Well I traveled back down to the great state of Arkansas for my fall trip last week, and decided to stay in Hot Springs on Lake Hamilton this year, since Mountain Harbor was completely booked with two events…but after giving it a lot of thought, decided I was going to do some more photo shoots down closer to Hot Springs and would only have time to work one dig in for quartz crystals this trip….it made more sense to stay in Hot Springs this time.

Missy and I slept in just a little bit and then headed to Miller Mountain the next morning…arriving shortly after 7:30 and finding out we were the first arrivals of the day….after talking to Faith and checking in while Bill was bringing up fresh dirt piles, I drove over to the parking area and let Missy out to stretch her legs as I prepared to find some nice quartz.

Well I didn`t have to wait long to find something nice and big…soon after lacing up my boots and grabbing my rake and bags, I ambled behind the truck to the first pile and found a very large quartz chunk with crystals all over one end and both sides…so I backed my truck up and loaded it right up…then decided to do some surface collecting while I had the place to myself….I filled half a bag with smaller crystals laying around in sight and soon after, another couple of folks showed up to look for quartz too…they turned out to be a nice couple from Topeka, Kansas, and were like me, just looking for anything pretty to take home…I helped them locate some nice crystals while digging into a few of the piles near the parking lot…I was mainly still surface collecting but if I located something, I would dig down and see what else was nearby and usually there were quite a few small clusters and points nearby. I filled two bags pretty quickly….within the first hour I dug out a couple of smaller clusters of smokey colored crystals…and was quite happy with them…decided even if I found nothing else the rest of the day, my day was complete with them…but as it was, in the five hours I was there, I did find quite a few nice singles and clusters…

…here Missy is seen on one of her many jaunts around the tailing piles checking things out…with the beautiful fall foliage in full display near the entrance to Miller Mountain Mine…

…mind you, this is only the rocks part of the story of the trip…if you want to see the rest of the trip, you have to visit my blog site with the landscapes, waterfalls, sunsets, and beautiful models, found at http://jwjphotoblog.com

Jimmy Ericson and I drove over to Miller Mountain Coleman Mine on Saturday morning, arriving about 9 am and found there were already about fifteen people digging thru the piles of new dirt and some on top walking around searching for yard rocks. We paid our ten dollar dig fee and then Jimmy drove on up and got started, while I visited with Faith and Bill, the Caretakers for the mine, who had asked me to bring some druse quartz down the next time I was there, so I brought a few pieces down to look at. They decided they liked a couple of the boytroidal ones and we did a little trading. I decided I would do my digging first and then trade afterward.

I drove on up and found Jimmy settled into a pile of dirt….

…so I got my boots on and changed to a shirt already clay stained, didn`t want to get my last good fire department shirt stained…and grabbed my bags and my extendable digging rake. I was invited by a couple of ladies to join them at their dirt pile two up from Jimmy, and one of them showed me some killer clusters she had found already. I hadn`t dug in more than two minutes before I found a beautiful small cluster and then several single points, so I figured this was going to be a nice pile of dirt. There was a lady digging behind me that had found a large point that was every bit of six inches wide and maybe seven or eight inches long, most everything was being found in the large clumps of dark red clay.  Here is a photo of the small cluster I found, all cleaned up….

We kept on digging, Jimmy was finding several smaller crystals down at his pile and I was finding a few singles and a lot of smaller clusters, but nothing very big….the lady that had invited me to dig at her pile, was from Arkadelphia, about thirty miles south of Hot Springs and has a rock shop there…about an hour after we sat down, she pulled out a nice plate of black quartz crytals….mouthwatering to say the least…when she got up to go walk the top of the pile a few minutes later, I drifted over toward her side and started digging deeper…within a few minutes of doing so, I pulled out what appeared to be a softball sized cluster that seemed to contain two large points…I could see the tops of the points and a couple of smaller points down the side of it, so I was thinking I had a five crystal point cluster. I decided to take it down and wash it off….something I have never done when there, ever….but this one felt good and I wanted to see what I had….I really don`t think I have a good photo of it yet…but here is what I have so far….

