Docia and I met at the secret spot last week to follow up on my pocket find at the lower level and see if we could find a few more pockets while there. We drove in early morning to beat the heat and no sooner did we arrive, did we start finding new pockets. I decided to see if the last two pockets I had found, would expand any….

…while she went to the left and found a couple of new ones right away.

…she first found a little ledge between us and then a drill hole and then she kept moving to the left and found an opening into what turned out to be a perfectly round pocket opening with a cluster of poker chips in the middle embedded into rock….

..and here are a few of her finds….

I decided to see if either of the two pockets I discovered last week, would open up more…one had been filled with water but now a week later was dried up…so I worked on it first…

…and removed as many loose crystals as I could from it, then worked on the face of the pocket and removed some more plates…

and was able to pull these plates and crystals out…

…once I had the pocket opening expanded, I was able to see some nice druse plates inside….

..and while trying to expand the pocket opening, I was able to chip a few plates like this one off…

…as well as these plates and combos…

…I then moved over to the right to expand the other pocket as much as I could…

..and boy did it keep going back…and back…and finally I got to this point, above, and could reach in up to my shoulder and felt yet another pocket above and to the right…

….and Docia expanded all of her pockets as well…

..until we were both wore out after digging for four hours non stop….I was able to remove two bags of poker chips alone….

..including several poker chip twins…and several nice plates apiece…

and the first thing I pulled out after removing hanging plates, was a beautiful twin poker chip attached to a small druse plate…

…as well as the following druse / chip combos…

..including this unique flat crystal ….

While clearing off what looked like a thin shelf above the first pocket, I found what turned out to be a second pocket of druse plates with poker chips attached…. most of them were just coming out with no chipping required…once I had them pulled out I was able to work on the first pocket plates even more and found an embedded poker chip cluster in the center, attached to the base of the pocket…

..I decided to wait on it and moved to the right more to see if there was more crystals and plates to be found, and within just a few inches I found even more loose crystals and plates embedded upside down….

Here is a single crystal, probably about four inches long and heavy, that was embedded in the gravel upside down in this hole…

I filled another bag with the crystals I removed from this area alone. I took a short break to stretch my legs and photograph my progress so far…

After the break, I went back….

Missy and I headed down to the secret spot again yesterday and decided to try the lower level this time to see if we could locate some more pockets. I was armed with the mattox this time and it proved to be a better choice than the heavy rake against the bigger rocks especially. It made things much easier but we still had little luck finding any pockets up on the ridge, so after a few hours of raking and digging, I decided to take a break.

We had a great day for digging and collecting, it turned cooler this week, highs only in the low eighties and as I looked up I saw a deep blue sky with beautiful fluffy clouds, a deep blue that one could see clearly, no haze in between you and the sky. It was one of those dazzling blue skies today. There was also a nice cool breeze flowing all day long, a day just made for collecting rocks and crystals.

After drinking another bottle of water, I decided to walk around and stretch my legs and surface collect a bit…I walked over to the pocket that Docia and Debra had located a few weeks ago and began sifting through the spoils pile nearby and located a couple of twins and small combos that I was astonished that we had left behind. After wrapping them up and placing them in a secure location in my truck, I returned and made a circle farther out and around the pocket. Soon after, I began noticing poker chip single crystals laying in the gravel. I wondered if those were from the original pocket and just made their way that far back or if they were indications of another entrance to that pocket, so I began moving the dirt and rock away from the surface…

..I hit this white calcite dust, as I call it, looks like shavings  actually, and its a good indication that you are close to a pocket of chips. At this point I was thinking it might be a back entrance to the other pocket…

..as I was only a few feet away, so I started digging down with the hand rake and using the pick end of my rock hammer to see what I could find…and in a few minutes, I started locating some singles and some small plates of beautiful druse…straws, waves and bubbles of druse…

..so I kept digging down and it started looking even more promising…I was trying to contain my growing excitement until I knew for sure there was really something there…

..and then I got down to this level with the rock hammer pick and saw this plate sticking out and hanging upside down…so I put the rock hammer away, took off my gloves, and gently pulled the plate out and turned it over to find this…

..and that little gizmo to the left of it in the pocket photo above was the next thing I pulled out….

