I normally take a spring vacation and a week off around July 4th, however this year, after my early retirement from nearly 16 years of fire / police dispatch work at East Central Dispatch in St Louis County, and picking up a seasonal job at Greenbriar Hills CC, I decided I would scrap my spring and summer vacations to show my bosses that I was truly dedicated and serious about working there, something I feel is important to do as a new employee in your first year of work. Doing so also allowed me to save up for my September Labor Day Weekend trip to Central Kentucky to join with good friends and members of the Catawba Valley Gem and Mineral Club there, on their annual trip to Kentucky for geode collecting. This year, as in the last year or two, we would be joined by members of two mineral clubs from New York state.

During my interview with my employers of the Golf Course, I mentioned that while I had taken five to six week long vacations in years past, there were specifically only two that were important to me, the Labor Day Weekend trip and my annual fall vacation in Arkansas…they told me that they would work with me on both trips, and despite being somewhat short handed this time of the year, having lost the college and high school guy`s help during the summer by mid August, they were true to their word allowing me to take my trip. I feel fortunate to work with bosses who have an interest in rocks and minerals….my Manager and one Supervisor with children that are starting to collect rocks and minerals, and another Supervisor that is interested in collecting and building his collection. I have helped them out with flats of different crystals and minerals from my collecting trips, and brought my Superintendent a few pretty drusey quartz yard rocks to dress up the front door entrance and garage entrance. A couple of my co-workers have also expressed an interest in rocks and minerals too, one even showed me some drusey quartz pieces in a box that his son had collected over the years and some cabochons used for jewelry that I was able to identify for him.

Onyx and I got up about my normal time of getting up for work, at 4 am on Friday morning, August 31st, and finished packing the truck for the trip…having packed it much of the way the evening before. I had actually been packing a little each afternoon after work for the entire week before, and sorted through several crystals two weeks before, to take down there for the buy/sell/swap tailgate event. I had the truck packed by 4:45 am and we hit the road shortly afterward, headed down to first visit with Gary, my fluorite miner friend in Southern Illinois. I wanted to see what new material Gary might have now…he indicated back in June when I visited with him at the Clement Mineral Museum, that the family mining work had been pretty sporadic after Gary lost his Dad to cancer, and then shortly after, lost two more family members, and the heavy rains had slowed them down as well, but he was sure they would eventually get back into it. He had let me know Thursday evening that he and his son Walter, had been remodeling his Dad`s house alot lately as well, especially during the hot weather spells recently, and would be around that morning. I was going to miss talking to his Dad, he was a super nice guy to talk to and had a lot of interesting stories from his days as a fluorospar miner all over Southern Illinois. About 20 miles down I-64 after Belleville, Illinois, the sun began to light up the sky and clouds that were hanging around, proving once again that God is a very creative artist of sunrises….

…this one hung up in the sky for about 20 minutes and just got prettier each second….traffic was light and we made it down to E-town four hours later, giving me a few hours to visit with Gary and purchase some beautiful fluorite. He came out of the house as I pulled in his driveway, told me to let Onyx out to stretch his legs…he had put his dog, Buster, up in his cage so Onyx could roam freely. We visited while I roamed around looking at the material he had available…one particular flat of material really caught my eye…he had told me about a fairly lrge cluster the week before, that he and Walter had found in a pocket, attached to the wall and just staring them in the face like a big flower in bloom, as they opened the pocket up…he said Walter got into the pocket and worked his way behind it as best he could and used a hammer and small chisel to lightly tap behind it and remove it from the wall in three places where it was attached, as Gary held on to it and hoped for little damage to it during this delicate process. Walter was careful and successful in removing it without any damage to the cubes, which were big and lustrous in appearance, the colors were dazzling as well and in the right light it really just sits there and shines very well….

…my images really do it no justice, but will give you an idea of its beauty…and the image below shows it with two additional smaller clusters that came from the same pocket….I purchased everything he had from that pocket thinking it would likely not be there for long. He told me on the phone the other night that several dealers from across the country were calling and coming by to see what he had on nearly a daily basis lately, and purchasing everything they were getting out…they didn`t even care if it was clean or dirty…crystals were going that fast lately…..