…cleaned up of course…it was quite pretty there too though….and as I walked back toward the pile, everyone along the way wanted to see it so I stopped and showed them what it looked like dirty and then on the way back, cleaned up….I would call it the find of the day for me….I filled four bags of potential crystals, there was so much clay on most of them, when I felt or saw points, I just stuck them in the bag…while not all of them were keepers, quite a few were and I waited til I got home to clean them.

After four hours of digging, I decided to get up and walk around on top and see what I could find…I had seen a guy walking back and forth to his truck from up above with big yard rocks in his hands, so I didn`t really think I would be finding any good sized ones but thought I would just see what I could find surface collecting. I didn`t get very far up the way until I saw a couple of points sticking out of the dirt winking at me and pulled out a few nice smaller clusters…in the bag they went and I kept walking…up on top I found several small singles and gave them to a couple of kids with young families…one family from Nacodoges, Texas, who were there for the weekend and sat and talked with them a bit…they had come up for the weekend to escape the Texas heat and found the heat in Arkansas to be much the same…as well as drought conditions…told them about our dig at Bear Mountain the day before and they decided they just might go there the next morning on their way home and check it out.

Here are a few of the crystals I found while walking around, shown dirty first…

…I didnt carry my camera around with me that day or I would have shown them to you in a step by step format….this one shows a nice single crystal that I found sticking out of the pile….

…and here are some of the other crystals I found…

Sometimes you never know what you have til you get home and start cleaning it up….you start out with a glob of clay…….and then as you are washing it off, out come two points, one on each side…looks promising, so you continue washing, even brushing, and then oila !

…this is what you come out with….on this trip its safe to say though, that we found more nice stuff at Bear Mountain Mine.

Here are some more pics of crystals I found at Miller Mountain last weekend….

this one has a burr on the backside and I punctured my thumb good when I picked it up….so if you saw me sucking my thumb that day, thats why….

Jimmy E and I drove down to Mt Ida last week, and spent a few days on Lake Ouachita at Mountain Harbor Resort during the evenings and quartz crystal mining during the days. We both arrived about 4 pm Thursday at the Harbor, Jimmy driving down the western side of the state and I drove down thru the center of the state. We both left nice temps in our respective states and as we drove into Arkansas it became noticeably hotter, arriving to find mid nineties and humidity awaiting us with open arms. Yikes…well at least dinner was nice at Mountain Harbor Lodge, with a nice view of Lake Ouachita below us.

The next morning after a sumptuous breakfast of banannas and water for me, we checked the weather forecast and forecasters were indicating a rain front moving in about midmorning, so we drove over to Fiddlers Ridge Rock Shop and registered for digging at Bear Mountain Mine, intending to get there as soon as possible and get some digging in before the rain arrived.  After talking with Judy for a few minutes and paying our daily fee, we  drove on down to the mine, arriving ahead of Bobby, the mine operator. We opened the gate and drove on up to the mine and found a nice view waiting for us from the top near the back of the mine and pit….

and this was our view of the pit on our left as we drove in, you can see the track hoe in the top of the photo on the other side of the pit from where we drove in…

We began looking for quartz in the tailing piles on the south side of the pit on either side of the roadway that led to the pit…the pile on the left, while looking like fresher material, also had a thick layer of red clay dirt covering it and was hard to see anything, plus we didn`t have any sunshine this morning to see glints of crystal with. I was looking around in the pile on the opposite side of the fresher material and told Jimmy I was beginning to find some nice smaller crystals but also seeing evidence of some larger boulders with quartz crystals on them as well. He decided to walk over to the base of the pile I was on and began digging into the side of the material. He told me he was finding a lot of single crystals, but was quite content so far.

The pile on the left here is the fresher material pile that Jimmy started on and the pile behind the track hoe bucket on the right is where I started looking…I walked along the left edge right behind the perimeter cable and found a few good sized chunks with crystals all over one face and found a few smaller ones as well…pretty soon we heard a truck pull up on the far side and a dog barking…I walked up to the top of the pile I was on and saw Bobby, the Mine Operator, checking his trackhoe before starting it up. We exchanged a few greetings loudly and he invited us over to the north side of the pit where he was at to search there, but told us to stay over where we were to search as long as we wanted to.

