Four Weeks of Cabin Fever

Posted on December 25, 2013 by jwj

It was four weeks of snow and ice, and extremely cold weather, before we had a break and could get back down to MFQ…the snow was so deep south of me in other areas that I couldn`t go anywhere for those four weeks…not only were the crystals under the snow and ice, so were the roads…my buddy Jim had told me that it took the highway department a week to clear the main highways due to the heavy ice under the deep snowpack. One thing I don`t like about winter driving, is ice…hard to drive on and impossible to stop on it.

Best thing to do when it gets icy, is just stay home…..I have worked way too many accidents in my nearly forty years on the fire department and seen way too many things that can happen to drivers traveling in bad weather.

I let Ray know I was going down there Sunday morning, but he was tied up that day and couldn`t get away. I comped out and came home from work early morning, intending to get about five hours of rest before driving on down. Just as I got home, I heard a loud crashing noise…a noise that I had heard a few nights before about the same time of early morning, on the railroad tracks a block behind my house, as a westbound train was coming through town. This time an eastbound train was passing through and came to a sudden stop…I got back in my truck and drove up to the Elmont Crossing to see if it had derailed, and found the train blocking the crossing. I called BNSF police dispatch, to let them know they had a problem on the tracks there, then called my buddy Linda, who dispatches nights at Sullivan Police, and let her know that all three crossings in town were blocked by the train. I then drove over to Hwy D and crossed the tracks on the bridge, and circled back to Main Street on the south side of the tracks, where I found the last six cars on the train, separated from the rest of the train by about an eight car length…I called Linda and updated her again, she said she would call BNSF and update them as well. I then drove down to the end of Hannah Street and located the Conductor walking the train to check the air hoses from car to car…I knew he was going to have a lengthy walk, so I called BNSF again and offered to give him a ride back to the end of the train, but was told that policy required him to walk the entire train to make sure no other cars in between were separated as well. I called Linda and updated her once more and then drove home and went to bed.

Five hours later, Missy and I got up and headed south…I walked out the door to find that we had received a dusting of snow, up close they looked like frozen flakes of ice…

…we got on the road headed west on 44 and saw that as we reached the west side of town, it looked like a blizzard had come through, but as we approached Bourbon, five miles further west, no snow at all seemed to have fallen there…not even a dusting. As we approached Leasburg tho, I we hit another stretch of heavy snow showers…

..and about every town from there to Rolla, we hit yet more snow showers…as we got to Rolla tho, it was all ice in the treetops…def looked like a winter wonderland there…

…and later, when I finally turned south, I saw a break in the clouds to the south…it was supposed to be around 45 degrees at MFQ that day….

…my buddy Jim had told me the night before, that the pile from the last blast was still there, not much had been removed due to the heavy snow and ice they had down there….he was right, when we arrived, we found about a third of the pile removed and the giant hydraulic jackhammer had been busting up the big boulders….

…I got out and it was a bit chilly, pulled on my boots and a blue hooded pullover, grabbed my gloves and mattox and headed to the wall to look for pockets. Within the first thirty minutes, I located a few nice pockets full of brown and orange dogtooth crystals, small ones but nice nonetheless. I also found some weird looking calcite chunks that looked like they had either deteriorated or come from a cave….

…these above would have been brown dogtooth crystals, large ones at that…but didn`t quite form out all the way…the ones below were simply chunks of calcite in different forms…

…and I also found some pockets of pretty red calcitic druse as well, some with poker chips attached to them….

…and this one has a poker chip attached below….

I also found a few pockets with some pretty chocolate brown crystals in them as well….

…I`ll get some more photos of the better ones from the four full bags that I brought back…I also found and brought back about ten yard rocks that were nice as well. here are some of the dogtooths I found that day….

Hope everyone has a MERRY CHRISTMAS today…..

Thanksgiving at MFQ

Posted on December 11, 2013 by jwj

I received a phone call a couple of weeks ago from a good friend who told me that there had been a blast at the quarry at MFQ a few days before Thanksgiving. I had to work Thanksgiving Eve and Thanksgiving night, but was off that weekend so I made plans to go the day after Thanksgiving. I emailed my friend Ray in St Louis and told him, and he decided to come along with me. I was able to get a good nap in and Ray met me at the house, we loaded up the truck, and headed out shortly after 8 am. After stopping for gas, we headed east and arrived about 11:30 am and osbserved the west corner of the cove wall had been blasted down…..