He had another longer specimen on matrix with some nice cubes and then several the size of the two small ones above, and several smaller pieces, from this one pocket. He also had some nice quartz pieces, some with fluorite cubes, deep purple color…so purple they were nearly black looking…embedded in the quartz crystals…and a few multicolor fluorite cubes with stair-steppng cubes….after looking at everything he had, which was not nearly as much as he usually has on hand when I am there…I purchased a few flats of material, the most gorgeous ones shown on the table in the next image….

…the oblong piece behind the Coke can is the next largest specimen from that pocket, the one to the left of the peanut butter jar is a gorgeous cluster of dark purple cubes with smithsonite in between the cubes on top…I really liked it…and the one in line with it near the edge of the table is another beauty…covered in quartz on top and one side…and there are some smaller beautiful clusters on the other end of the table there…Gary helped me load them up and after carefully wrapping them up, especially that huge cluster, carried them to the truck and safely loaded them into the floorboards. I wish now I had checked to see if he had any octogons…Gary chips them out of pieces of fluorite himself and is very good at it…some people call them fluorite diamonds…and they have also made some jewelry lately with the fluorite octogons, so maybe I should have checked on those too.

Onyx and I got back on the road soon after Walter arrived to work on the house some more, and I headed east to Cave-in-Rock to take the ferry over to Western Kentucky….we got to the crossing just in time to board and go across the muddy Ohio River…..

...I drove over to Princeton, intending to stop at the A & W Restaurant to get some lunch and a big cold root beer…grew up on A & W during my childhood…Dad drove a schoolbus and after we dropped the last kids off at their homes on the rural route north of town, we would always stop off at our local A & W, owned back then by Don Lakebrink, one of our fellow firefighters, and we would get a mug of frosty A & W rootbeer before heading home…Dad always got a big mug and I got a little guy`s mug !!  Talk about hitting the spot every time !! 🙂 

Well I was a little disappointed to find out that the A & W there had closed recently, so we drove across the street to Mc Donalds and got lunch there instead and then hit the Western Kentucky Parkway eastbound. About ten miles down the parkway I noticed dark clouds forming up ahead of us….

…and pretty soon, as we approached the turn off to Hopkinsville, we came upon wet pavement where the storm had passed over ahead of us….soon after that, it was one storm after another and rain showers every ten to twenty miles all the way over to Danville…three hours later, as we were passing St Catherine College in the valley by Springfield, we saw more clouds forming just south of the college….

…I checked some creeks on the way across the valley, having come in the back way from Bardstown, but they were running pretty high and full from recent rains, so I pushed on to the hotel at Harrodsburg. I received a text from Slade a few minutes later, he had just arrived at his hotel, the Bright Leaf Golf Resort Hotel, where most of the members were staying…however it`s not a dog friendly hotel so Onyx and I were staying at the Baymont Inn on the north side of town, and conveniently I thought for us, it was located right behind the Dairy Queen. 🙂  My good friends Fred Mahaffey from East Texas, and David Bruce from north Georgia, were also staying at the Baymont. The Hickory Club had switched hotels this year, after some of us met with some attitude from the owner`s son of last year`s hotel…in the past couple of years we have ate breakfast and supper both at the restaurant of the Bright Leaf Resort, great buffet food there, so it was a natural decision to stay there as well. Had they been pet friendly, Onyx and I would have stayed there too. I let Slade know we were probably about 30 minutes out still and would give him a shout when we headed to the Bright Leaf for supper after checking into the Baymont. Slade is the Newsletter Editor for the Hickory, North Carolina Club…the hosting club for this trip…we have been good friends for a couple of years now and he is a member of my group as well. 

As we approached Perryville the clouds once again started darkening down…I was able to get through the beautiful old town square area in good light and then once up on the hill on the other side of town, it really got dark and ominous looking….

…this storm could have done something with the temps now about 85 degrees, but luckily for all of us I am sure, it did not do anything more than drop some rain showers on the south side of the highway. We rolled into Harrodsburg 20 minutes later with ease, found Fred`s jeep parked on the south end of the hotel, and after checking in for a three night stay, and freshening up a bit, I soon headed over to the Bright Leaf Restaurant to meet up with everyone for supper…as I approached the hotel there, another storm appeared just east of the highway behind some horse farms there…

Slade was waiting for me outside as I arrived…I left Onyx at the hotel room since I figured he was ready for a change of scenery. We found most of the group already inside the restaurant chowing down on the seafood buffet and joined them. Everyone was rested up from their long trip down there from North Carolina….the New York crews wouldn`t arrive for another couple of hours as they were collecting at roadcuts on their way down there…so it was decided to postpone the tailgate event til the next night when it was certain that everyone would be present for it.

