Last weekend I took a couple of rockhound friends to a couple of places I frequently go rockhunting at in central Missouri. One of my friends is from northern Georgia, I had the pleasure of digging with Mark Bishop at the first machine dig at the Eureka Mine this year, courtesy of a referral by good friend Jeff Deere, who wasn`t able to make it to the machine dig. Mark had mentioned to me that he would be driving up to Keokuk, Iowa in September to attend Geodefest and would love to stop by on his way home and go rockhunting with me if I had time. As soon as I got home, I cleared my calendar for that weekend so I could take Mark to the Secret Spot and to MFQ. A few weeks ago, one of my Kentucky rockhunting friends who is fortunate to live within an hour of the Eureka Mine, met a new rockhound at one of the public digs there, found out he was living in the St Louis County area, and referred him to me for information and put him in touch with me by email. Nathaniel, it turned out, is a world wide renowned Pastry Chef and loves to collect the same thing I like to collect, pretty crystals and minerals…he had a really nice large specimen of fluorite given to him by a fan in Florida while he was living and working down there a few years ago, yet had no clue where it might be from. I gave him my opinion, that it appeared to have come from the southern Illinois mines, and we started talking about rockhunting…I found out that he had not been on any other field trips in quite some time if ever, and invited him to go with Mark and I. He was available that day and accepted.

I had to work the night before for a few hours, and then left early to come home and get a good nap in, prior to Nathaniel arriving about 7 am, followed shortly by Mark about 7:30 am. My carpenter Joe Johnson, arrived in between them to make a small repair on my kitchen ceiling and when he finished, we loaded up and headed down to the secret spot. It was a cloudy and cool morning, there was a threat of light rain possible, however the temps were pretty much perfect for a good workout ahead. After a brief stop at the donut shop, we arrived at the secret spot…after showing them around and explaining things to them, they divided up and set out to explore the place and see what they could find. The water holes that I normally have to contend with there, were completely dried up and made walking around there much easier….

…and that enabled us to dig into a few areas where there were indications of dogtooth crystals…while we found a few, it appeared that maybe we had only found the top of an old pocket that had mostly been removed way earlier….from there both Nathaniel and Mark wandered over to one of the walls to look for pockets….

…after a short water break, I wandered over to the wall below them a ways and looked for some pockets too…Nathaniel snapped a few of me doing just that….

…..and soon enough, Nathaniel found a good pocket and was able to find some poker chips with matrix attached….the look on his face was priceless….

…shortly afterwards, we decided to pack up and head to MFQ and see what we could find there. Mark decided he was too worn out after the past few days at Keokuk, digging and lifting and hauling around some large geodes, so he decided to head for home from there, while Nathaniel and I drove over to visit with a good dealer friend of mine, who sells Viburnum Trend minerals. Nathaniel really liked what he saw there and picked up a few from him. We then headed on down to MFQ and arrived to find about a third of the wall remaining. After a short lunch break, Nathaniel decided to snap a photo of me getting prepared to find more goodies…..

….we started looking around at the face of the wall and found pockets staring us in the face all over that wall….

…Nathaniel dug into this one spot above and below and soon was pulling out several brown dogtooth crystals from it….while it looks a little shaky looking, this particular spot he was in was quite solid around and above him, even forty feet to the right….

…to the left where I started, was quite a different story, alot of overhang, so I didn`t mess with it much, just pulled out the easy ones out of the much and moved on…

…after walking around and pulling out some loose crystals, I walked over to his crevice along the main wall and found a small pocket up about midway on the wall, and after retrieving my chisel and hammer, was able to pop out a few plates with brown and black dogtooth crystals all over them, they appeared to have sugar frosting all over them as well….

…after that, we walked around and found several nice twins and clusters in the loose rock below that high wall as well…each of us filled a couple of bags before we headed for home, Nathaniel snapping this selfie of both of us with the walls behind us….

…..as we came into Rolla, this beautiful sunset appeared to the west…..