As we pulled up to the blast pile, we stopped and talked to one of the owners and his wife, for a few minutes, thanked them for allowing rockhounds to come there and rockhunt, and then we began searching to see what we could find after the blast. He told us that he had taken some of the pine cone looking crystals to his wife, occasionally, and they liked them too.

We immediately started finding some nice crystals in various colors, that had survived the blast and the fifty foot throw to the ground as well…

…within minutes, I had one bag full and returned to the truck for another, as Ray climbed up on the pile in search of boulders with vugs…he found several and was able to remove some nice clusters from them…

I kept walking around the perimeter of the pile and soon found this one just sitting there waiting to go home with me…

…this of course is the cleaned up version of it…and we found a few that had a red crust on them…still haven`t figured that part out yet….

…although I can tell you that it isnt soft like clay, is hard and rough just like it looks, nothing seems to wash it off at all. I managed to find quite a few dark grey colored crystals, even a nice set of twins like these….

…and quite a few chocolate colored crystals as well….

…and some bigger chunks covered in chocolate brown crystals, too….

…Ray found a big chunk of crystals coated with that red crust and gave to me…he didn`t like that red crust at all….I don`t like it, but found it interesting since we have never seen it there before….

We were there til about 3 pm and then headed home, with a truckbed full of crystals…we didn`t find many pockets but were able to liberate quite a few crystals from the vugs we found.

Protected: Mid October at MFQ

Posted on November 22, 2013 by jwj

Had a Virgil Richards Day at MFQ

Posted on October 10, 2013 by jwj

Missy and I drove down to MFQ Sunday morning, hoping to find some more pretty crystals. I had received word from a good friend down there, that there had been some blasting activity there earlier in the week, so we were on the road a little after six am. It was a bit chilly when we hit the road, high forties, and it was only forecast to reach a high of sixty two that day, with some gusty winds expected. I had hoped to get down there the previous morning but the rain forecast for that afternoon, came in a bit earlier than expected, so we waited instead. My right arm was still hurting, but it seems like I have been adjusting and getting used to the pain somewhat.

However, I saw my doctor yesterday and he said I have tendonitis and gave me a few options on how to treat it…trying option one now, which includes alleve twice a day with some minor exercises and using my tens unit twice a day. If that doesn`t help it, then he can inject cortisone in my arm and see if that takes care of it…and if that doesn`t do it, then surgery is an option as well….I`m hoping we don`t have to go that far. Original injury occurred over thirty years ago while I was in college and helping a state trooper buddy chip out his driveway of two inch deep ice so he could get his patrol car in and out just fine…I basically just overworked the muscle tissue of my arm that day and back then, the prescription was to rest it in a sling for ten days, easy enough back then since I didn`t have a job then. Even helped me get out of a few tests, lol.

Missy and I arrived around 10 am and it was still just a bit cool when we got out of the truck….didn`t phase Missy at all, cause she now has her winter coat back on and am sure it felt quite nice to her. I started out with a long sleeve shirt and made it thru the day with it on, actually, mainly because that gusty wind was quite a cool breeze all day long. She bounded out of the truck and took off to check things out and I didn`t see her again for about thirty minutes. I got my boots laced up and put a light core jacket on and decided to walk around and see what I could find on the surface first. The main obvious changes were that the cove pile had been completely removed on the west facing wall on the north end…..

…and the blasting had occurred above our heads where the north end upper bench had previously been, now the wall up above was completely even with that north end upper bench wall…..

….after walking around and not finding much along the wall…it was also obvious that there were many pockets way up high from all the glittering I could see where the sun was hitting the wall high up, but I found no pockets down below at all. I decided to walk down the wall to the east and see what I could find, checking along the base where much of the ground material had been scooped up and removed as well, since my last visit. I soon came upon a section of the wall where there were some apparent crystal formations….

…so I stopped and started exploring…pretty soon I had found a few nice pockets that were chock full of beautiful crystals and druse combinations, and within minutes, I was pulling one cluster after another out of the pocket opening, each one covered with dogtooth crystals…I took a break and went to the truck to get a couple of bags full of wrapping cloths….these were way too beautiful and delicate looking to take any chances…I decided to wrap them double before setting them in the bag. After about twenty minutes, I had two bags completely full of double wrapped crystals and clusters, and after placing them into the backseat of my truck for better ride stability, I returned to the wall with another bag of cloths. I worked my way down the wall about ten feet and looked up and saw this….