We stayed a little longer and then decided to load up what we had and go over to the north side and look around. Jimmy had found a large boulder and needed to knock some host rock off, and I had found a large boulder with crystals on three sides and so we both brought our vehicles down closer to load up. I walked my boulder up to the top of the bench I was on and then carefully bent down and lifted with my legs and carried it down to my truck.  While I didn`t get any photos of it there, here is one of it cleaned up….

Jimmy relocated his van and got his sledge out and began removing base rock from his crystal face treasures as Bobby walked over to show me the pit and explained where the pockets have been worked in the past year for the clusters of gorgeous crystals, like this 8 pound cluster found there recently….

and this 28 pound cluster found there….

and for those of you that like the single crystals, specially those that look like scepters, this one was found there recently too….

…all three of these were found recently there by a buddy of mine who recommended that we go there, it was his referral that brought us there this weekend. Bobby pointed out the area where they had been finding them and said he was going to drive his trackhoe up to the top and take off some of the dangerous overhang rock and make things safer that morning while we continued to search the tailing piles. Hopefully after that he hoped he could get back into the pocket area and perhaps find us a nice pocket with some nice clusters like the ones shown above.

Bobby said they had opened a pocket Monday, earlier in the week, and there were a couple of women there from Florida that wanted a few buckets of clusters like that…he said they were able to fill twenty five gallon buckets full of clusters removed from that one pocket find…

Bobby soon moved up to the top of the pit and began removing overhang rock as Jimmy and I relocated our truck and van to the top of the mine and walked over to the north side of the pit and began searching for more crystals. It soon became obvious to us both that there were far more crystals to be found on the north side in the fresher yet tailing piles on that side…

Like this set of extremely large boulders next to the pit drop off area…the lowest area were were allowed access to due to safety concerns…

…we found several smaller chunks of the boulders broken off and laying at the base and around them, most covered with crystals on one face….

….and then we took a closer look at the larger boulders and discovered pockets of clay on top of them that contained loose crystals themselves, so we began chipping out the clay pockets from the tops of the boulders…..and here is the photo of the top of the boulder with the crystals imbedded in the clay….

….and here is Jimmy holding one of the clay pockets we removed from the top of the boulder….

….then we took a closer look at the boulder that was leaning up against the boulder in front…the back boulder had crystals along the underside face of the edge….

..including this close up of some very pretty tiny but beautiful crystals….

….and so Jimmy got out his trusty sledge and we knocked off the ledge, it came off in a couple of pieces so we were able to get a chunk each…in the meantime we noticed that the rain apparently wasn`t going to fall and in fact the skies were beginning to clear up….my buddy Mike and his wife showed up shortly after and told us it had rained hard down by them, the Arkadelphia area, and they had heard it was raining cats and dogs over in the Mena area, which is about 40 miles west of Bear Mountain….but not even a trace of rain on us that day….

Bobby took a break from working the overhang and came down to chat with us….

….and gave us the bad news, he had knocked off too much overhang to get back down into the pocket that day to find more clusters, but truth be told, we were quite happy with what we had found on our own that day so we told him that was fine, we would catch a pocket later on another trip. Before we left, he gave us both a couple of nice plates that he had dug out the day before,  similar to what we had found that day but bigger crystals.

Parting shot of Jimmy at Bear Mountain Mine….

About halfway and one more bucket cleaned as of this morning, so decided to get some Super Iron Out and take advantage of the hot weather this weekend and clean up some of my quartz crystals…not all of them mind you, as I kind of like the orange stain that some of them have on them, feel it gives them distinction and some character, separates them with definition from the other crystals that are clearer. Just my humble opinion of course.

I took Mike Streeter`s advice last year and soaked them in the sink in a warm water bath first…

then transferred them to tubs outside with hott water in them….

and as you can see, I`m using Super Iron Out that you can get at Walmart or most hardware stores, its also used as a plumbing cleaning agent, so would likely be found in the plumbing section of hardware stores…I`ve seen it at Lowe`s too…

some of the quartz mines personnel will tell you to use Oxyallic Acid, not sure I spelled it right, but in most cases that takes longer and might require some type of heating element beyond the strong sun in the summertime…so I just use Super Iron Out during the day and it does real well. Anything stronger required, I`m prob going to use a diluted form of Muriatic Acid for…

In this tub, I have several smaller clusters and plates cooking in the Super Iron Out and the one in the lower left hand corner, you can see a larger crystal sticking out, this one was covered with some type of black material and the Super Iron Out is doing a good job of baking it right off and its only been in there maybe 30 minutes so far.