…we were both tired but happy with our finds…Onyx on the other hand appeared to be exhausted, having stretched out across the back seat of my truck on the way home. I found out later on that Mark made it home by 10:30 that night safe and sound. I returned to work later that night and then took the next night off, my exhaustion catching up with me, having been up for about 22 hours straight…haven`t done that in a very long time….had a great time tho and can`t wait to go again. 🙂

if you have any questions or wanna say hi, give me a shout at jwjphoto7@gmail.com

Earlier this summer I was contacted by good rockhound friends Matthew and Carolyn Lybanon of the Memphis Club MAGS, they emailed to tell me that they would be up in the St Louis area the weekend of August 22nd and 23rd and wondered if I could take them rockhunting on Sunday the 23rd. After checking the calendar to make sure I was off that weekend, I answered them and said I would love to take them rockhunting that day. They were interested in finding some dogtooth calcite crystals so I knew exactly where I would take them, the secret spot and MFQ. In the weeks leading up to their visit, I drove down to both locations and did some hunting and digging to see if I could spot some specific locations where we might open up a pocket.

During one of those visits I found out that Onyx likes to swim, one of the quarries has some water holes that are about three feet deep on one end…the only problem with that is that I have to give him a bath a day or two later as that water has been there a while and is a bit on the dirty stale side of things, but that`s no big deal either, he smells better and I get a good workout in doing so.

 A few weeks ago, Tina from the BE Clement Mineral Museum in Marion, Kentucky, contacted me and told me that she had received a visit from a family located in Waterloo, Illinois, and there was a young man in that family that was starting out as a rockhound and looking for some assistance…she provided me with their contact information and I made contact with Mike Sabo last week, soon after they returned from their vacation. Mike told me his son Cianan was 12 years of age and just getting started collecting rocks and minerals and that they had not been out on any field trips as of yet. I asked them if they would like to go with us on the 23rd  and after checking with the rest of his family, Mike said they would love to join us. I let them know what tools and clothing to bring and we were set for their first field collecting trip.

Last week I was working with a new guy named Josh on some photo work and while talking to him, found out that he likes to collect rocks and minerals, but he too, had never been out on an actual field collecting trip, so I invited him along as well and he was able to go with us also. Sunday morning rolled around finally and Josh was the first to show up about 7:30 am….he, Onyx, and I had just returned from McDonald`s where we picked up some breakfast, and we were met at my house by Mike and Cianan. Luckily they had already stopped for breakfast and had no problem coming inside to talk with us while we wolfed down our hot cakes & sausage patties, while we waited for the Lybanon family to arrive. Matthew, Carolyn, and daughter Julie were due to arrive about 8 am, which they did, and then Alan, Debbie, and the twins arrived about 20 minutes later, finding most of us out in the backyard touring the rock gardens, and then walking inside to look at the rest of the collection including the dogtooth room. Everyone also got to meet Onyx and discover what a cute attention ham he is. 

Soon after, we loaded up and headed to the secret spot, arriving soon with cloudy skies and cool temps still intact.  Mike and Alan were driving vans, so we had to take it a bit easy going down the road at the secret spot due to the road being washed out in a few places…I even had Josh jump out of my truck and move a basketball sized boulder in the middle of the road as we were descending down the steep part of the hill. I had assured them the road was solid earlier so we had no problems, acquiring just a little bit of red clay paint is all. Soon after arriving and gearing up, everyone spread out to look for crystals and pockets….and Onyx naturally headed for the water holes….

…I took Alan over to a pocket that I had located two weeks before and showed him how the pocket expanded back into the hillside, explaining that with a small sledge hammer and chisel, he could prob get back into the deeper pocket and pull out some nice crystals and clusters. I left him there as he started hammering away, and headed to the other side to see if I could help others locate some likely looking areas to find crystals loose on top and what to watch for in terms of potential pockets. Cianan and his Dad were already checking out some old pockets and finding some loose crystals laying around on top. Josh called out and I walked over to where he was standing over a rocky bank with a ledge of poker chips embedded in the gravel and what appeared to be some openings in the dolomite ledge…he indicated he would work it but would appreciate some help, so I looked around and spotted Alan at another location and asked if he would like to help Josh work it…Alan came right over and teamed up with Josh to see how deep the pocket would go….

…I heard Carolyn and Debbie talking behind me and looked over my shoulder to see them checking for some sign of a pocket on the ground about thirty feet away…they were looking in an area that I had found several floor pockets over the past few years….

…and now that everyone was looking around and digging in, I grabbed my gloves and mattox and began to see if I could find a good pocket for them as well….soon after, I was joined by Cianan and we started digging into a couple of likely spots….