…and closer up….

…I could see the end of a crystal sticking out slightly…after cleaning out the surrounding area carefully first, I reached inside and pulled out this large double poker chip with exposed dogtooth crystal tips….

…and further inside the initial pocket opening, you can see yet another pocket opening up deeper inside the wall from the first one…and let me tell you, about every cluster that I pulled out after that initial shock, consisted of alot of oohhhs and ahhhsss and holie cows too….within five minutes I had the third bag filled and was headed to the truck for yet another two bags….an hour later I had those two bags filled and the pockets were empty. I decided to drive over to the newer blast pile area and see what could be found there.

Missy had trotted off in that direction already, so I loaded up and drove on over to that pile next. I had seen a trackhoe up on the upper bench on the south end when we drove into the quarry and it appeared that the hoe was pulling material off the upper bench and pushing it over the edge and down below…..

….that material had formed a couple of small piles which could be climbed, so climb I did…..

…and when I reached the top, after cutting out stairs to climb up on, I found a couple of large openings at the top…you guessed it, more pockets…..

….opened up from the vibrations of the blasting on the wall two hundred feet to the north, and crystals laying all over the place up there in the opening space of each pocket, and underneath the loose crystals were clusters of crystals laying all over the place, many with very pretty bright yellow calcite druse nestled all around the crystals. I was pulling several crystals out that had orange centers, some had brown centers, and some had black centers, some had frosting all over them and looked like the brown dogtooth crystals that my buddy, Virgil, had found several years earlier one day there.

The two pockets on the left seen above, were the first two I located once I reached the top of the pile, and the ones to the right were additional pockets that I found by following the bread crumbs while up there, a line of crystals going from the first pockets to four more pockets…..plus two of the pockets went deep down and one went underneath a huge rock that was sitting up there on the right side, too. I had to make four trips to the truck to get more bags and wrapping cloths as I kept pulling crystals and clusters out of each pocket opening and kept running out of wrapping cloths, the initial pocket required at least an hour and two bags, to clean it out !! That brown trail you see on the right side of the rocky slope in the image below….

…is the trail I left, when I slid down the pile each time on my butt, like a big slide…carrying one filled bag in my left hand, and a large cluster in my right hand or on my lap…it was quite fun sliding down each time, but let me tell you it was a lot of work climbing back up each time, and cutting those steps out each step of the way….but well worth it too.

By 3:30 pm, I was wore out and decided to go up above to the upper bench to check it out…I figured it the track hoe was up there, maybe there was something worthwhile up there to be found.

I hadn`t been up there since Ian was down the first time, and once up there, I only found a few green clusters and that was all. Needless to say, I wasn`t up there long and soon enough Missy and I were headed home.

I stopped off near Raymondville, to visit a good friend, at his family`s dairy farm and finally got to see what chocolate milk cows look like. They have a large herd of Brown Swiss and Holsteins both.

James 🙂

jwjphoto7@gmail.com

MFQ Early September too….

Posted on September 12, 2013 by jwj

Sure is a beautiful day today….Thursday, September 12th, that is….weather forecasters have been telling us all week that today we would break the hot spell and cooler weather would return…..while I had my doubts, I knew last night that something was coming our way cause my sinuses were out of whack again…had to take half a zirtec and some alleve for my toothache and arm pain….the zirtec worked and cleared up my breathing, the alleve alleviated the pain, and combined, they both put me to sleep early last night, giving me a good ten hours of rest.

Woke up this morning to a nice cool refreshing breeze from the north, and while it has dissipated somewhat this afternoon, it sure is a lot cooler than it was yesterday…we haven`t even hit the projected high of 86 today, so far it`s only 82 out there and we still have the occasional cool breeze. Rain is forecast for this evening and I`m looking forward to that as well…and they are telling us now that we wont hit the mid eighties again til late next week. I think our cool down has finally arrived. Missy and I went down to MFQ again the last couple of weekends and brought back some great stuff again. I`ll combine both hunts in this story, along with photos.

The first trip down was on Labor Day itself…I had taken off the day before from work to rest up, and we rose early Monday morning to drive there and arrive at dawn…because it was due to be a bit warm that day. We took the easy route down and as I was making a highway change, the sun was just starting to rise in a big yellow fireball in the red predawn skies….

