After a couple of weeks of hard rain and thunderstorms, I decided to return to the new druse spot and see if anything nice had been washed out of the clay, and boy am I glad I did.I also wondered if we would find any color on the trees remaining, and as we drove into Steelville, we saw a few beautiful maple trees in full bloom….

Missy and I arrived to find alot more erosion, this area one night alone had about four to six inches of rain in just a few hours and you could tell the water had done some serious carving in the clay when I walked up on it. Luckily it wasnt too muddy when we arrived, but I tried to give Missy some instructions on staying out of the mud pit while we were there…apparently those instructions fell on deaf dog ears, let me tell you, cause within about twenty minutes she ran up to me pretty much covered in sloppy red clay mud from her stomach down…I was not a happy camper and she sensed it…dogs are pretty smart sometimes…they realize you arent happy any longer and they walk away and leave you alone…luckily for both of us, she came up with a great idea and went somewhere nearby and found a clean water source and cleaned up before she returned to my presence. I wont elaborate on my thoughts while she was gone, but I can safely say I failed to bring an extra towel for the back seat and I was not very happy with the situation. I soon got busy picking up beautiful pieces of bubble druse all over the place, filling three bags within the first thirty minutes….this is what the site looked like when we arrived...

…and here are a few photos of what all I found that morning there…picking up some pieces in the heavily eroded areas of the photo above up on that hillside…my first trip walking over to it and very impressed with what I saw and found there…the following photos show the druse all cleaned up and lots of bubbles…

…the last photo above, shows a very large druse chunk that I found on the first trip there…weighs about one hundred fifty pounds, took me a few trips to get it to the truck, covered on three sides by bubbles….I stayed for a few hours, filling up six bags full of druse, uncovered those nice chunks above that were covered in bubbles and carried them to the truck and wrapped them up, before heading home and stopping off at the secret spot on the way……I was very happy with what I found at the druse spot, and only covered about a third of the ground there this trip.

On the way to the secret spot to expand the new pocket, we came up on this beautiful tree that was past peak, and leaves were falling off it in the gentle breeze….

…within twenty minutes of arriving, I had the area around the pocket cleared back to the rock wall behind it and started bailing water….

..eventually I cleared the area around that big rock on the right side as well, but didnt find any soft spots that would indicate another entrance to this pocket and didnt pursue it any further…I might do that the next time I`m up there since I`ll have more energy then. I took a break after cleaning it off and retrieved my hammer and chisel as well as another bag….

…after bailing it down, its obvious to me that this pocket goes under the big wall in front of me there, and I`m not going to be able to pursue it any further. My best bet will be to either look to either side for more openings, which will require a lot of cleaning of piles of rock gravel, or simply going and finding another pocket and starting all over. Within the first few minutes after bailing it down, I was able to liberate a few pretty combos…

…and the next photo shows the crystals at the edges of the expanded pocket…

..what you don`t see is that I was able to liberate a few small twins and triples and small clusters of crystals from the bottom of the pocket on three sides, mainly the big base in the foreground here. I`m thinking I`ll prob dig the original pockets back out when I return and see if they lead anywhere on either side and back behind me, and then maybe look for more pockets.

I had the weekend off once again, after returning from my trip to Colorado and decided since I didnt get to do any rockhunting out there, I would head back down to the secret spot and see if I could expand that new pocket some more. It seemed to be deep and going in about three different directions, and I wanted to see if I could open it up some more and see what it might hold. Missy and I loaded up and took off down there about mid morning, cause this time it was a bit cool and I wanted to give it a chance to warm up a bit before I arrived. I walked in and started digging with the mini mattox after clearing off some of the loose gravel mixture surrounding the existing pocket….within minutes I had worked up a pretty good sweat and took my jacket off and went to get my bailing bucket and some more tools and bags…..

 …the pocket was full of water and it was obvious at some point today, I was going to have to bail some water…but I decided to clear more surrounding gravel and rock and see if I could find more pocket openings instead…

…and it didnt take me long to find a soft spot once I had some area cleared back toward that back wall….

…so I began lightly scraping down with the mattox and pretty soon, I had signs of another pocket beneath me opening up….

…and pretty soon, this pocket really started to open up….

…and you can see the growing pile of crystals from this new pocket above and close up below….

I took a water break and then cleared some more rock and gravel away and decided to do some serious digging in the new pockets on top of the week old pocket….

…and closer up…

…you see that somewhat round piece that my chisel is pointing toward up above ?  I took that out and it turned out to be a nice chunk of druse hanging upside down with some poker chips attached…but first I`m going to show you that top pocket closer up…

…as well as a close up of some of the crystals lurking under the surface water in the bottom pocket….

…and here is the growing pile of crystals and plates…

…and the floor of the week old pocket is laced with crystals as well…

…and in the mouth of the pocket as well….I was reaching in and pulling as many out as I could…a bit hesitant at first, remembering what Docia told me when she said she couldnt make it today…and wishing me lucky reaching into the cold pocket water. What was really funny was that the water in that pocket turned out to be fairly warm, not in the least bit cool at all, and I was pulling several crystals out, and many were firmly attached to the walls and floor of the deep pocket too…this one seemed to be at least ten inches deep, I was often in up to my elbows…

…I turned my attention to the week old pocket and while pulling some of the crystals from the bottom of it, I ran across yet another small pocket off the floor of it…

…and closer up you can see crystals lurking inside it as well…

…I followed this one til it deadended into a wall and then decided to stop here and return in a couple of weeks and see how much further I could go in the wall direction. I covered up the other end with some flat rocks to keep any stray stuff out…..

