started scratching around with the hand rake once again. It didn`t take long to find yet another lucrative pocket area….

..and pretty soon, signs of calcite were popping up all over…

….and then plates and crystals started popping up as well….

…like the plate above and this crystal shown close up below…

By this time, I`m wondering if I have hit yet another small pocket like the one before…when I come across this pretty palm sized plate of druse with hematite balls on it….

..and I`m thinking I really like the color in it and the hematite balls are a plus as well. I didn`t see alot of pretty druse like this in the last pocket so this is looking better every minute…then I turn over this little number next….

..a nice little combo with the same pretty druse and hematite balls and two pretty yellow orange colored poker chips on it…

…and now I`m excited…like what I`m seeing and showed it to Docia and she liked it too….then I realize there is a ledge on both sides and I begin to dread that maybe this will be another shortlived pocket again…

..the next thing I pull out, from an area between the two ledges and somewhat in the middle, is this little dogtooth crystal perched on a small plate of pretty druse…

…and a small hole opens up under it….

..I stood up to take a break, and get some water, and here are the crystals so far collected in relation to the ledges and pocket….

With a bottle of water down, I decided to check out this new hole that opened up under that pretty little poker chip perched on the plate, and after deciding I couldn`t get my hand down into it, and determining that the hole was fairly deep, I decided to chisel out some maneuvering room….

..and then put the lens down into the hole and shot this photo of what was inside…

I reached down into the hole and pulled what I could reach from it…

….and the stack kept growing…I took a close look around the hole and decided it was solid calcite ringing around it, so I chipped through it and widened it out some more…

..and pulled these nice chips and plates from the hole….

…and within a few minutes, pulled all of these crystals and plates out of the hole….

..and this little dogtooth crystal guy….

..and then every time I reached in, I was going down with my arm and then reaching back practically underneath me, feeling for the edges of the hole and it felt like the pocket was about eighteen inches deep and a couple of feet back…that was the extent of how far I could reach back if I laid down on my stomach and reached in there…having cleaned out the center of the pocket with single chips and plates, the edges of the pocket within reach were producing nice plate and chip combos like these….

and….

…figuring I had pulled as much material as I could reach with my hand, I decided to put the camera down into the hole and see what else might be down in it…this is the first flash illuminated photo inside the pocket….

…and the second one appears to be a cluster of poker chip crystals covered with wet clay…well soon after this, it started warming up fast and we decided to pack it in and we were both pretty happy with our finds from our pockets. The following photos show some of mine cleaned up….

I normally have to work on my birthday and this year was no different…I had checked at work to see about taking the day off, as it fell on a weekend this year, but one of my co-workers had taken a week of vacation and it was one of his vacation days, so then I looked into taking Sunday off, but another co-worker had taken it off to head south on a week of vacation, so I just waited til Tuesday instead.

Missy and I met up with Docia at 5:30 am at our secret hunting spot and were greeted by a pretty sunrise on arrival…

Since we arrived so early and the sky was a bit cloudy, we had to wait an extra thirty minutes for good light to even illuminate our hunting area well enough to spot any pocket indicators. We both set out to check the area and quickly discovered even more material had been removed, so we walked around it first to check and see if there was anything left behind…we found a few small odds and ends, and one the size of a bowling ball that had one chip on it sticking out, but that was about it.

After walking around and checking a few areas with the rakes and getting a good workout, the only thing I had found of any substance, was a blue colored poker chip twin with a dark gray interior, reminiscent of the blue hole I had found last fall….

Docia soon called me over to where she had found what appeared to be some nice indicators of a promising pocket nearby…

..to the left of her boots, you can see scratchings in the gravel where she began searching and found a few odds and ends, single crystals and some chunks, and moved up the hill to where she is seen sitting, and then started digging out some nice big orange colored crystals…

….these guys sunlit here….

…and while sitting there, as I returned with my camera, she pulled out this pretty little druse plate in front of me…

…..and as she picked up her whisk broom and started cleaning up the area she was digging in, more big crystals started popping up out of the dirt right in front of our eyes, and the only words that were coming out of our mouths were  WOW, WOW, WOW….