..and as you can see, they were covered in a heavy red clay dusting…everything that came out of there was covered in it…a real messy coating of it…the next thing out of the pocket was this twin laying in the thick mix of clay…

…well the pocket soon started going to the left and down, so I followed it, pulling several loose singles and a few twins out of it…

…and I was up to my elbow reaching back into the pocket before it came to an end…at least as far as I could tell since I couldnt reach any further. I started working on the mouth of the pocket next, and was able to liberate this big cluster pretty quickly…

…and was able to chip one other one out, and surprised it came out in one piece without breaking apart on me…with a nice little poker chip attached to it…

I`ll get these guys cleaned up and take a few more photos of them and what came out of the pocket, too, in the next few days.

Well I was supposed to meet up with Docia and Floyd a couple of weeks ago at the secret spot, but they had to lay down some lime on their gardens and so didnt get to come down that day and meet up with Missy and me. Floyd had just got home a few days before from driving a ship in the Gulf for a few months and I hadnt seen him since last year. He and Docia make a great pair together and are always alot of fun to work with and be around as well.

So Missy and I drove down to the lower spot and began looking for a few new pockets while there. Here is what it looked like when we arrived, after the few digs we have done there in the past few months….

…the view above shows the digs on the left side and this next one shows the digs on the right side of the corner point…

I took a large garden rake with me this time, made it easier to rake down the larger rocks this time, not as hard on me just using the little hand rake…that can really wear you down after raking several areas with one…course the larger rake made it a better workout I suppose. 🙂

After about an hour of raking down large rocks trying to find another big pocket, all I had to show for it was a small pocket on top of the ridge where I wound up between an old pocket from last year and my pocket the time before…

..and removed about eight or ten poker chip crystals and nothing more…so I`m guessing it was just an extension of the older pocket and I didn`t look up there when I was in it last year.

I grabbed my four pound hammer at this point and chisels and decided to take a break from raking and see if I could find anything else to chisel out of any pockets…I wandered over to Docia`s pocket from the trip before and decided to see if I could chisel out the nice cluster in front…I was able to wedge my small black chisel that Debra, Denise, and Darla had given me back in May…and pried with it to bust the nice cluster out….

..that`s it in the middle, but you are looking at the back side of what I really popped out of there….here it is all cleaned up…

…and right after I put that one in the truck wrapped up to protect it, I walked back over and spotted this one just sitting there and looking up at me as if to say…what about me ? 🙂

..so I walked it over to the truck and wrapped it up also and set it in the truck bed, then walked back over to take a closer look at the piles we had brushed everything back from the holes, the throwaway piles as I call them, and found this little guy sitting on top….

…as I was walking back from the truck once again, after putting him in a special spot, I spotted this one….

…and loaded it up in the truck as well….by this time, I was tired from raking and tired from chipping, so I decided to drive up to the original area and look around to see if I could find anything nice to take home…Missy opted to stay in the ac this time and within a few minutes, I found this nice druse chunk…its about 16 inches long and has nice colored bubbles as well as holie areas as my Mom likes to refer to them as…

…and then I decided to stop up near where Docia stopped the week before, where she found a nice druse chunk covered with hematite, which resembles slag at times…and while there just briefly, I spotted this yellow druse chunk with an almost orange poker chip nestled inside the druse bubbles….

…and with that, we decided to head home and clean up our finds….tomorrow I`ll add another story of our trip on Fathers Day and show you several more goodies found from the secret spot as well as a new area I was able to access…one I have been wanting to get into since last year….

Docia and I returned to the secret spot again yesterday morning to beat the heat and boy did we have a good day of collecting. We started out on the upper location and found quite a few drusy quartz plates before heading down to the lower location where we found four new pockets in the lower slope location.

this is the pocket Docia on the left side while I was working on the right side where my red rake is…

and closer up…

..she started finding loose poker chips, always a good sign of a pocket location, and called me over to help her open the pocket up more.

..we opened up the pocket to the right, located right in front of me and then moved to the left and found even more sign of pockets…

..finding goodies like these….

