Well, as you can see from my page, I am staying quite busy again this past year with the Rock Guide work in southeast Missouri. I currently have about ten locations I can take groups of rockhounds to collect at on a bucket fee basis, $ 30 per five gallon bucket a rockhound fills to take home, paid to the landowner. I have a guide fee of five dollars, payable to me by donation only, and many tip me as well for my Guide Services…I will take you to areas where you can surface collect pretty rocks, or dig out pretty rocks, and I will even help you dig if requested, or show you how to use your tools to dig without damaging the pretty rocks. However I don`t  lift filled buckets into transport Utility Vehicles like Side by Sides, or Razors…most of the Landowners will do that for you and transport you back to your vehicle as well.

I hurt my lower back on a Rescue Call many years ago one snowy night when only 8 firefighters showed up to look for two young men lost on the river. We had to slide the steel rescue boat and motor down a hillside to the waters edge to launch it, and then afterward, pull it back up the hillside and put it back up on the trailer. Pretty sure all of us hurt our backs that night.

I did manage to drive out to New Mexico this year and several in my personal group of rockhound friends went with me again, with a few new folks joining us this year including 2 newbies to rockhounding. Somehow, still not sure how, but I picked up a stomach bug on the second day out there, was able to shake the fever that night, so I wasn`t contagious at least, but the side symptoms stayed with me til the evening before I headed home. I wasn`t able to eat any solid foods til that evening. I also wasn`t drinking enough water to stay hydrated, gatorade was about the only thing I was taking in during the day and maybe a banana or two each day. I was able to take my crew out each morning, and sometimes able to collect with them, a few days I stayed in the truck with Onyx and catnapped. Managed to make it back home the last day of the trip with a 14 hour drive and brought back about 600 lbs of crystals and minerals. Blanchard Mine was once again the highlight of the trip. I will post a separate story on it later today complete with photos.

Next trip will likely be the Central Kentucky trip, if it doesn`t get scrubbed or replaced, in early September.

The Missouri Trip which is normally this first week of April, has been rescheduled for October this year.

The Arkansas trip scheduled for the 2nd week of November, is still on and should be pretty good, have information that we will likely be able to go to a new claim that has blue and green wavellite and a privately owned quartz mine or two, might have to make it a 3 day weekend of collecting opportunities. Hope to have more info on it by end of July.

I no longer have my red Tacoma four door pickup…it served me well for the past ten and a half years, I managed to put about 309,432 miles on it during that time of driving it. It had 80,000 miles on it when I purchased it in 2015. I drove it up to an Indianapolis suburb end of November 2025 to look at a 2019 Tacoma TRD Pro pickup at a Toyota dealership on a very cold day, turned out to be their Black Friday sales day, but they were going to receive a foot of snow a few days later. Onyx went with me, as they are a dog friendly dealership, and we were up there nearly all day, but I drove home with it that evening…it is blue in color, Toyota calls it Voodoo Blue. 🙂

I decided not to go to New Mexico this year, due to planning problems and I kept in touch with my group by email, so they are aware of what happened. The brutal winter weather broke about a week from the end of February and enabled me to create some dig events in Washington County here locally, once again.

My local team and I have been busy scouting some new private properties as well lately, we looked at one in the Tiff Community area last week and it looks promising, has alot of beautiful bubble Druse Quartz in many colors, saw a lot of red, blue, yellow, and root beer colors, and a lot of spider holes, or tiff cuts as the locals like to call them…the miners came up with the term spider holes, but they are the shallow holes that the tiff miners dug out by hand, looking for tiff to collect and sell to the mills. We found some normal Barite there, most of it combined with some stunning blue Quartz on one side of the property. The owner plans to do some burning of leaves soon and then I will start taking groups there.

We looked at another private farm right after that one, at a location on the north side of Ebo, off Hwy 185, smaller place with 140 acres, but they have 3 creeks running thru the property and 2 of them are chock full of beautiful Druse Quartz…we found a little bit of Barite here and there as well, most of it attached to the Quartz and in the Pudding form. There were also a lot of big boulders of Coral there, especially in the creekbed that was further back, we plan to help them do some burning back there on a day with a lot less wind than we have been experiencing lately, and maybe some more Coral and Druse will be exposed. We are returning there this afternoon to look at the 3rd creek that runs thru the front of the property.

Today we will also be scouting a thousand acre farm north of Potosi, the owner has spotted Druse Quartz there, but doesn`t know if he has anything else there or not. Next week we will be looking at another private farm in the Cadet area that shows alot of promise so far, going by what the locals have told us about the property. I am also waiting for word from a landowner with a large old mine on his land in the Tiff Community area, too.

Also have a large cattle farm near Bonne Terre to look at soon, we were set to go check it out 3 times in the past 2 months and each time we approached the date, old man winter returned and prevented us from doing so. Now we are just waiting for the contact person to get a day off so we can go down there and walk the property, she told us that one hillside is sparkle city.

We looked at a few smaller places last fall, but they were thick with layers of leaves, making it nearly impossible to find any Druse and the owners did not want to do any burning, most likely due to concern of the fire getting over on their neighbor`s property.

I will post some photos soon of what each property has to offer rockhounds.