I feel like I am so far behind on my stories that I cant remember them, and certainly the details of them, gonna have to do a better job of keeping up on the stories here.

After missing out on Geode Fest last year, due to being too busy, I decided to take a few days off and make the trip there this year. Ryan Shaffer was going as well and spent the weekend digging with me at Josh and Jennifer`s Railroad Creek Farm. I stayed at the Super 8 Motel again and not sure I will next time around, as they invented some new charges this time, fees that were not explained at the time of booking, either. That type of business does not set well with me, there are definitely other hotels up there to stay at. Ryan booked his hotel late and wound up staying in Fort Madison, 15 minute drive to the north. I think the only other problem we had was finding a place to eat at on Saturday evening, Keokuk High School was having their prom that night and the restaurants were booked pretty solid, think we wound up eating  at PIzza Hut.

I remember getting up there to Keokuk to the venue about 2 pm Thursday, and saw that Charity and Jamie had their booth tent set up, so I visited with them a bit and then walked over to where Ken Vaisivil was set up with his geode booth…I purchased a few from him and admired several, this was one that I admired, he was selling it out of his personal collection….

…a frosted calcite attached to the front of this basketball sized geode half…I didn`t buy this one but he had a good price on it, and it was gone by the next morning. I have purchased several similar geodes from him in the past few years, some with poker chip shaped calcites inside the geodes. He also had this neat pair for sale, only fifty dollars for the pair, with a big yellow barite crystal inside…

I bought several smaller ones from him and we visited a bit, then I walked up and talked to Greg Coleman, who was setting up his tables for his Haunted Ridge booth…he was working the booth alone this year, and then after that I drove over to the Super 8 and got checked in, and made sure Onyx was comfy and settled in before I headed back. Ryan was at the venue by the time I got back and I introduced him to everyone I knew there…even Mike Messer and Dennis Kossow were there by that time. Mike is the President of the Fairfield, Iowa Club and some other clubs as well, and Dennis is a semi retired Stonemason in the Fairfield area, who stays quite busy in his retirement years, but also finds time to rockhound in certain select areas, like Hallelujah Junction for smokey quartz scepters and crystals. He always has some nice crystal specimens from out west that I like to add to my collection, this year it was an azurite specimen that was very gemmy. Also talked to Marv, who is either the President or Past President of the Cedar Rapids Club, he was setting up his booth next to Dennis and Mike, and has those beautiful Mexican Troya geodes that I like…. and I have met all of these guys thru my buddy, John Oostenryk, who as usual, was late getting to the venue, and I think it was either late that night or early the next morning, before he arrived.

I think Ryan and I stuck around there til about 4:30 pm and then headed down to the Italian Restaurant Angelini`s Ristorante on Main Street for dinner. Great atmosphere and food there, love their lasagne and spaghetti both.

After that, we returned to the venue to get registered for Geode Fest, so we didn`t have to do that the next morning. While waiting for registraton to open, I had Jamie show Ryan the huge geode he found at Cooper`s Fox River location last year….

There were no long lines at pre-registration, because most of the folks there early, were next door at the Orientation for Geode Fest, usually Kirk, the Director of Tourism welcomes everyone and then turns the microphone over to Marv, who tells everyone how the Keokuk Geodes formed and what the many variations of them there are in that area.

Afterward, Ryan headed to his hotel to check in, and I stopped by Dairy Queen to get a blizzard and a pup cup for Onyx, then back to the Super 8 for the evening. The next morning, Ryan and I got to the venue fairly early and he was able to briefly, and I mean briefly, meet John O, as we all call him…we might have talked to him for five minutes, maybe less, and that was the extent of our conversation with him all weekend…for whatever reason…and I am just going to leave it at that. We drove over to Josh and Jennifer`s farm…was told that Jennifer`s son Payton, would be there helping this weekend. We saw his truck, but didn`t see him til later in the day.

We gathered a bucket and tools and walked to the creek, and I showed Ryan the creek in the area of the bank where we pulled some geodes out two years ago that were believed to have purple irridescence and then walked down to the dirt bank on the point of the hillside and began digging in. We found a few geodes there, but not as many as two years before when Pete Hahn and I were digging there. Here is one that Ryan found, cannonball sized….

…and then he popped it open….

…he was pretty happy with that pair…liked the multiple chambers on the left side….