..then we started clearing off the area above and found another one…

..and then found even more pockets…

..and found these just waiting to be chipped out…

and…

…and while I was chipping out plates of druse, Docia was working on an entire shelf of druse bubbles to the left side of me…

…and this next photo shows the chips and druse plates we recovered from the first pockets….

and a close up of some of the druse plates with poker chips combined…

…and here is a closeup of the pockets I was chipping out, above right and after we cleaned out these areas, we moved over to the right side where I had started working and after checking it out more, I discovered another pocket myself…and eventually opened to pocket opening enough to reach inside…

..up to my elbow initially…then while feeling around inside the pocket, I felt a very large poker chip crystal and had to expand the pocket opening a bit more in order to remove it…

…and here is the pocket I was working on…

..which turned out to be at least two feet deep..I was able to reach back into the pocket up to my shoulder and then digging down into it, was going about a foot down pulling out beautiful honey orange chips and blue gray druse plates with soda straw bubbles all over them. beautiful stuff.

here is the lower slope after we finished…

Between us both, we filled two buckets and four bags with very nice poker chips and druse plates.

here are some more of my finds from the pockets Tuesday…..

..these were all palm sized and bigger, the next one is small…but beautiful…

the two above show the big one I pulled from the pocket…and several of the doubles we found too…

Missy and I drove down to the secret spot again yesterday, intending to meet up with Docia and find some more pockets of poker chips. I took the night off from work and we arrived about 1 pm and started out with a little sunshine up on the sand dunes looking for druse plates. The temps were climbing out of the seventies to the eighties so I let Missy loose for a bit while it was still breezy and somewhat cool, figuring it might heat up and she would then have to remain in the truck`s air conditioning later. I started out checking the normal areas first…waiting for Docia to arrive…and with the help of the sunshine, started seeing druse plates eroding out of the clay bank all over the place. I knew the one bag I had grabbed out of the truck wasnt going to be enough so went back to the truck to get two more and my camera. I changed into my boots as well and then snapped a few photos…this one of a nice druse plate sticking out of the sand which quickly caught my eye….

..and as you can see, it looked to be about the size and shape of a large dinner plate…however…as I started brushing it off and trying to pull it out, I quickly discovered to my amazement, that it was much more than a druse plate…here is the hole I dug it out of…

…and I had to twist it to remove it from the tangle of the shrub roots it was embedded in……and here it is as it looked after I removed it….

…you can still see the druse plate on the end that I originally saw, as well as a lot more there…and here is the other side of it…

..big bubbles of druse on the other side…quite a find and promptly loaded into the bed of my truck. 🙂

I looked around and didn`t find any twins of it, but did find some nice smaller plates nearby…

..and all in all, filled two bags and loaded several good sized druse chunks in the bed of the truck…getting ready to go outside now and clean them up and will take a few more photos to add to my story here…

Missy and I then drove down to the lower spot and along the way saw some very pretty flowers…

…and just below that, I was thinking I should have my camera in my hands as we drove slowly through the wooded area and sure enough, we came around the corner and a beautiful doe jumped gracefully across the roadway and I missed it….we got on down to the lower spot where Docia and I had worked on some pockets last week…

…and this time, armed with a bigger and consequently, heavier sledge hammer, I opened up the pocket Docia worked on, a little more….

..to where you could see more of what was actually inside it…

…this mass of crystals as well as the next mass shown deeper inside the pocket….

…are still there…a solid mass connected top and bottom to the pocket walls and other crystals…and a massive amount of rock on top to remove to even attempt removal of them.

I then walked around to the other side of the pile to where I had started working on an opening in the massive rock face last week, and with the heavier sledge, I opened up the small opening to one I could stick my hand inside and feel around…

…just enough to get my hand inside…

..and after removing the rock above and on the left side of this photo above, I was able to reach inside and remove this nice plate of druse with a cute little poker chip attached….

and here it is now after removing that rock…

…I worked on removing the rock to the upper left side and found yet another pocket….

…and then one to the left as I was scraping away excess rock and dirt…and the first thing I pulled out of the upper pocket shown above, was the following dogtooth crystal…

…and here is the pocket more close up, the new upper pocket that is…

..along with two bags worth of goodies extracted from all three of the pockets and two plates I was able to pry up from underneath them…and here is the aftermath of that work….