…and within seconds the pocket had expanded about eighteen inches across and started moving to the right, with crystals popping up all over this dirt field…

….and as you can see in the two prior photos, there are crystals and plates all over the place, like the ones in the next photo…

…two photos back you can see a big rock where the pocket was moving to the right…it stopped at that rock, or so we thought, til we discovered it was loose and pulling it out and turning it over, discovered this as well…

…a big druse plate acting as one of two anchors for the extensive pocket…and as soon as I pulled this anchor plate out, I pulled this beautiful combo plate out that was positioned underneath it….

….and again, more WOWS and our minds just amazed at the beauty that we kept finding and pulling out of the dirt and gravel in front of us…I was so glad at this point that Docia had invited me to join her in digging and exploring this pocket…the next photo shows the remaining anchor druse before I pulled it out of the way…

..and more crystals seen in the dirt as well as many we have already pulled out and placed up on the ledge and now backlit by the rising sun….

..Docia decided to put her 2.5 lb hammer up there to give you an idea of their size and perspective…

With the two large anchor druse plates out of the way, we discovered a ledge behind with some poker chip inclusions embedded in it and even more loose crystals in the dirt…

..and the next suprise to pop out of the dirt was this beautiful  plate with chips attached…

..and we soon came to the start of the roof of the main pocket, and began to dig down deeper…

….and this ledge is what was hiding behind the anchor druse plates…

..we cleared the pieces of rock out of the way to the right and started seeing indicators of more crystals and plates very quickly…

…so we carefully began removing those…I was reaching in and pulling them out and handing them back to Docia and she was placing crystals on the ledge with the others, plates on the plate area, and chunks were tossed down the hill…within a few minutes I could see plates hanging upside down all over and crystals underneath all over…

..including this bright yellow colored crystal…..

..that actually turned out to be a two or three color crystal, the bright yellow just one of the shades of it…and as I removed more goodies, there were still more to take their place…

…and more plates of some of the prettiest druse we had ever seen, coming out of this pocket, some visibly hanging upside down and some only visible from the backsides…

..and it was about this point in time that we began to notice some of the crystals coming out were exposed at the very top of the point in a dogtooth formation in a bright yellow color, some showed signs of erosion by the poker chip forrmation surrounding the inner dogtooth crystal…check out this one on the ledge right above the hammer in the center of the photo…

…and we were pulling out these colorful druse plates too….

..and by now, the pocket has deepened even more into a small caverns, big enough almost, to crawl into…

..and we began pulling even more plates out….

..and we were taking turns reaching back to our shoulders to reach them and anything else we could remove, although not without great effort one way or another…

..and pretty soon, Docia was telling me about a large plate that she could barely reach and was loose, but something was holding it in there…so she got her hammer and chisel out and began working the front of that cavern roofline back so she could reach in there more easily, and within just a few moments, pulled this beautiful large druse plate out…

…one we discovered a few seconds later, has some marcasite embedded in it because it was sparkling multiple colors in the sunlight…something we hadn`t seen in this location til today….she also started pulling out multiples of dogtooth crystals as well….

…one that you could look down into from the top with a unique view…

..by this time, we were both tired and it was beginning to get very hot outside, and so we decided to call it a day, but not before Docia attempted to crawl back into the caverns pocket and pull a few more dogtooth crystals out…

…she has been telling me for weeks now, how she would like to find a pocket big enough to walk or crawl into and she came very close to getting her wish today.

The next few photos show some of my picks from this pocket, all cleaned up…

…..and some of the poker chips with the tips exposed…

..and another triple chip with the tips exposed in the next one…

..focus is slightly off on some of these, but you get the idea I`m sure..

Last week after Docia and I found a few pockets in some different areas, I decided to come back the next morning and see if I could find another one. I had absolutely nothing better to do, so Missy and I got up early and returned to the secret spot and had a good few hours of digging. I decided to check out the area to the right of where Docia had dug out the nice pocket and see if the loose crystals I was seeing on top were part of a pocket underneath or just crystals she didnt like and tossed over there.

Before I started on the right side tho, I raked an extensive area to the left just a few small crystals…

….and then started seeing massive crystalization in the floor area…

….and then found a saddle that popped up and out of the ground with a cluster on one side…

…..so after only finding this, I walked over to the right and started seeing crystals in the gravel to the right of Docia`s extensive pocket from the day before…..