We arrived about an hour later and it was fairly cool, so I wasted no time in making a surface search of the area…the knob was still intact for the most part, but it looked like the machinery had been up on it dragging some of the bigger rocks at the base, back away from it, which is good because they could be a real hazard to walk over and around,specially with your hands full of beautiful crystals…..

…after a surface search, which turned up a few nice chocolate brown twins and triples that someone had obviously left behind for whatever reason, I started cleaning out the pockets in clear view. After clearing some of the loose stuff in plain view, I began digging back into the pockets and pretty soon, I had my hands full and my pocket apron full as well. I always wear a carpenters apron when I go rockhunting, it has two large pockets in the front of it, so I call it my pocket apron. After filling it up, I took a break and wrapped up the better ones and then continued digging. I was concentrating on these pockets to the right of my bags….

…which took about an hour to clear out…then I concentrated on the pockets to the left of my bags…

…and after cleaning them out, I stood back and looked at the knob once again, and spotted what looked like a few more pocket possibilities on the right side, and explored them….

…and as it turned out, there were alot more pockets there than I originally thought, so I cleaned them out as well, finding some very nice goodies in them. Not only that, but the pockets I was finding here, were much deeper than pockets previously found there….

…after digging for a few hours there, the heat was beginning to catch up, so I put Missy back in the truck with the ac on, changed into dryer clothes and then packed up. I had five bags full of beautiful wrapped crystals, a few dogtooths in them, and was quite happy with my finds. I then drove over to the new blast area to check it out….

…they had worked it back to almost the wall by this time…

Not even a week later, I was off for the weekend, and missed a chance to go rockhunting on Saturday, which would have been a little cooler, so Missy and I got up early on Sunday morning and took off for MFQ once again. There was a chance of scattered showers and after checking the radar, it appeared that there was a line of showers moving to the south from the north and hovering around Columbia as we headed out the door, so I figured we would have five hours of clear skies before rain would move in. We took the smooth and clear sailing route again, stopping off for a sausage and egg biscuit and fuel, before driving on….after arriving we found that the knob had been worked over with the machinery, and the entire right side was basically gone….

…quite a change, but as it turned out, for the better because there were quite a few pockets exposed and just waiting for the right collector to come along and harvest the bounty inside them….…and harvest we did…there must have been twenty pockets alone in the face of the newly worked over knob wall, many of them just staring me in the face when I walked up to take a closer look at it…so I went back to the truck and retrieved five bags and started pulling cluster after cluster out of the pockets, wrapping them up and placing them in the bags. Within about thirty minutes, I had one bag full and was working on the next one…but I`m getting ahead of myself. I had made a short walk around the trailing end of the knob pile before starting on the pockets, and then climbed up to the top of the pile above the knob. I found several pockets along the wall up there and pulled some nice crystal clusters out of those pockets too….

…enough to fill one bag…and while up there, a local guy drove up and set up an archery target on one of the gravel piles below me and sighted in his crossbow. I carried this bag back to the truck and grabbed another couple of bags and then climbed up to the face wall of the knob to start exploring the new pockets there…

…after pulling out what I could find, I dropped a few boulders down out of the way and found even more pockets behind them….in the photo above, you can see where I have done just that…

…and after pulling a couple of nice twins, joined at the hips, out of the large hole that resulted in this maneuver, I started pulling some uniquely shaped black poker chips out as well….

…at any rate, I quickly started filling one bag after another because at times, these things were rolling down the hill out of this large pocket, like chips from a slot machine…

…I was trying to find the source of the black poker chips and clusters, but was unable to pinpoint where exactly they were coming from. Within the hour, though, I had filled two bags with wrapped poker chip beauties and then I decided to trigger a slide or two to get some heavy boulders hanging above me, down and out of the way….

…and within a few minutes, I was able to safely trigger the slide and get the large boulder down and out of my way…

…and bringing down quite a few more above and to the side as well….

…and after filling two more bags full of goodies, I decided to take a break and get some food and water down, then go check for more goodies elsewhere…I wanted to scout out a couple of other locations while there as well…noon was fast approaching and the cloudy skies were beginning to clear off…the rain never did materialize…. and I knew as soon as the clouds cleared, the humidity and heat would return. After a short break, Missy and I drove over to the new blast wall area to check it out some more too.