…just got in from cleaning up the druse covered with clay…here are the results…starting with that plate that turned into a big chunk…what a stunner !!

…you roll it over and it converts from a plate to druse bubbles….

..and a few more plates cleaned up below….

and…

….the following photos are some of the druse plates and chip/druse combos…

…and individually….

and there you have it…

Boy are my hands tired…well actually my fingers and thumb joints are tired and my hands are sore, muscle wise…Docia and I met at the secret spot yesterday afternoon with the idea of expanding that pocket she found last Saturday. We decided to tackle it in ” Mike Streeter ” style, hard rock mining with sledge hammers and chisels. I wish now we had opted for a rock saw, lol.

Here is how the pocket looked last week when Debra, Denise, and Dora were with us….

and here it is after Docia and I pounded on it with the sledges and chisels once again yesterday….

…we found a few goodies, but the really nice ones were glued in, seemed like. 🙂  we did leave a few pockets for the next time when armed with better tools….

…and the large center one is still there as well….

…after two hours of pounding hard rock tho, we decided to check for pockets elsewhere…yes, easier to find pockets, lol.

Docia went left and I went right and we both located some nice potential areas fast…

…she started finding pockets and called me to come over and help her open them up…

…here is one pocket opening up on the right side of the lighter colored shade of gravel and dirt…

…since it looked like everything was moving to the right side, I cleaned off more to the right and she went left more…

..and I found more potential to the right and she found more potential on the left side…

..that little white spot of calcite up on the left side of the pocket she found, indicates to us another potential pocket in that area…which she found a few min later…but first we decided to see how big this one was, and started removing loose crystals from the front of it…

..and then we looked inside it….

…and my, oh my, pretty sparkly druse plates and poker chips were what we saw inside. So with that motivation, Docia started clearing more the left and found yet another pocket….

..and I went to the right side and found two more pockets, that combined into a wide pocket…

…looking inside Docia`s new pocket, we saw several large and loose poker chips and some small druse plates…

…I turned on my flash and shot again and its goodies as far as you can see…

..and as it turned out, it was quite a ways in there full of loose goodies…we were both reaching almost to our shoulders, well past our elbows, into the pocket and downward no less. While she worked on retrieving loose crystals and plates from her pocket, I worked on the two on my side as well…

…the one on the left showing signs of some nice stuff…

..and it eventually tied in with the first pocket she found up there as well…

…her pocket once cleared of the goodies in front, started looking even deeper….

….and as we contemplated exploring further, we started hearing the rumblings of thunder and decided to stop there….as soon as I can this afternoon, I will clean up some of my plates and chips and get some more photos posted.

Here are some of my finds from the pockets….

and the following two images show a poker chip we pulled out of one of the pockets with a raspberry tint to it….

…those are all I have til the next time we visit the spot again and find out if we can extract some more goodies…wont be doing anything til all this severe weather stops coming around…my prayers are with the folks of southwest Missouri who were devastated last night with a very destructive EF-4 tornado in the Joplin area…..

I had met Debra, Denise, and Dora at the McRocks Fluorite Dig last year at Marion, Kentucky, and again this year at the BE Clement Museum`s first public dig last month in April, helping them find some good areas to dig for the big beautiful purple cubes we have been finding there the past five years now. They had asked if they could come down to Missouri and go hunting with us for druse quartz and poker chip crystals. Lots of people ask and never follow up or show up, so I gave my standard yes answer, thinking I wouldnt hear back from them.

A few weeks ago, Debra emailed and said, ” hey remember us ? ” and asked if they could come down the weekend of May 14th and 15th to go rock hunting with us. I checked my schedule and told them that weekend would be fine, although weather wise, it turned out to be cool and rainy, but we persevered as most rockhounds do, and made it work.

I comped out early Friday night from work and came home to get a few hours sleep, the same amount they were able to get as it turned out….they arrived at their motel at the same time I got home from work. I woke up at 7 am Saturday, got Missy fed and ready…. then we drove up to meet the gals at the Cuba Best Western for breakfast. After some banannas, biscuits and white gravy, we headed south to meet up with Docia.