…I got a chance to talk to him for a bit and found out he was a pretty sharp young man and totally into searching for pretty crystals and minerals. Back at the house, right before we left, I gave him a couple of flats of crystals from the Viburnum Trend area mines that a friend had given me the week before…I had cleaned them up and got them sparkling again with some super iron out just last weekend. We were able to find some shallow pockets of druse and poker chips but no big pockets opened up for us…Josh and Alan pursued the pocket on the bank as far as they were able to and then wandered off to explore other options….I took a water break about an hour later and spotted Josh on the wall on the far side, looking for signs of crystals and pockets….

…and looked back and saw that Cianan was still hammering away looking for a pocket…a good sign of a dedicated rockhound in the making….

…then I heard some more hammering in the other direction and spotted Alan hard at work with two sidewalk supervisors behind him directing his every move….

…he was working some old pockets that I had discovered about a year ago, another location with potential to find more if a guy is willing to work and look for the pockets, moving a lot of rock to do so….

…in the meantime, Josh was down along the wall in the area that I had located several good dogtooth pockets during 2014…

…and Cianan continued to look for pockets and crystals in the clay dirt….

…by this time it was nearly 1:30 and we had been digging a few hours there, and we decided to drive on down to MFQ and see what we could find there…Alan and Debbie decided they were going to head on home to Memphis tho as they had a short night of rest in St Louis and were worn out now…and Mike and Cianan decided to head home as well, so the Lybanon`s followed Josh and I down to the quarry as soon as everyone else peeled off on to other highways. Josh took a nap while I drove south and soon we arrived …I had received word from my good friend Jim that much of the higher bench material had been dozed off to the bottom, so when we arrived, we found a huge pile of rock leading up to the bench above like a giant stairway…..

…we all walked over to the base of the pile and were pleasantly surprised to start seeing alot of red boulders and small chunks of red druse with poker chips and many with dogtooth crystals in vugs on the boulders too…..

…Carolyn took some of these home with her, she was ecstatic to find some beautiful stuff here….she likes to surface collect and this place was a dream come true for a surface collector like her that day….

I grabbed my new three pound hammer and chisels…my old ones were buried under quite a bit of tailings dirt in the old pit at the Eureka Mine by the trackhoe operator that we had problems with at the last machine dig….and I began cobbing down some of these boulders, as Josh decided to climb up the pile and see what he could find on top….

…joined by Julie down at the far end who was walking around on the base of the pile looking for more crystals too….and it was about this time that the sun finally made an appearance with the cloud cover rolling away….

..and about halfway up, Josh stopped a few times, finding some nice small clusters of poker chips entertwined into each other and successfully tossed them to the soft sand bottom near my truck to pick up later and wrap up to take home….yes Virgil, I was able to convince him to wrap them up before placing them into his backpack….

…about an hour later, Matthew, Carolyn, and Julie decided to head home, a five hour drive ahead of them yet to Memphis, and Josh and I wrapped up shortly after as well, the heat taking its toll on me and sapping my remaining strength for cobbing any remaining boulders. By this time, we had the back end of the truck completely packed with wrapped specimens, Onyx was soaking up the ac in the cab for the past hour, and we were ready to cool down, so we loaded up and headed to Rocky Falls to do just that….

…one of those beautiful treasures of the Missouri Ozarks that some folks don`t know about…there were several locals there when we arrived, sitting out in the shallow edge of the pool in front of the base of the falls while their kids were sliding down the falls into the deeper base pool…..

…we were there about 30 minutes and then headed on up the road for home…about ten miles down the road, coming down a hill, we spotted a beautiful doe and two spotted fawns in a field on the right side of the road…I slowed down and shot through the windshield to capture them…..so pretty…..

…all in all a great day, albeit a long one, but full of so many enjoyable moments and time well spent with good friends….does it get any better than this ??? I doubt it.

James 🙂

jwjphoto7@gmail.com

Two weeks ago, I had a call from a good friend who told me that there would soon be some activity going on at MFQ. I had a day off coming up so decided to drive down there and see if I could find anything nice, before my anticipated trip to Arkansas, as I wanted to get some good stuff to take with me and give to a new rockhound friend that I had found on Facebook. Missy and I got up early and drove down there on Saturday morning, spotting deer and wild turkeys along the way, always a good sign of things to come. When we arrived, we had a pleasant surprise, finding not only one recent blast pile in our favorite coved wall area, but also the original wall on the left as you enter……

I decided to check out the original section of wall first, and found one chunk of poker chips at the bottom of the pile in relatively great shape. I then drove on over to the east wall to check and see what was left of the blast pile there and see if the wall was anymore exposed than the last time I was there….and as it turned out, it was alot more exposed, one section standing out and appeared to be full of pockets….