We had a great meal, fried catfish strips, jumbo shrimp, clams, scallops, and about six veggies to choose from, as well as cake slices and cobbler to choose from….they used to have a soft serve ice cream machine but no longer, so I decided to get some DQ when I returned to the Baymont. After supper, we all wandered out into the parking lot to visit further, and I took that time to give Slade a couple of flats of material I had brought for him..he gave me some nice stuff as well…one a HUGE smokey quartz crystal that he got at Adam`s Farm Site near Hiddenite, North Carolina. The crystal is at least five or six inches high and wide too and a few inches thick, just beautiful…I will get a photo of it soon and put on here so you can see it as well…I haven`t yet opened the box that he filled with crystals to see what other treasures he brought me. As we were doing this, the New York Club members arrived and they were asking me to come over to the other side of the parking lot to let them know what to expect at the quarry the next morning…it was then, that Fred, Slade, and I noticed the beautiful sunset forming after the storm passed through an hour prior, and at the same time, a large half rainbow was forming straight east of us, so I first grabbed my camera to record it….

…and then turned behind us toward the golf course to photograph the sunset…it was gorgeous….

…then swung back around to shoot the pink clouds east of us….

…then back to the golf course side….

…which just kept getting better by the second….

 

 

…I then walked over to let them know what time we were leaving for the quarry and what to expect, that we would have four hours of collecting time there as long as everyone got out of bed in the morning and were lined up to leave by 7:15 am. Then Fred and I headed back to the hotel and me to DQ for a blizzard and small cone cup for Onyx. We were in bed soon afterward, after a long day of driving through storms, getting up at 5 am the next morning. 

Onyx and I were up at 5 am Saturday morning, I had to get some breakfast at the Bright Leaf and before that I needed to ice down the coolers, as it was looking like a warm day ahead….sunrise sure was pretty as I arrived for breakfast tho….

…I had parked in the first slot of the parking lot next to the exit to the highway…Slade was right behind me and then everyone else lined up behind him…everyone was standing around chit chatting when Harry and Larry pulled up and said let`s get going at 7:13 am…I had told Clay, the Quarry Manager, we would be there around 8 am if we could get everyone moving early…and driving through all the stoplights on the bypass around Danville is no easy task either…we made it through the first four just fine without losing anyone and then lost half the line at the 5th one…there was a mile stretch between stoplights there so we were able to slow way down in the right lane and wait for them to catch up…I couldn`t believe it when we got to the main intersection close to Walmart…we were all able to get through the green light just fine, which was amazing by itself !! 

We made our turn at the last stoplight and drove across the hills and dales to old Business 150, where the quarry is located, and entered through the open gate to park in front of the scale house/offices. I got out and lined everyone up in rows and then we waited for Clay to arrive. He had let me know enroute that he had a guy working the front end loader, loading up a dumptruck there that was making deliveries to a customer, and he let them know we were on the way…he just didn`t tell the guy how many vehicles we were traveling in. 🙂 

About ten minutes after we arrived, I called everyone over for a safety meeting, checking to make sure we all had hard hats to wear, steel toed boots on, safety glasses for those using hammers and chisels, and good gloves… then I went over the history of the quarry, and background of our field trips there in the past three years as well as what happened several years ago that kept many clubs from gaining access to the quarry for about the last fifteen years.

In front of the office/scale house, there is a huge boulder that has beautiful fluorite cubes on it in amongst bladed, weathered barite, and some nice calcite crystals as well. About 15 yrs ago, some knothead that was with a mineral club and there on a field trip one day, decided to venture up to that boulder and start chipping crystals off of it. He was caught doing so by the Quarry Manager…not Clay at the time…and removed from the quarry, as well as his club, and no clubs were allowed back into the quarry for quite some time….several years of time. About three years ago, I came upon information about the quarry and former field trips there, saw photos of crystals found there,and while at work one night in dispatch, I emailed the Quarry Manager on a form on the quarry`s website…Clay answered me a few days later and we started talking about me bringing a few close rockhound friends to the quarry to look for specimens and he was fine with it, with some safety conditions attached. After I published my story on that trip on my blog site…this site….Harry Polly sent me an email and asked if I could help his club, the Catawba Valley Gem and Mineral Club,  get into this quarry for their annual Labor Day Weekend trip…I had talked to Harry a few times on the McRocks board site and always enjoyed talking to him, he is a very nice guy and knowledgeable on many things as well. I let him know that I would do my best to help them get in there, and after talking to Clay and getting his permission, I let Harry know and he invited me to join them and anyone in my group that would like to come along, too. A few of my guys were able to join me that trip and then it just grew from there.