There were spotty light mist showers as we drove down through the countryside and the temps were hovering around 55 degrees, not the ideal weather for hunting druse, but as Docia mused later, much better than the hot temps we had been experiencing lately.  We drove into the upper location and stopped in one of the prime spots, and as I got out of my truck, I noticed quickly that the wind was very gusty and would make walking around very tough going. I suggested to the gals that we head on down to the lower location and check it out, cause there was usually a lot less wind down there. We drove over to the turn around spot and the gals started spotting some nice druse and poker chip pieces laying around and stopped to check them out. As we were walking around checking this area, I spotted Docia driving over to meet us. It was fun watching them pick up druse and poker chip chunks,  oohhing and ahhing every step they took. I kept telling them wait til you see what we find at the lower location.

After meeting the gals, Docia also strongly encouraged them to proceed to the other area to search, due to the wind and also told them that we had found some nice druse outcrops there recently that she was sure they would like. We drove down there, parked, and  they quickly picked up their bags and tools and followed Docia to the new outcrops to find some nice druse. We walked up an old logging road toward a big pile of clay dirt and along the way came across some clay dirt outcrops of exposed druse quartz weathering out of the outcrops. There also happened to be the remains of a dead animal along the road and one had to move quickly upwind of it due to the odor, it was peeee–eewwww bad there. I walked on up to the top of the hill and located a clay dirt mound and started seeing little plates of druse all over and Dora came over to check it out. She spotted a nice little piece of dark druse and started to dig it out and discovered it wasnt little at all, more like basketball sized with bubbles all over of dark druse….boy was she excited then !! Unfortunately, I didnt have my camera with me at the moment or would have snapped one of her with a BIG smile on her face.

They quickly loaded down two bags apiece and decided to carry them back to their truck and then look around some more. As Missy and I made our way back toward the parking area, I decided to check one side of the clay banks where there is a path to the top, as the rest of the gals were checking out the other side, where druse plates often weather out of the upper layer of clay dirt and fall down to the ground. I worked my way up and just kept spotting gray druse and then I circled over to the edge and started back down, wanting to get to the floor and look for poker chip pockets for them. I spotted some dark shiny bubbles sticking out of the clay dirt and knelt down to take a closer look, make sure it wasnt just more gray, and as I pulled it out of the dirt, I found out it was smokey quartz druse bubbles and yelled over to Docia about it. I had everyone`s attention, specially Dora, who loves smokey quartz apparently…she yelled up and asked if she could join me and I told her to come on up….so she grabbed an extra bag for me and headed up to see what I was finding, cause right behind the bubble piece were two plates of smokey colored druse as well. I dug to either side to see how far the druse plates were located and determined there might be room for both of us to dig, as it appeared plates were coming out of the dirt approximately three feet wide and about ten inches down. Once she climbed up there and noticed what I was pulling out, it didnt take her long to join me in digging too.  Denise saw the plates we were pulling out and decided to join us as well…once she climbed up there, I let her have my spot…I had one bag full by then and still wanted to get down to the floor and look for poker chips.

I started walking downhill once again, along the edge just to look over and see what was below, and spotted a gorgeous soda straw druse plate hanging on for dear life and said a loud HOLIE COW !!

I knelt down and looked over the edge and saw a three foot wide ledge below….decided I could easily get down there by holding on to the bluff with one hand and try to pull that plate back with my extendable rake. I carefully made my way down after extending my rake out…. made myself a few footholds with it, then leaned out and gingerly pulled the plate back uphill to me as close as I could get it…. I then leaned down and grabbed it,  and held it up to the light…. wow, it was even prettier up close than it was afar…and gave out a loud WHOEEEE !! Everyone looked around and up as I held it up for them to see. Here is what it looks like…

I then looked down and saw druse bubbles to my right up away from me, said OH MY GOSH…. and that`s when Dora decided she needed to come over and check on what I was seeing all over the ledge. I straightened up after picking up a loaf of bread sized bubble druse of dark brown colors, and held it up for all to see….