…there was also a pile of huge boulders there and one contained a huge vug of calcite crystals…

…naturally I couldn`t just walk by without stopping to look and photograph it, but I kept on walking toward that area that appeared to have multiple pockets and boy did it. I worked that area for at least two hours, filling bag after bag full of beautiful druse plates and many of those plates had big flaky poker chip crystals attached….

starting in the pocket on the left above and then moving to that pocket on the right…..

…which just got better and better…..

..then I spotted yet another pocket and moved over to it….

…and filled yet another bag on this one alone, as it contained some nice dogtooths….

…and then I moved over to the coved wall…

…..have to say I was a bit disappointed as it did not produce very much of anything other than a few small plates of poker chips down at the ground level. However, I did climb up the pile and along the wall, found some great pockets full of BEAUTIFUL and VIBRANT red druse pieces…filled at least two bags of these beauties….

…I was very happy with the beauties I pulled out of the east wall pockets, which is where I recommended my buddy Ian collect at when he told me that he would be there on the morning I planned to be heading home from Arkansas…here are some of those beauties….

…it made for a great morning there…collected enough of those beauties to fill at least ten flats…if you have any questions or wanna say hi, give me a shout at jwjphoto7@gmail.com

Well I am slightly behind again, but it has been a very long couple of weeks, but it`s looking like we will be busy soon at work, so it is prob best I get this caught up before that happens, or there is no telling how long it will be then. I received a call from my buddy a few weeks ago, and so I have made two trips down there, and let me tell you, both trips produced quite a few filled bags full of dogtooth crystals. On the way down there, I stopped off briefly at Alley Spring Mill and photographed the Mill with fall foliage in the background, and there was a fine mist of fog rising up off the spring waters as well. It was beautiful in the early morning light…

We then drove on, and as I approached the entrance,  I came around a curve and upon three deer in the middle of the road, a doe and two young ones with her…and they just came to a stop in the middle of the road as Missy and I slowed to a stop and prayed no one came over the hill from the other direction…they were absolutely beautiful framed in the light of the rising sun…I wish now I had been holding my camera in my hands as I came upon them…however I was so transfixed by the beauty of the entire situation, I`m still not sure I would have been able to follow through and photograph them even then….I do know that we must have sat there for at least twenty seconds before they vamoosed on into the brush on the other side of the roadway. We arrived at the quarry a few seconds later and found we had the place to ourselves. 

We were there 90 minutes before several vehicles pulled in and parked not too far from the pile. I decided to go get a water bottle and take a break…as I did, Missy was over near a group of folks checking everyone out. I walked over and introduced myself and they told me they were with the Spring River Gem and Mineral Club out of Cherokee Village, Arkansas. I talked with a few of them as several of the others grabbed their tools and buckets and headed for the pile. I pointed out an area of the pile where I had found several chunks of calcite druse the week before, and many of them headed to that area to look for more. I stayed and continued to talk to Jean and Bud Green, and John Holder, and we discussed rockhunting in general there at the quarry and what could be found there. They had been there before, a few years before, and things had changed a bit since then.

After my break, I walked back up to the wall where I was digging into some druse pockets, and some of the plates I was pulling out had poker chips attached…..

I soon had two bags full of them, this pocket was quite extensive and deep. I then walked on down the wall, and soon found a few more druse pockets and even a couple of pockets with dogtooths all over the place. A couple of guys pulled up a few minutes later from the West Plains area, and after walking around the pile looking around, started chipping off some frosted crystals they found in some vugs on boulders. I stopped and talked to them for a bit as well. After about an hour of working on the vugs and liberating the crystals from the vugs, they got in their car and moved on down the wall to the coved wall to see if they could find anything else worthwhile. I was working on the wall on the west side of the pile and began finding a few pockets of dogtooth crystals here and there as I moved up the hill toward the top of the pile. It was no time at all, before I had to return to the truck and get another bag, so this time, I stuffed even more wrapping cloths into the new bag…as it was, I didn`t stuff enough, cause the  next pocket contained even more dogtooths than the previous two pockets combined…this time they were brown frosted dogtooth crystals with a black exterior poker chip formation.