…..finding these indicators after just a little bit of raking…

…and found a small pocket that quickly unearthed these three guys…

 Backing off, you can see the small short ledge, where they came from…

….in front of my glove on the right, and even though I had found a few nice single crystals and these three combos, a few more nice ones popped up quickly from that brown colored ledge to the right of the other ledge, like this little cluster…

..and this nice little combo…

..so I dug down and a little more into the shelf, but didn`t find much more…

Below are some of the finds the couple of trips, all cleaned up…the first one is a nice plate Docia found the day before…

..and a couple of clusters found on the pile…

..and the large druse with chip combo found up in the washout area…

…here are two photos of first plates and combos found the last few digs…

Docia and I decided to beat the heat once again and return to the lower level secret spot and see if we could find a few more pockets last week. I knew how early I could get up and get down there, but checked with Docia to see what time she wanted to get up and go, and decided we would meet there about 6 am and get as cool a start as we could on digging and exploring. While it was probably around 77 degrees when we arrived, it was obvious it had rained recently when we got there, which makes digging alot easier.

We started digging and clearing off areas near the pockets we had located a few days before, studying the low spots and root areas and digging in those areas, but didnt find much. After about an hour of clearing and finding little to show for it, I decided to take a break and check downhill in a mudhole depression that was even with the blue pocket I had found last fall. I grabbed my mattox and hand rake and a bag and started walking that way…walked about fifty feet and looked down toward the blue pocket hole and stopped dead in my tracks…astonished….speechless for a minute…and then turned around to Docia who was still digging in her spot and said…hey does it look like to you that there are some rocks missing ?

She got up and walked over and we both stood there in total amazement….

….that big pile of rocks in the middle was new to us, so was that big hole in front of it…and that pile of smaller rocks on the far left side used to continue up to the ridge on the right in varying slopes and degrees….while we were somewhat elated that we had some new areas to explore…I was a little down because the blue pocket was GONE…eradicated and completely gone….I was down for a few days earlier this week and I think it was because the blue pocket was missing…no longer could I go just even look at it and dream of what might lie under the surface and no more could I think of what might possibly be within my grasp if I simply exerted a little more effort at extracting some more crystals…for a few hours each day I couldn`t even think straight…I was walking around in a daze….I even told Docia, if I could just find out where they took that load, and go there to look through it, I would be much happier.

Even the depression mudhole I was going to check, is gone as well, left in its spot is a big depression of gravel and rock, which we explored as well as we could…it was filled with water so we didn`t explore much, but did find some massive calcite in it and a few crystals, possibly the bottom of a pocket left behind…after looking around the new area and finding a few clusters, I explored one of the ridges of this depressed area while walking back and forth to the truck and discovered an area of some loose crystals and decided to explore it more…

…and started seeing loose crystals just under the surface of the rock and gravel…

….and you can see the small pile of crystals uncovered on top and to the right there….

..and the next photo shows crystals in the mix right under the surface…

..and even more indicators…

..and pretty soon I thought I was on top of a possible pocket, but alas, it was just not meant to me…Missy even came by to check on me and let me know how much she is enjoying her new hairdo…

..and while I found some really nice singles, and doubles, and twins, and plates with crystals attached…

..once I dug down to a certain level, I struck massive that soon went nowhere fast….sometimes you can hit massive and be really close to a pocket, but don`t think so this time. So after a few minutes of bagging up my finds and taking the nicer ones to the truck to wrap later, I walked over to check out a pocket that Docia was extensively working on…

..or I should say, Docia had worked on….quite a nice pocket that flowed into yet another pocket and another pocket…she was holding up some nice finds, some beautiful yellow druse plates with hematite balls attached to them…and when I walked over and saw the base of crystals in the pocket, I was stunned by the sheer beauty of them…

…I remember when she started at the bottom of the photo and it was just a few crystals popping up and she followed it up to the bigger pocket at the top of the photo where the big druse plates were hanging upside down….

..with some beautifully colored crystals in the base of it…Docia took off right before I snapped these photos and I left shortly after…first I scooped up some crystals and plates she left behind for me.

Here are some of my finds….

…all in all, a pretty nice day. 🙂