I let everyone in the group on Saturday morning, that I didn`t want to catch anyone doing anything that selfish or stupid, because not only would we all be removed from the quarry, but no other clubs would ever be allowed in there again either. Mindless actions of morons like that, is what hurts us the most as rockhounds trying to enjoy our hobby…I think everyone there agreed and assured me that they would not do anything like that….we took a group photo in front of that boulder….

…Clay arrived soon after, got waivers for us to all sign welcomed us and  gave a short safety talk with some history as well. Clay is a third generation Quarry Manager there, and works with his Dad and his sister as well. Larry gave Clay a big box of work socks for his work crew, while Richard, one of the Hickory Club members, gave him a big jar of honey, and then I gave him a few packages of Missouri gifts as well. Clay then led us down to the ground floor of the quarry and pointed out where we could wander around to and areas to stay away from, and everyone then took off in different directions…..some to the left side….

…some to the right side…..

…some walked down into the small pit in front of where we parked….

…and some worked the piles in the middle of the ground level where we parked at….

…I walked around a bit to see how everyone was doing, shot this video….

DSC_01511

….and took this photo from up the road a bit, looking back down to ground level where we all parked and spread out from there…

…the bench right behind our vehicles, is the bench with the most calcite in it…those white splotches on the wall indicate that…no other bench there has as much calcite as that one does…so if you are looking for calcite, and most of us were, this bench and below is where you will likely find it…Laura, Richard`s daughter, was working to the left of where we parked, in the boulder pile and found a nice dogtooth calcite vug in one…

…and soon after I walked over to photograph it, she found some more and her Mom, Shelda, helped her carry them back to their truck….

….and here is Laura working on yet another one in the same spot….

Way to go Laura….those are some beautiful dogtooths inside that vug !!  Not too far away from her, were a couple of the New York rockhounds, one with the same name as me…James and the gal with him I am not sure of her name…perhaps Slade can help me out again…they were working hard on some boulders over behind Laura…

…I then found Cheryl from New York petting Onyx and talking to him…by then he was a little bit muddy, having discovered a few mud and water holes to wallow in….

…and then I wandered down the interior boulder pile behind our vehicles, and found Harry working over a small boulder that had not only a nice vug in it….

…he also discovered a nice fluorite cube after cobbing down the boulder a bit more…

…I looked up and saw Larry Huffman not too far on down the rocks, working on a big boulder…he found some nice crystals on top and figured there had to be pockets inside the rock as well, so he decided to cobb it down and find them….

…from there I spotted David Bruce going after his saw, so I followed him over to a cove in a pile of boulders up above the lower pit area….by the time I relocated him, he was using his saw to remove some of the heavy dolomite matrix from around a beautiful vug….

…that somewhat resembles a big sparkley smile. 🙂

While I was up there, Slade came over to see it as well…and we spotted Fred down below in the lower pit area…Jim Hurd, a Hickory Club member who lives in West Virginia, was down there in the lower pit area also, said he was spotting several pieces of brown calcite…so I got my truck and drove down there to the lower level and walked back over to the area where Jim had been searching. Fred joined me shortly after and we began finding some nice pieces of calcite, as well as some stunning pieces of white bladed barite….

Kurt…another Hickory member, was down in the lower pit as well, on the left side…while Fred and I were working the right side…

I showed Kurt, who is new to rockhunting, what the white bladed barite looks like so he could look for it as well over on the left side….soon David Bruce joined us down there also….

After finding some nice bladed barites and a few calcites too, I decided to wander on down the lower pit canyon, which leads to an old blast pile at the very end…framed with cattails, it looked quite pretty….