I am anticipating placing another plate into a tub later today, one of the plates I found in the clay pile at Miller Mountain on Sunday morning while in Arkansas two weeks ago, it came out looking smokey, cleaned up with water looking smokey, guess the real test will be after I place it in the Super Iron Out, if it comes out of there looking smokey, then it might just be smokey quartz.

..and catching up on photo editing last few days…had to get my mom`s photos done from the family reunion so she could get them sent out, so that was priority one and everything else, including the quartz, was put on the backburner, but last night I started in on the six bags of quartz crystals and today I managed to get the bucket cleaned out too…found some really nice small clusters of crystals and one fairly large sized one too, in the balls of clay I brought home from Arkansas last week…here is what my sink looked like after cleaning last night….

this is one of the plates I found in the pile I was digging thru Sunday morning at the mine…

it cleaned up pretty nicely…when I dug it out I thought it had a smoky or two on it, but looked more like lemons when I cleaned it up….and here is the small cluster I washed off last night from a hunk of clay, and was a nice surprise for me…

and as you can see it cleaned up with water pretty nicely too…

and then the next morning I resumed my cleaning, and got to the bucket finally from last Sunday morning, last few mud/clayballs I pulled out of the dirt pile I was working in next to Mark and Carol…about halfway down and still encased in clay was this one…

..crystal clear and pretty as could be…found some more this morning too…some small ones, some bigger ones, some with damage, and some perfectly undamaged…

this next one was one I found while walking around on top of the pile Tuesday, most of my family had left due to the heat and I was taking one last quick look around, spotted one crystal of this one sticking up, the rest was upside down in the dirt and the dozer had just passed over….

Hey All,

just got back from a week in Arkansas near Hot Springs…drove down for the July 4th weekend for a family reunion and some hiking with my dog Missy, and took my family quartz crystal hunting as well. I had a few shoots along the way at some pretty waterfalls and shot some beautiful fireworks down there at Lake Hamilton in Hot Springs and De Gray Lake at Arkadelphia too.

Sunday morning, Missy and I headed over to Miller Mountain Mine to scout it out and find some quartz crystals.

I paid my ten dollar fee and started digging in one of the fifteen new piles that the bucket driver brought up from the mines that morning and right away, started finding smokey colored crystals. I also found a couple of clusters nicely sized…

…this one above already cleaned and the one below not yet….

A couple digging next to me introduced themselves as Mark and Carol and turned out to be from the Joplin area. Mark took me over to his truck and showed me a nice large cluster he found in the clay in one of the piles that morning before I arrived, that had several large points sticking out of the clay…

..and a side view of it…

They were pulling several nice single points and small clusters out of their pile all day long.

I originally intended to stay til about 2 pm, but had so much fun and found so much material, I stayed and dug til 5 pm. Finally around 4 pm, I got up and took my second walk around and found so much more small clusters and single points up on top of the pile than I had found digging in the pile all day. While there, a few families came up that had started their morning off digging at Ron Coleman`s mine and found only a few crystals after four hours of digging. Three people told us that in three days time, not one new load of dirt had been brought up out of the mine for anyone to dig through and one guy had been there all three days. He said he had found more in all three afternoons at Miller Mountain and would return the next time to it instead. I filled four bags on Tuesday with high hopes for Tuesday. I will add more pics with my finds as I get them cleaned up in the next few days.

On Tuesday, twenty of my cousins loaded up with my parents and we caravanned to Miller Mountain Mine for a day of crystal collecting…Bill and Faith, the caretakers there, gave us a group discount on the adult price, with several from California and Wisconsin along this year that had traveled down for the reunion.

One of my California cousins is a water specialist for his city and he brought his Honda truck so he could load it down with quartz for the trip home. I helped him locate a few yard rocks for his rock gardens and he actually found some nice specimens as well while there.