…after digging a few hours, I had to get up and stretch my legs…found this one not far behind us in the leaves on the ground…

…and Payton came walking up the trail soon after and stopped to talk…he had no clue we were down there, let him know we arrived earlier than the group and were good friends of Jennifer and Josh, had dug at that spot two years ago too and did well.

Before the afternoon group arrived, we moved to the bank where the purple irridescent geodes are located and began digging in…soon found them to be in a certain layer there…Payton showed us a couple of broken halves, that a guy dug there that morning, and they had purple inside them, so he joined us for a few minutes and dug into the bank where the guy told him he dug those from….

There was a good crowd there on Friday, both morning and afternoon groups were pretty good sized. Josh always rents a mini trackhoe for Geode Fest and does a lot of digging with it, digs into the creek banks to make it easier for rockhounds to find geodes to take home…he has done this 3 years in a row now and his site gains in popularity each year. Dan, one of John O`s buddies, he is a retired steelworker, and in my personal rockhounding group, he is usually John`s chauffeur as well on my trips…he was there this year to operate the mini trackhoe for Josh, during Geode Fest. 

Ryan and I headed back to the venue after digging for several hours Friday, and there was a guy lined up at Charity and Jamie`s booth to get a big geode popped open with one of their hydraulic soil pipe cutters. He had been to one of the Amish farms on the Fox River, and had this extra one, much smaller, that he had found with one foot when he stumbled into it…it was full of mud, sand, and silt, but when I looked down into the opening, it was lavendar colored crystals……

We had dinner at Angelini`s again, this time I had the spaghetti and it was just as good as the lagagna there, followed by another trip to Dairy Queen afterward.

The next morning we again grabbed some donuts for breakfast, and then drove over to Josh and Jennifer`s farm, but set up at the purple irridescence bank and began digging in. There were some folks that joined us when they arrived in the morning group and began digging upstream along the bank, then moved down closer to us. Ryan and I were pulling alot of geodes out of the bank where we had started the day before. Mike Maher called me to figure out where we were digging at today, he and his son Ryan…. both in my personal group of rockhound friends…. were on the way over in the first group as well, and had a young lady with them named Chandler, it was her first geode rockhounding trip, and her Mom was along too. She came pretty well prepared for it, wearing safety glasses and tall rubber boots, and gloves on…she was ready for anything and she had a great attitude, too.

The group that morning, again, included a huge number of rockhounds….

This was the area of creek right below us.

Mike, Ryan, and Chandler made their way over to where we were at by the big tree and I allowed Ryan M to take over my digging spot next to  Ryan S, digging into the bank…and did quite well there, accidentally broke the top half of this geode as he was digging it out of the bank,  which was gorgeous inside….

…and the pieces above are what was left of the top of it….I don`t think Chandler was given that one, but she cleaned up pretty nicely with several other nice geodes handed to her….

…and Mike stayed pretty busy finding fossils and geode halves in the creek bed for her….

Ryan found another multiple chambered geode in the bank there by the big tree….

Saturday evening, we had to settle for Pizza Hut for dinner as every restaurant, including our favorite one, were booked solid with Prom Goers. Hopefully next year, they give us some notice on that if it`s going to happen again.

Sunday morning, I didn`t do much digging, went back to Josh and Jennifer`s farm, but was pretty tired and sore from the previous two days of digging, so I took it easy, but we started out at the purple irridescent spot again. I wound up helping a young man named Jax, who was there with his grandmother and her friends, and he was trying to find some nice geodes to take home. I had some druse quartz and Washco Q material with me, and gave him some of those to take home with him too. His grandmother asked if she could take a photo of Jax and I….

Well I thought I had posted this story late last year, but cannot seem to locate it now, so will re-post as much of it as I can remember, meaning the highlights. 🙂

I recall getting up there early last year to visit with vendor friends, namely my buddy John Oostenryk, good friends Charity and Jamey Moog, Dennis Kossow, Kirk the Geode Fest Director, and since 2021 was the first year for Greg Coleman and Johnboy from Haunted Ridge Druse Farm, I wandered over to find them setting up their booth soon after I arrived. They were going to be selling druse quartz from Greg`s farm each day, so naturally I visited with them each day they were there and provided them with insight from my many past experiences during several years of Geode Fest. 

…and across the way from their booth were several tables covered with Viburnum Trend Minerals…albeit expensive ones…and I was especially intrigued with two huge clusters of calcites from the Fletcher Mine that were on display…I dont believe either one sold while there, but they were sure beautiful….here is one….