After searching down there for calcites or fluorites, I wandered back up to the lower pit and found Fred loading up his Jeep suv with various finds…some of them were fossilized coral plates…I had heard others referring to them but had never seen any…Fred showed me some of his coral plates and I asked him where he found them…he told me they were in the lower pit over by the culvert pipe that feeds the lake down there with fresh rainwater runoff. I hiked over to that area and located about five nice plates myself…Slade then told me where there were some more…back down the canyon several of us went…we had thirty minutes left on the clock to dig there so we made good use of it and found some beautiful big fossil plates down there in the boulders by the wall…here George, another Hickory Club member and Kurt, work to get some of the fossil plates out….

while David and Slade were finding fluorite cubes in vugs in the huge boulder pile behind us…

…and Fred was finding more fossilized plates back up the road leading to the lower pit through the canyon….

After about fifteen minutes, we all headed out of the quarry so that the workers could close the gate and go home to enjoy the holiday weekend…many of the members had already left ahead of us and headed to south on 150 to the roadcuts near Stanford, where pink dolomite vugs could be found…we were soon headed there as well…

…and arrived to find many rockhounds spread out down along the roadcut on both sides of they highway looking for some accessible vugs to pop out of the walls…not an easy task mind you…some are weathered and some are so tight in the rock that they do not offer much accessibility to a chisel or hammer, so sometimes you just have to peel back the surrounding rock and hope they come out intact….

…while we were there, a small storm popped up about a half mile south of us and passed by to the east without so much as one drop of water falling on us…

…whoever received that rainfall was very lucky, because most of Kentucky is in dire need of rainfall as much as Missouri is…I wandered up and down both sides of the highway looking for some nice ones that had already fallen down to the ground, giving them to the new rockhounds from New York state that were close by…like New York James, who was talking to Jim Hurd on the other side of the highway…I noticed Jim was wearing a special hard hat this afternoon…what appeared to be a Flower Child Hard Hat….

…in amongst the pretty Black Eyed Susan flowers no less…and on the anniversary of his wedding to his wife as well…Congratulations again Jim to the both of you….I had heard of him but never met him til this trip…turned out to be a very nice guy. Soon after, I spotted another New York Club member helping James out with some vugs on the wall, trying to get them out….

…and believe me, every little bit of help…helps in this type of situation…..I then wandered back over to the north side of the highway again and found Slade watching David try to get a vug out of the wall, finally had to bring it down and hope for the best on damage to it….

…check out the video of it below….I think he was able to salvage some of it….

DSC_0218

 

Slade showed me a piece of pink dolomite rescued from the wall, shortly before we headed back to the hotel for a much needed nap before supper later…

After a good three hour nap that afternoon, my phone alarm failed to go off and wake me up…thankful for Fred for calling to wake me up for supper, and it was a good supper too, fried chicken and at least ten veggies too…after my good workout earlier, I made two trips to the buffet to take advantage of all my favorite veggies….and yes the chicken was good too. 🙂  Afterward we returned to the parking lot for the buy/sell/swap tailgate event. As soon as I started unwrapping my double terminated green/yellow calcite crystals encased in pyrite and my orange dogtooth calcite clusters from Missouri locations, I had a crowd all around me…I don`t mind trading minerals for them, but you have to have some nice stuff to trade evenly for my nice stuff, or be willing to compensate with cash…luckily there were several prepared to compensate…I did pretty good for the second year in a row…last year with fluorite and this year with the dogtooth clusters and pyrite encased calcites from the Viburnum Trend mines, both are big faves of mine…and fluorites I picked up from Gary on Friday did well too. The huge crystal cluster was purchased by Harry and Larry to showcase in their annual show next year and I traded the remainder of the fluorites with them for some of their beautiful treasures. Thanks again to Slade, Fred, and David for watching my truck when I was away dealing with the traders.

The next morning we would be able to sleep in a bit, as we were not going to leave for White Oak Creek at Junction City til 9 am, so I stopped off at Dairy Queen once again after the tailgate event and got Onyx and me some ice cream for dessert, then hit the hay after the 10 pm news, forecast was for a bit warmer on Sunday. We slept til 7 am and then headed to breakfast once again at the Bright Leaf. I cheated on my diet once again and had the biscuits and white gravy…and scrambled eggs…funny thing is the Manager there knows how to make chocolate gravy so I could have had chocolate biscuits and gravy, that my Mom made for me during my childhood…a recipe of her Mom`s handed down to her and her brothers and sisters. However, the Manager was not able to find any cocoa there at the restaurant to make it for me and the others to try…told her if she ever put it on the menu or buffet bar, their breakfast business would likely double or triple…she agreed. 