I climbed back up to the top of the pile to check the area I had found a crystal or two the weekend before, and only found a short shelf of crystals, so I climbed back down and walked along the wall looking for pockets. I rounded a small corner in the wall and came upon a likely looking spot and pretty soon, I had exposed about ten pockets. I could feel the heat coming on strong, so I began to pull crystals out of the pockets and wrap them and place them in bags as fast as I could…Missy had decided to stay in the air conditioned cab and within a few minutes, I couldn`t blame her a bit….

…in one section of this area, I found ten pockets, small and shallow, but lined with some of the most gorgeous druse I have ever seen and some very nice poker chips as well….

…I cleaned them out as well as I could, requiring the use of my hammer and chisel, which only served to completely wear me out with the heat really building up by this time. I changed clothes and decided to head for home, stopping briefly to snap this photo of the wall I had just worked….

MFQ Again Mid August

Posted on August 27, 2013 by jwj

This has been an unusual month of August for us, because it is normally a very hot month, temperature wise daily, and last year we had temps averaging from 102 to 108 daily, but this year, we are quite the opposite. Most of the first three weeks, the temps were in the 80`s, and then as we progressed past the middle of the month, the temps began to slowly climb, and now, the last week, we are in the high 90`s, and while still cooler than last year, the humidity makes one think our temps are much higher. Plus we haven`t had any rain for two weeks and are hoping for some relief soon.

I took off the 18th so I could return to MFQ and see what could be found….my supervisor had returned from her vacation and I had more overtime built up, so took the day off to do some collecting…Missy and I arrived mid morning to a beautiful cloudy day. I grabbed my tools and bags and made a fairly quick walk around to see if I could find any pretties laying loose in the gravel or dirt, then dug around at the base of the cove wall to see if I could locate another pocket…

….not finding any, I then scraped around on the wall to see if I could locate any there. I found a few shallow pockets and pulled out a few nice crystals, then took a short break for water. The temps were climbing into the low nineties and I then grabbed another bag and headed to the knob to see if I could locate another pocket there….

I first climbed up to the pocket that Ray had found a few weeks back that was chock full of nestles chocolate colored dogtooth crystals…this was no easy task this time because there was a lot of loose gravel and dirt on the way up on the left side next to the rock knob….

….so I had to find a different way up that was more solid and not prone to sliding down on me as I climbed up. I climbed up on the bigger rocks to the right of the knob, they are firmly entrenched and not going anywhere anytime soon, although some of the smaller ones moved a bit on me under my feet as I moved over to the knob pocket. I decided to dig around in the original pocket to see if I could locate anymore missed crystals…the last time there, I had found a few that were either overlooked or left behind….someone had worked the pocket a bit more extensively after Ray had worked it initially. However, whoever was there after Ray, had left behind about a half dozen really nice dogtooths, laying in the loose dirt when I found them. Here is how the pocket looks now…kind of L shaped in the rock wall….

I found a couple more while up there, and then decided to scratch around the pocket as well…and while digging around in the loose dirt at the front of the pocket, I started finding some dark gray colored poker chips, then a small cluster popped up…and the next thing I knew, a few dogtooths surfaced as well….after wrapping the few up and placing them in my bag, I decided to take a short break, go grab another bag with more wrapping cloths, and headed back to the pocket. I climbed back up and within a few minutes, some larger dogtooths were uncovered, leading me to believe there was yet another pocket under the original one that Ray found…and soon enough, I was pulling this one out next….

…and then I pulled several more out, many of them smaller dogtooths, but very pretty and frosted over. Following are some images of the crystals I found there…took me about an hour to clean out the bottom pocket completely….

Afterwards, I took Missy to a spring fed creek nearby and she was able to get a few drinks of good cold water, too….then we headed home.

MFQ First of August

Posted on August 19, 2013 by jwj

Ray returned from vacation the first week of August and rode down to MFQ again with Missy and I on the tenth, recharged and ready to again see what we could find there. We ran into some full and running creeks….no water was over the highway, but they had definitely had some heavy rainfall there the night before. I found out later, about seven or eight inches of rain had fallen throughout the night time hours and had ended just before our arrival.

As we entered the main river valley from the west, we stopped at a scenic overlook to check out the heavy fog rolling across the valley below….