There were two bubble outcrops of beautiful dark druse weathering out of the rocky bluff I was holding on to, and alot of the sections were loose enough to work out by hand. Docia retrieved her camera from her truck and photographed me, so these photos are courtesy of her, no remote timer involved here, lol. Here I am up on the ledge with Missy watching me closely from the edge of the bluff above me….

and this next one gives a little more perspective as to my location…

The next photo shows all of us hard at work, Debra digging to the right side, Denise up above me digging for smokey quartz, and Dora, Missy, and I at the ledge druse.

I wasn`t even aware that Missy was that close to me til I saw Docia`s photos, she apparently laid down on the top edge of the bluff and stayed right there with me til Dora came over to help me out.

Here I am below,  pointing somewhat to a pocket of druse to my left, which only produced a few smaller pieces of loose druse….

…the main area that produced bigger pieces is actually in front of me and to my right, and hard to see in this photo. I was able to dig enough material from the area to my right, that filled two canvas bags completely full…there were four basketball sized pieces of bubbly smokey colored druse from that one pocket. gorgeous druse pieces !

It didn`t take Dora long to figure out I was pulling some nice stuff out of the ledge and left Denise with the pocket of smokey druse plates. I started handing stuff up her and Docia decided to walk up and photograph it more closely.

Docia offered her camera to me to photograph a pocket I discovered behind some of the druse plates, but I decided it wouldn`t be safe to let go with my one hand from the rock outcrop I was holding on to for balance. I did decide to take a closer look at the pocket tho….

.….and what amazed me the most, was out of all the pockets we had found, this one just had to be located sixty feet up higher than any of the other ones…after pulling three basketball sized bubble druse chunks coated with heavy calcite crystals, out of the entrance to the pocket, I discovered about thirty dogtooth calcite crystals laying in behind those big pieces, loose in the dirt and strata, and removed them as well. No poker chips found, but I wouldn`t have been surprised had I found any either, lol.

The next photo gives a little more perspective on my location in relation to the floor below….

…I`m sure I will hear about this from a few choice individuals and I`ll prob inherit a few more choice nicknames from here on as well, when they read this. I should prob prepare my response now…..but I wouldn`t have climbed down into this area if I hadn`t felt safe enough to do so…there was a ledge of rock about eight inches wide to stand on at the base of the bluff rock, which was solid as well, and then there was an additional four feet of sloped gravel and rock to the edge. I`m afraid of heights folks…well the falling part anyway…but I felt truly safe up there.

Well I cleaned out as much as I safely could, even using Denise`s mini mattox to pry some of the plates out, and then climbed back up and walked along the edge back to to their position to see how they were doing, and in so doing, discovered yet another pocket of bubbly druse weathering out of the clay dirt at the edge again.

this time I just bent over the edge and tried to dig it out but found it to be connected and extending way back into the bank about three feet, even traveling back under me, and way too big for me to take out. I decided at that point, to walk down to the floor and look for poker chips…little did I know that Docia had found a poker chip pocket of immense proportions already…she had warned us a little, when she drove her truck over to the bottom of the  hill and left it for us to load up our stuff, but didn`t say how nice a pocket it was…boy were we in for a surprise when we got down there…it was so nice, I decided to get my camera out and take some photos…

Here Debra and Docia are working the pocket and you can see a ton of goodies already removed from the hole in front of them. Docia and I both reached way back into the pockets on either side of that hole and removed single poker chip crystals with the pretties yellow orange glow to them, some of them glowed more than others. We both had our arms in as far as we could go, up to my elbow and there was still more pocket extending back…here are some of the pretties removed already….

…this was one that glowed more than the others…when Dora and Denise finished moving their bags from Docia`s truck to their truck, they came over and we all took turns helping remove a few more plates and chips from the pocket…

….and each time something nice, like this narrow and long druse plate with chips attached, came out, Denise or I would pull our cameras out and record the moment.

..but we did give Denise an opportunity to do some chipping on her own….

…as did Dora….

We each chose what we wanted out of the poker chip hole and soon headed back to Cuba. The gals stopped by my house the next morning on their way home to Indiana and took a look at my rock gardens and my collection inside as well. They were quite happy when they headed home, that explorer was heavily loaded down with Missouri druse and some beautiful poker chips too.

I cleaned up some of my druse chunks and plates from the pocket and ledge, shown below…