We headed out at 9 am and arrived at the creek about 30 minutes later, found that Mr. Phillips had brought in a bulldozer to straighten out the house side bank of his creek, due to the high rolling water nearly washing the bank away on Friday, after heavy rainfall. The dozer operator did a great job of sloping it down to the creekbed….

….and from the edge of the grass to the water, there were geodes laying everywhere, all you had to do was pick them up and weigh them in your hands, and if light enough, crack them open on the spot…within ten minutes of arrival, several were out in the shallow waters of the creek looking for the big ones in the dirt bank on the opposite side…..

…that is the New York crowd above…Fred Haynes on the far left sitting down…my buddy Fred on the right side in shorts and Matthew to his left…

DSC_0227

I cracked a few open right there in front of my truck and then grabbed a bucket and my crack hammer and walked upstream…Slade and David had gone way upstream and I met them coming back with several nice ones already collected…I came upon Harry on the second gravel bar above and Larry was further upstream from him…both were finding some nice ones. Harry rolled one basketball sized geode over that was sitting next to him and found a crack in it…he said someone had been striking it with their hammer just moments before but apparently didn`t roll it over to see the crack and moved on…so Harry cracked it open to find beautiful orange-red quartz crystals inside…STUNNING would be the word for me when I saw them….here they are on my tailgate about 20 min later….just so I could photograph them…

I then photographed a couple of nice ones that I found upstream too….

…I grabbed another bucket and went back upstream, meeting David and Slade on their way back downstream again, this time they told me to go upstream to the log across the water…they cracked open several up there that had double terminated quartz crystals inside…so that is where I headed….it was easy to find the spot they were in, geodes cracked open all over the place, some with the double terminated crystals inside too….check out this video of it…

DSC_0242

…and the photos aren`t bad either….

..that`s Harry sitting on the gravel bar down below working on cracking open more geodes..that is where he found the orange-red crystal lined one too…

…shortly after I filled a second bucket full and returned to my truck, we had a nice rainshower come down and soak us even better than we already were soaked in sweat…this one was really refreshing tho…so I was okay with it…and after that, Harry, David, Fred, and I headed to the Green River out of Stanford to check out recommended collecting sites there…we secured permission from nearby landowners before accessing the river in two spots…the first spot was pretty barren of geodes so we didn`t stay long there. The second spot was much better and we found quite a few, but most were solids, so we opted to find yet another location for Monday morning`s hunt….we drove back to the Bright Leaf where I dropped Harry off, he said we would discuss Monday`s location at supper that evening, then Onyx and I headed to our hotel to clean up and rest up a bit before supper. 

I decided to try and call the Quarry Manager of the quarry northwest of there, and his wife answered the phone on the third ring and handed the phone to him…he told me it would be okay if we came over there on Monday morning and said he would meet us at the gate at 9 am…I told him what I would be driving and told him there would prob be around ten of us. I then called Larry Huffman and let him know, he said he would let Harry know and they would check with everyone at supper to see what they wanted to do. I then let Slade, David, and Fred know too. When I arrived at the Bright Leaf for supper, Slade met me out in the parking lot and told me that some wanted to go to Kings Mountain and some wanted to go to the quarry, so seven of us got up the next morning, met at the Baymont Inn, and headed out at 7 am, figuring we had at least an hour and 45 min drive to the quarry…we made it there just fine, arriving at the gate about ten minutes before Dorsey the Quarry Manager arrived. He asked us what we were looking for there and we let him know we were interested in crystals and pretty ones if possible…he laughed and said there were plenty of crystals to choose from in at least two pits of the quarry. He took us to the first pit, which looked alot like limestone quarry walls here in Missouri…..as we were driving down a gravel slope into the pit, a bright red fox took off across the pit from left wall to right wall like a streak of lightning, bounding up and over the boulders and over the wall…he was moving on and too fast for me to grab my camera and shoot him….but this is the wall that he flew up and over like it was nothing…

…as we pulled up and took a closer look at the walls, we were able to spot  some large calcite vugs in the wall, as well as boulders on the ground….Dorsey pointed out a few large ones and then turned us loose…

…Slade and David headed over to the small blast pile in the left corner and started finding crystals almost immediately, mainly in boulders on the ground…

…here are a few I spotted and photographed in the wall on the left side….