I was told a day later, that the price tag on it was $ 2500…that prob explains why it didn`t sell while there. I also recall the price didn`t get lowered on the last day, either. Here is another photo of the booths at Geode Fest 2021….

Pete Hahn came up on Saturday, to help Johnboy and Greg work their booth, and went out hunting with me on Sunday morning. The first couple of days I went hunting with John and Sie Shell from Northwestern Iowa, went with us. I had met Shell a year or two before, she is a friend of my Tennessee Rockhound friend Abigail, who has been under the weather for a couple of years now with some health related problems, we hope to see her back out rockhounding with us soon. Shell joined John and I on one of the Railroad Creek locations, upstream from our friend Josh`s place. As usual, Shell and I could not keep up with John that morning….

I had two buckets filled fairly quickly and decided to go back to my truck with them…on the way, I snapped a photo of Shell posing next to the creek…

I remember posting this photo of her on my FB page and several comments from good friends here locally, saying ” they now understood the obsession of rocks now “……or something like that. I got a good chuckle out of it.  🙂   

It was pretty warm last year and I recall visiting the Amish booth with the home made ice cream a few times that weekend. Each evening, several of us went out to eat to the Italian Restaurant in downtown Keokuk, Angelini`s Ristorante is what it`s called, great low light atmosphere inside a remodeled storefront on Main Street and great food, too….

Josh and his wife Jennifer, joined us each evening for dinner there and we sampled the wine selections as well.

Saturday morning Shell and I went back to Railroad Creek and walked downstream to a few locations, she wanted to check out a secret location for geodes…we dug there in the hillside for a bit, didnt find much, and then we walked on down the creek to another place where I had good luck finding good stuff, geodes and calcite chunks, along with John and Chuck Reed, a few years before…we dug into that short bank for quite a while…

I think the best days of collecting were the first day and the last day…Pete and I went to Josh`s Railroad Creek Farm location on Sunday morning, got there ahead of the crowd by different route, and walked upstream to a certain spot we had been directed to, that supposedly had purple interior geodes. I called to check on Shell, and she told me she was preparing to head home early, had changed into her clean clothes and was headed out the door, then asked where we were going…told her we were on our way to RR Creek to find the purple interior geodes…and the line went quiet for a long second, and then she freaked out, decided she would join us, and showed up about 15 minutes later. She wasn`t real happy about it, but excited to see what could be found…amethyst in geodes seems to really bring out the ” FREAK ” in some people. 🙂

As we were walking down thru the brush on a short cut to the creek, I was leading the way with Shell behind me narrating one of her many videos for her sales page, and I recall her telling her people ” that she had woke up that morning and decided to head home, but then received a phone call from some a__hole who told her he and a friend were going to a location that is known to have purple interior geodes…. so she had to change back into her dirty clothes and drive over to join them and now was following the a__hole thru the brush to the location. ” 

I was chuckling about it then, thinking whatever, not like we twisted your arm and made you come with us, sounded like a bit of whining to me. I didnt realize she was recording it til later, when I had several friends see her video and emailed me to tell me she was referring to me as the a__hole on the video, and they were not happy about it. I was like whatever but I understand that she had some blowback on it and this year when I saw her, she apologized for it. We remain good friends. We dug into that bank like there was no tomorrow, and while we found a few geodes, we didn`t find many we could keep due to the size and very few of them felt hollow…

…when you arent finding good stuff…you dont last long at that location and tend to move on to another…

She also got a bit perturbed with me for cracking open my geodes right then and there, when I was pulling them out of the mucky clay mud and dirt…it was dry dirt under the tree roots and clay mud all over the rest of the bank. I was pulling cannonball sized geodes out and while I did break some into three pieces, I also managed to cleanly break a few hollows into just halves…like this pair….

many of the ones I smashed into a million pieces weren`t that great to look at anyway, so no big loss to me, and I wasn`t setting a bad example for any younger rockhounds as there was no one around us for awhile anyway. As far as I recall, we did not find any geodes with amethyst inside them, but we had a good workout and a good time trying. She headed home soon after that and I returned to the booth area to visit with friends before heading home.

John showed me some geodes he picked up from a dealer a few booths away…

…and I snapped a photo of a couple of guys holding one of the biggest geodes I had seen that weekend, one that John cracked open for them soon after I returned to the venue…

I also found out that Greg and Johnboy had done well on druse quartz sales, they were able to sell everything they brought with them.