…s

…since we had gotten up early to arrive early, the sun was coming up over the higher layer of the fog as we were about to head on down the road….

…we arrived a few minutes later to a pretty blue sky filled with fluffy white clouds….sure was a nice cool temp when we started there, too….

…prob largely due to the storms that had cleared out just prior to our arrival….this quarry always drains real well…I have never seen more than a few water puddles there…and only water puddles, no mud…which suits Missy just fine for when she gets thirsty and hot….

…well the knob was still there, looking much the same as last week. Ray poked around it for a bit, climbing up on the other side to see if he could locate any pockets up there, but didn`t find much and so then he grabbed his hammer and chisel and headed east down to the other end in search of boulders to cob down…..

…and pretty soon, I could hear him working on some boulders. I began working on finding more pockets in the cove wall…and by the time he had finished cobbing down some boulders filled with pockets of…get this…ivory snow colored druse quartz….I had found and cleaned out two pockets…he let me know that he was ready to head to the new druse spot anytime…I had just taken a water bottle break and was walking back to the cove wall, wanting to take another look at one area before calling it quits…I put my mini mattox into the dirt and pulled back one swath of dirt and rock…and OILA !!!….. there was a beautiful chocolate brown dogtooth crystal sitting there in the dirt mixture….if I recall, the first words out of my mouth were HOLIE COW…loud enough that Ray, who was walking back to the pile on the east side…heard me and turned around. Then a second later, I found yet another and said it again, loudly, and he came to see what I was finding…and by the time he got there, I had found a pocket of them and they were rolling out of the pocket into my hands…literally….he decided to stay and help me dig it out and one turned into at least two or three….enough to fill two bags….THEN we headed to the new druse spot.

We arrived about a couple of hours later, and although they hadn`t had the same amount of rain up there…the clay mud on top, at least, was a bit soft and gooey. Luckily the construction crews that had been working there the past few months, had likely experienced the same thing and brought some white rock in for traction…

….it was obvious they were no longer excavating the clay dirt now and I drove up the hill to search the south side since we had searched the north side the last time there.

I didn`t get the camera out but suffice to say, we found a ton of bubbles in all different sizes in all colors…my favorites there are the citrine yellow and the smokey colors…Ray even found a lot of pink colored bubble pieces. After collecting for a couple of hours, we headed home with lots of pretty goodies.

MFQ End of July

Posted on August 13, 2013 by jwj

Missy and I loaded up the truck and headed down to MFQ again on the 27th…Ray was on vacation out east and we had nothing better to do…it turned out to be a very pretty day on our arrival down there….

…I mainly drove down to take a look because some friends from up north were traveling down to Marion, Kentucky for a public dig and wanted to swing by on their way home, so went down to scout it out again to give them a better idea of what could be found there…I was going to have to work the weekend they were gonna be there. It was a bit cloudy when we arrived but that helped keep the heat away as well and all in all, it wasn`t a bad day to collect at all…Missy took off on her forays and adventures to check the place out as is her norm these days…

…the knob that Ray and I had been working lately, was still there, but I didn`t venture over to look at it cause it was much the same and still had a lot of rock hanging up on top that could be tricky to work around, so I headed over to the cove wall that we had been finding some beautiful pockets in, instead….

…the last time there, I had found some beautiful stuff, so I decided to nose around and see if I could locate another pocket of beauties…within minutes I had located yet another great pocket and this pocket, much like the last few, really kept going and going and going and….

…and was located just a little higher up on the wall….

…it took about three hours to clean it out, and I filled about six bags full of wrapped goodies, including quite a few dogtooth crystals again. As we left, I snapped a photo of the new blast pile, which they have cut down to size quite a bit in the past week…

,,,having cut it back to the wall almost, and they pulled a bunch of boulders out into the middle of the floor area and were cobbing them down with that big hydraulic jackhammer attachment, doing a fine job of it I might add, and I found some beautiful beach ball pieces of pretty stuff there as well, and loaded them up too…here are a few of my finds from today and the week before as well, as I finally found some time to photograph them….

the next couple of photos show small curved plates of dolomite druse with chips on them…very pretty and sparkle immensely beautifully in the sunlight….