…and discovered some were pink dolomite and there were some with small quartz balls…here is the first video I shot there…

DSC_0264

Slade let me know I should walk over and photograph the small boulder that David spotted with a nice vug…when I got over there, David said the vug that Slade found was even better, so I photographed it first next to a blue five gallon bucket for a size comparison…

…and closer up for effect….

WOW…is all I could think of….way to go Slade !! 🙂  David helped him extract it with his saw and then used the saw on his boulder to get his vug out.

In the meantime, Richard was moving along the wall back toward the entrance, and Laura and Shelda were checking out the wall on the right of where we all parked….

…and here is a plate that she found checking out the wall over there….

…and while I was checking out the wall to the right of the entrance slope…I discovered several chunks of calcite, orange in color…including this huge and thick plate…it did not go home with any of us…

…I did however take several smaller chunks home with me and they were just as pretty. After about 90 minutes in this first pit, Dorsey took us over to the second pit and pointed out the lower walls, which were dark brown in color, contained many vugs of several different crystals…

…while Slade and David headed initially to the boulder piles in the middle, I headed to the walls to check out the vugs…they were much more accessible in this pit, easier to reach for one thing, and very pretty with some loose crystals inside that I could reach into and pull out…within minutes I had my apron completely stuffed full of them…on the way to the boulder pile, Slade and David came upon this huge calcite vug in the top of a boulder near the wall….

 

…and a pink dolomite vug nearby as well, that was also not accessible to us….

 

…while they were then checking out the boulders in the center pile, I walked on down the wall and found a huge pink dolomite vug in the wall, and was able to pull out several pieces and one big ball of pink dolomite crystals…

 

….then I called Slade over to work the pocket so he could take some home to his daughters who were not able to make this trip…

…he got what he could get out of it and then it looked like this…..

 

…I then wandered over to the boulder pile in the center where David was trying to saw off a corner of a boulder where a vug was calling to him…and found several boulders with nice dogtooth crystals inside them in boulders nearby….

 

 

…and soon after that, Richard asked David to help him cob down a boulder that he found with some nice vugs, so we headed over to the parking area….

…where we also found Fred cobbing down some nice vugs in boulders that he found in the blast pile in front of our vehicles…including some calcite crystals that were orange and white and very irridescent looking….to the point they were almost jumping off the rock right at ya…

…I spotted another boulder with a vug of the same looking crystals…way too big a boulder to take home and unable to extract the vug as well…so I settled for the photo of them instead….

…and here is the second video shot at the quarry…..

DSC_0286

…by now it was noontime and getting very warm and humid out there…Slade decided he needed to get on the road headed home to North Carolina…Richard and his crew felt the same way…and Fred needed to head toward Texas…Dorsey led us over to the bathrooms and break room where they could change into dryer clothing to make their drives home…

David and I decided to check out one more pit that was available before we headed for home…so Dorsey led us over to it….

…..and we walked up the small hill on the right side of this photo below to check out the berms and walls….

….and yes that is a boat in the photo down the hill a bit…Dorsey said they had monsoon a few months ago and that pit below filled with water, nearly forty feet deep, and took three months to dry out….not far up the berm David spotted a rectangular black rock with small yellow fluorite cubes on it, very pretty, they were bright yellow…I didn`t have my camera at that point with me, so I did not get a photo of it…hopefully David will take some and send to me so I can put in here. We walked on up to the high walls, discovered a cave that appeared to be pretty good sized, in the middle of the high wall…no we did not go over to check it out and that was mainly because we were getting tired fast due to the mounting heat and humidity…the sun was really beating down on us by then, and maybe due to the fact that a huge vulture came flying out of the cave as we walked up to it…nahhh that couldn`t be the real reason….:) 

We decided we were not going to be able to find anything better up there, so we returned to our trucks and drove back to the break room to thank Dorsey for allowing us to rockhunt there…I gave him a sack of work socks that Larry Huffman had provided to me on Saturday morning at the Danville Quarry…and he invited us back next year…I think we are going to take him up on that offer. 🙂

David and I headed home afterward, he driving back to northern Georgia and I headed toward Missouri…Onyx and I got home safe and sound about 4:30 pm, and I heard from everyone else that they arrived home safe and sound as well. Now to catch up and clean up and post some more photos soon !!  🙂