…I was curious to find out how deep this pocket was going to turn out and whether I would be able to widen it and bail it down to find some clusters to chip out…guess we would find out the next time I was down…here are the ones I wrapped up to take home…some nice druse plates of gray and some pretty ones with poker chips attached, I also pulled out several single and twin crystals….

I found a pretty sunset on the way back home…first in downtown Steelville….

and here in the Meramac River Valley just over the hill from Steelville along Highway 19….

and here setting over the Meramac River and the reflections in the water….

…and at Cuba when I hit 44 for the last leg of the trip home.

Sorry everyone…I took the latter part of September off to drive my parents out to Colorado so they could see some beautiful fall color and ride the steam train at Durango, as part of their 50th anniversary. They no longer like to make the long drives and after everything they have done for me, I volunteered to do the driving for them. I had taken the last weekend off at work, back in January when we pick our shifts to work, and thought then that I would attend the gem and mineral show in Joplin again….it wasnt held last year due to the catastrophic tornado that ravaged the entire city. My mom and I were talking over dinner one evening and she remarked to me that she and dad would love to travel out to Colorado and see some beautiful fall color and once again ride the train at Durango…it has been 45 years since we rode it…and I only remember bits and pieces of it…but they couldnt handle drives any longer than five hours. I told Mom I had taken that weekend off, giving me a week off, and would love to take them out there instead, so we started planning it out back in August. If interested, you can check out that story and the photos at my other blog site,  http://jwjphotoblog.com

I went rockhunting two times before the Colorado trip and even took a couple of care packages out there with me, one for my second cousin Emmie, who is an aspiring geologist in Denver and just started first grade this year….and one for my geologist buddy Ian Merkel, who is in the Evergreen area and works for the Henderson Mine Company. I took them some Missouri druse, poker chip crystals and clusters, some Arkansas quartz, and some western Kentucky fluorite.

So on this Sunday, I decided to go back to the secret spot and check out an area in the pile that I had a sneaking suspicion that there might be a pocket lurking nearby…I had crisscrossed this particular area a few times and seen some sign, plus there was a huge boulder there that had crystals on it…everything just seemed to add up and I just needed to do some physical researching to see if it truly would add up.

Missy and I took off early that morning to avoid the heat….arriving about sunrise….and what a pretty sunrise it was….

…and a few minutes later, as we were climbing up a hill from a valley floor, we spotted several very pretty deer in a field to the left of the road…I pulled over to photograph them in the early morning light….they stood still for one shot and then….

…their flags came up and off they fled toward the woods and I mean…FAST….

..we headed on down the road and arrived soon after…I checked the sloped area I had found the massive chunk of poker chip crystals, and discovered another slide had occurred while I wasnt there and the chunk was apparently buried…

..I didnt have the energy required to clean it off to look for more, so I opted to go over to the pile and look at another area that I figured had a pocket as well…another area I had criss crossed several times and always found crystals nearby…mainly at the base of a large boulder covered on one side with crystals.

and the next photo shows a few of the crystals that I picked up out of the surrounding rocks and dirt after digging down around the base of the boulder above….

…giving further confirmation that there could potentially be more nice stuff below or around it…so on I dug, in behind the boulder as well as I could. I tried to be as careful as possible with a lot of bigger rocks up above me and this pocket….it could slide down and bury the work I had done so far anytime….

….and as soon as I started digging in behind the boulder, this pocket luckily opened up pretty quickly…I was able to pull enough small crystals out to give me hope there was more in there, prob just further back which meant more careful digging. I began removing some of the bigger rocks above and around it, creating a couple of diversionary slide directions for it to go if it decided to…and as the pocket opened up more from above, more crystals started showing up inside….

…as it opened up, a few chunks of matrix with crystals attached, fell out of the back of the pocket….

Well I kept on digging and this pocket started to go deeper, down and further back…I was pulling out small crystals so that was motivating me to keep on digging….

…and pretty soon there was calcite signs everywhere inside the pocket…on the walls and ceiling area and floor of it…

…and within minutes, another pretty pocket opened up….

…and since it was so pretty looking, I decided I didnt want to damage it, so I began clearing rocks from above and around the pocket, so I didnt have another controlled, or worse, uncontrolled slide….at any rate, I managed to clear out the pocket and clear out the surrounding area….

 …and as soon as I began digging around the cleared edges, I stumbled upon yet another pretty pocket….

and this one started producing some bigger chunks of crystals…I was beginning to think this would be a lot more fun if all the rock hanging up above wasn`t….

…and this is one of the druse plates that came out of this pocket as well…

…and here is a pile of crystals that came out of these pockets….

 …and then the inevitable occurred….only this one was a controlled slide…I did it to clear it off and hopefully get into more pockets, however….

…I didn`t plan for the really big one that came down…and it was so heavy I couldnt even move more than one end of it at a time…so that is where I stopped for the day.