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

More Pockets at MFQ Yesterday

Posted on July 15, 2013 by jwj

Missy and I returned to MFQ yesterday, driving down early morning to beat the heat, plus the fact that for whatever reason, I couldn`t sleep well the night before, so got up and headed that way. We had a good trip, Missy perked up in the seat when we had three deer come out in front of us ….she was alert and looking for more deer after that…the sun was coming up across fields of fog and it sure was pretty in the farmlands area….

We arrived at the quarry about 8 am and the cloud cover provided a nice and cool morning shade all over. It was cool enough there, I left my long sleeve blue pullover on til about 9 am.

I did an all over search at first, located a few nice larger pieces, and then explored the knob that Ray and I had been working on the past few weeks.

Someone had been there since we were last there and rolled out a huge boulder from the beautiful large brown dogtooth pocket halfway up the pile of the knob. I didn`t see much of any thing good on it so I climbed on up to the pocket and saw where they had explored all around and above the boulder…but they missed one spot…I reached back in the space behind where the boulder had been sitting in the pocket and pulled out a beautiful black poker chip with a gorgeous bright golden brown dogtooth on the top of it !!! EUREKA !!!!!

I pulled out a few more smaller crystals and then moved over to the wall and worked my way around to the pockets I had found near the base of the coved wall and started checking for more crystals to each side.

After a small cave in of rocks and gravel mix from above, and not finding much more than druse plates, I decided to move to the right and look along the wall for more pockets. I moved about fifteen feet over and found three pockets of calcite druse…

….we always check these because they are often associated with poker chips as well. These three were only druse, but it pays to check them. I moved over to yet another knob area…..

…and found a couple of areas where someone had dug into the wall, high and low, looking for pockets…upon looking closer at the lower one, I discovered that whoever had worked it, didn`t do a very good job, cause they left a whole lot of poker chip crystals in the bottom of it…

….so many that I was able to fill three bags full of wrapped specimens and pull out two gorgeous clusters of green and brown poker chips nestled in sparkley calcite and dolomite druse !!!

I spent a good two hours cleaning this pocket out…I took out all the crystals that were left in plain site, then reaching back, discovered two more pockets behind this one, one going left and one going right…both of them chock full of small green poker chip clusters and some with some golden calcite druse all over them as well. I had to move some small boulders out of the way to get to them but believe me, the small amount of effort was well worth it !!

It was 10:30 am before I finished cleaning it out and by then I was not only tired but famished as well, not having had any breakfast other than a can of Arizona green tea on the way down. I drank some more tea and then decided to check the pile on the right of the cove, where the machinery had been removing some of the base of the pile, and I started finding black poker chip singles, and small clusters all over the place, most with very little damage, some with some matrix attached. I filled my shirt up, as I hadn`t brought a bag with me, and then carried them to the truck, wrapped them up, and headed home.

We got home about 3 pm and after unloading my goodies, Missy and I collapsed and had a great three hour nap. Another good ending to a great day of collecting.

here are some of my finds that day….

MFQ in June Part 2

Posted on June 30, 2013 by jwj

Ray let me know that he was available to go rockhunting again on Saturday, the 29th, and he would do the driving this time he said. I made arrangements with my parents to leave Missy with them for the day, and we couldn`t have picked a better day weather wise…we nearly burned up the Sunday before and the forecast highs for this weekend were in the upper seventies…turned out to be a breezy day as well, much more comfortable to go rockhunting in at a place with little shade. Once again, we headed out mid morning and arrived late morning, and found some work going on in another section of the quarry. We drove over to the right side and checked out the older walls first, finding some pockets of dolomite druse and Ray found a pocket with some gorgeous white as snow, druse quartz soda straws…I have never seen anything like them that far south in Missouri, so that was quite a find by itself !!

After about fifteen minutes of poking around there, we drove on over to the blast area and started nosing around where we left off the week before. There was a trackhoe sitting there with a hydraulic jackhammer attached to it, it was obvious they had been busting up the big boulders in the past few days, down to basketball and small beach ball size. We crossed over them to get to the chunk of rock again….

…and we started in digging in pretty much the same area as we left off last Sunday….

…and we pretty much started finding pockets of crystals once again, in the same areas as the week before, too. Ray began following a trail of crystals up high and discovered a pocket of them, while I followed a pocket of druse that led to even more crystals. I was working on the left side of the major crevice in the middle, and he was working on the right side….

…and as you can see in the next photo, it was an absolutely beautiful day, there was a nice cool breeze blowing all day long, and the temps were seasonably perfect….