BTW, I learned something new from the Spring River Group….it seems they call the poker chip calcite crystals something completely different….Christmas Trees are what they refer to the poker chips…I told Jean Harris, that in the southwest area of the US, they call them nailheads. I told her what some of the poker chips and dogtooths look like that we have found there in the past, and what colors we have found them in as well….she had no idea they were in that many colors. By this time, they had all moved over to the original west wall of the quarry and were searching there for more pretty stuff…I`m guessing they found quite a  bit of stuff there cause they were def over there for some time before leaving about mid afternoon. By that time I had climbed up to the top of the pile….

and discovered two more pockets of black and brown dogtooth crystals and filled two more bags before leaving. Needless to say, I was quite happy and quite tired, but I would venture to say that Missy was likely a bit more wore out than I was…she stretched out in the backseat and was promptly asleep and snoring as I drove home.  The Jacks Fork River sure was pretty when I crossed over….

if you have any questions or wanna say hi, give me a shout at jwjphoto7@gmail.com

I received a phone call from my buddy Jim regarding recent activity at MFQ about mid week, and since I had already arranged to take Saturday off to go rockhunting, it made perfect sense to drive down there Saturday morning and see what could be found. After a relatively calm night at work Friday night, I drove home and changed from my uniform into comfortable jeans, picked up Missy, and headed out. Jim was right, it was a short wall that came down…the smallest and shortest wall there yet.

The last time I had seen activity in this area, you could walk from the parking lot up the slope of the pile and come out on top of the upper bench, but one look at this pile, and I knew that wasn`t gonna happen, it didn`t even go halfway up. It was evident they had already removed some material in the past few days and were working on some boulders, reducing them down with the hydraulic hammer. Missy and I drove around to the back side of the new pile and began looking around back there first….

…walking around the front of the pile along the edges and then walked up the pile next to the back wall….

…well I didn`t find much, other than a few shallow pockets, so I drove back around to the other side and decided to check out the pile where they had been taking some material out….and soon discovered a huge boulder with some pockets at the base of it chock full of light green colored poker chips….

I decided to wait til later to see if could liberate them and walked up into the center of the pile and made my way toward the back wall, looking from side to side to see if I could spot any crystals. I found a couple of calcite druse pieces until I got close to the back of the pile…then I started seeing small black poker chips with black center dogtooths laying all over the pile…I finally looked up and around for the source and spotted a HUGE boulder, half the size of my truck, with many pockets of huge black poker chip crystals with the black dogtooth centers, many of the dogtooths exposed even….

..including this pocket that was located at the bottom of this huge boulder, containing several black dogtooth crystals, many that appeared to be four or five inches in diameter and about six inches long….

…and this one next to it, with a bit of damage, most likely from the blast or the fall afterwards….

…and this next one was underneath and to the side of both of the other pockets, a single large dogtooth crystal in this vug….

…well needless to say, I was stunned and happy at the same time…and after picking up a few more loose crystals in the pile below, many of which were unblemished and just plain beautiful, I walked back down to my truck to retrieve another bag of wrapping cloths, a bottle of water, and my hammer and chisels. After drinking half a bottle of water, I walked back up and started filling one bag with all the loose crystals around the base of this boulder that I could locate, some were even down below in a few drop holes, and I pulled them out and wrapped them up and bagged them as well. Within moments, I had one bag filled and was working on the other and still hadn`t even touched the boulder vugs. It was about this time that my buddy Jim drove down to visit a bit. He was enjoying the weather on his day off and waiting for his wife to get home from work.

I soon returned to the boulder and began to see what I could successfully chip out of the vugs. Luckily for me, everything was coming out just fine and pristine, and soon I had two more bags full of goodies…here are a few….

here is the cluster that I chipped out of the bottom of the HUGE boulder at the back side of the pile….

….and the last thing I did after cleaning all those black beauties out, was try to liberate some of the green poker chips in the boulder on the front side of the pile…but like most green poker chips, that tend to shatter much easier than other colors, I was only able to get these two out somewhat intact….

I did manage to find a few pockets on the back wall that were full of calcite druse, some with poker chips attached and liberated some of them as well, however I have no photos of them, maybe I can add some later. It sure was a Dandy Dogtooth Crystal Day. 

James 🙂

jwjphoto@fidnet.com