The weather down there all week was hot and steamy, and Tuesday was no exception, it got hot real fast and several of our group tired of the heat and left by noon. One of my uncles is a retired geophysicist, Bill Owens, and he taught at Washington University in St Louis, he and his wife Jo went with us and I helped him locate a few bigger boulders so he could trim a few crystal corners off to take home. Bill was a little more prepared for the heat and dug alittle and walked a little all day like I did, and found a bag full of crystals. Here he is seen putting on suntan lotion and wearing a big straw hat…

Joann, his wife, also found several nice crystals and clusters and filled half a bag herself. A lot of my cousins were first timers to quartz, having traveled down to the diamond mine state park three years ago on our reunion trip at DeGray Lake Park for the first time, and wasted their time, finding very little of anything there that day. They sure didnt waste their time on Tuesday and left very happy with their finds. After helping everyone find some nice goodies, making sure no one went home unhappy, I was able to find a few gems myself.

While I was walking around on top, the dozer guy came up on top and started moving some piles around, so we backed off and let him rework the piles and then sifted thru afterwards. Thats when I found these nice ones…

I then walked to the west end and turned a large rock over, as Docia has reminded me several times, turn the flat ugly side over to see whats on the dirt side, and this is what I found…

so now I have my hands full, digging tool and bag of rocks in one hand, scoop this baby up and start walking to the truck and then I look down and see this beauty sitting on the floor of the pile in just a little bit of clay dust….

and anyone that knows me, and knows that all I look for is pretty stuff, knows that I just couldnt pass this one up either…so I stopped and repositioned everything so that nothing got mashed, including my fingers…and toiled on toward the truck. Luckily I made it without any damage to anything or me.

Before leaving, I purchased two baskets of uncleaned quartz crystals, one for me and one for my cousin from California…Bill helped me load the baskets and as we walked out of the cool office hut into the heat, we were both amazed to see a full size Chev Suburban drive up the steep road pulling a 35 foot long Holiday Rambler camping trailer…loaded down by six rockhounds from Georgia no less…and no easy feat in itself at all…the road up Miller Mountain for anyone who hasnt been there, is up a very steep angle and no room to pass another vehicle, nor any place to turn around until you reach the top. I`m still wondering where he turned that rig around when they left. Wow…
On the way back to DeGray Lake, I came across this beautiful scene along Hwy 7 south of Hot Springs and stopped to photograph it…

Traveled down to the Hot Springs area of Arkansas for my annual fall trek, for a few days of rest and relaxation from the grind of work with two goals in mind, photograph some models and dig for some beautiful quartz crystals, which can be quite impressive and found in the Mount Ida and Hot Springs areas. Having traveled to this area for the past four years as part of my fall vacation, I opted to take the advice of a few rockhound friends and visit the Miller Mountain Quartz Mine near Jessieville, Arkansas, about ten miles north of Hot Springs along Highway 7 and ten miles west on Hwy 298.  I had Kyle, one of my models with me, and he likes to rockhound too. We were staying at Lake Ouachita near Mount Ida and drove over to Miller Mountain on Saturday morning, arriving at 8 am and found we had the place to ourselves.

The mine is under new management and very well run compared to the last trip I made there a few years ago, I was very impressed with the new caretakers, Faith and Bill. I was given good advice on where to look and after paying our dig fees, Kyle and I got to work and started finding some nice crystals. I was looking for clusters and Kyle was happy with single points.

I brought some canvas bags with me from my Lowes store and a few buckets and left with the buckets filled and five canvas bags full as well. I found several nice larger clusters merely by walking around on top of the tailing piles and surface collecting as well. All in all it was a great four hour dig and as we were wrapping up and packing the truck bed, about seventy boyscouts and fifteen scoutleaders descended upon the mine and began their day looking for treasures. Here are some photos to show you what we encountered and found….

here are the tailing piles looking north….

and some of the better finds….

Kyle and I didn`t have to do much digging, there were so many just laying on top all over the place…Kyle filled two bags alone with them…easy pickens that day.

Def looks like a place worth going to for a days dig, keep all you find, for $ 10, doesn`t it ?