As I was nearing the bottom of the first few pockets I found, we pulled a large chunk of rock out of the way and it turned out to be covered with crystals including a nice pocket containing a dogtooth or two on one corner, here seen on the tailgate of Ray`s truck…..

After removing a few more boulders in key places, Ray found yet another pocket of crystals, mostly in clusters and removed what he could. We were still dealing with some loose rocks above us, so we were trying to remove them as safely as possible, knocking a few out whenever possible to make things safer.

We finally took a break and as I was returning from getting a good drink of cold water, I noticed Ray checking out the right side of the pile, where it sloped up next to the wall. I walked over and we started making our way up and checking for pockets along the way, in the wall, finding a few small pockets but nothing major. Once I reached nearly the top, I looked over to the chunk of rock we had been working on, but way up higher, and saw a small shelf of dark gray crystals sticking out. I made my way over and was able to pull a few out…I noticed an area of crystals about five feet below me and suggested that Ray check it out, so he made his way over and no sooner sat down, than he started pulling out some beautiful deep brown dogtooth crystals, many of them with a sugary looking frosting all over them. Within minutes, he had opened up a HUGE cavernous pocket that was chock full of more of these beauties….

This next photo will show you how high up he was working this pocket on the sloped pile from where we had been on the floor below…..

…about thirty feet up at a sixty degree angle, yet compared to the rest of the wall behind him, he doesn`t look that high up….and it was about this time that I noticed his big blue bunny ears…..

…course they only looked that way from a distance….

…and here is that beautiful HUGE pocket up closer that he was working on….

…and here he is working the pocket even more, as I am climbing back down the rocks and pile, carefully, with my camera in one hand and a crystal in the other….luckily there was a nice staircase near the bottom, complete with a ramp….

…and just before I reached the bottom, I looked up and he had pulled out yet another large crystal with a dogtooth coming up off it….

…and then he went back to working it yet some more….

…and from the front, you can barely make him out….

…we took another break and got some more water, and discovered we now had shade…figured it must have been around 4 or 5 pm now…

…after the break, I decided to walk over to the other wall and see what I could find. I was getting tired but still had some energy left and wanted to find a pocket as nice as the one Ray had found up on the slope. As I walked along the edge of the short pile against the wall, I saw some crystal pieces that had rolled down from somewhere above. I looked up higher and saw that someone had been digging around a little bit so I moved up and dug into it as well, It appeared to go left as well as to the right, so I kept on digging and soon enough a small hole opened up going back toward the wall, As I explored it more, a deep pocket opened up and I was soon pulling out one small cluster after another, and then another pocket opened up below and above as well. Within 30 minutes, I had put enough crystals to the side to fill two bags full, and I kept on digging. I pulled a few out that had bright yellow dogtooth crystals on them as well, but most were just simply poker chips nestled in the pretty dolomite druse. After a bit, Ray decided to come over and see what all the excitement was about…he had been hearing me say ” holie cow ” several times…I took a break to go get some water and another bag with wrapping material, and he took over digging for me…

….I started wrapping them up, and he brought me some wrapping paper and a roll of paper towels as well, as I had exhausted my supply of wrapping material with the prior pockets. Ray walked back over and began looking for more pockets…

…and working a pocket that I had worked on the right side earlier in the day….after knocking down more boulders….

.shortly after he did, I was trying to chip out two beautiful big clusters, and the inevitable happened…I mashed one of my fingers between the rock and the hammer. Luckily i was able to remove both of them still and then wrap up the remaining crystals and carry everything back to the truck, where I stuck my finger down into the ice cold water in my cooler…boy did that hurt even worse…for a few minutes only thankfully…fingernail was already turning blue tho….

I also grabbed a couple of aleve and took them as well, and within twenty minutes, the pain was starting to subside…I walked over and checked on Ray. After returning to the huge chocolate dogtooth pocket one last time and pulling out a very large boulder with a few crystals attached to it, and cobbing it down, we decided to head for home. We were both happy with our finds from the afternoon and it appeared that rain was coming our way as well. On the way home, we spotted this beautiful double rainbow….

…and then soon after we began seeing the sunlit clouds as the sun was setting….we were the only ones out on the roads, so when we came across this nice scene, Ray came to a stop in the road and I shot this sunset photo….

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