Docia contacted me last week and said she needed more plates of druse for a fall project making gem trees for a youth organization, so we decided to meet up Sunday afternoon, October 30th,  and see what more we could find. I drove in the back way this time to see if there were any new rock deposits along the way, but didn`t see anything much under all the dust that had settled on top, and drove on down to the new diggs area to find Docia making room in the back of her suv. During the time she arrived and my arrival time, she had located a pocket of smokey quartz plates and had dug out enough to fill four bags already. She was making room for more when I arrived. and it was one beautiful cloudy day there….

I didn`t pull my camera out and shoot any photos up in the new diggs area, but I did manage to shoot a few yesterday after cleaning up some of my finds….

 

 

 

and this next set of plates has some pretty iron oxide coating on a few of the soda straws….

After three hours of digging for druse plates and filling three bags full myself, we moved over to the secret spot floor and looked for a few pockets of poker chips…I decided to check out the water pocket I found at the end of the day last weekend.

I decided to move over until I found a ledge and then feeling down in the water around the lip of the ledge, I discovered a small underwater pocket on one side, and then as I felt around the rest of the ledge, I found two more pockets…

…I pulled a few small plates of druse out as well as a few small chips of calcite and could feel poker chips on the roofs and the bottom of the pockets…so I knew I was in the right area….

..I then pulled this nice druse plate with a poker chip attached to the end of it….

I decided to bail out the water and see what more was down under the water and out of sight…I could feel quite a bit, but couldn`t see anything…and let me tell you, this was some of the coldest water I have ever had my hands in for an extended time period….

…and as you can see above, there was a nice plate, albeit upside down, in the pocket and actually positioned between a couple of pockets…the next photo shows where I began on the left and where I have progressed to on the right side….

..and after draining it down, I decided to tackle chipping out the upside down plate on the right side…

…which was no easy matter, it was firmly attached on the right side, and there was a whole lot of druse on the opposite side as well as a few poker chips….

..and once removed, I removed a few more crystals from the now expanded pocket, which was rapidly expanding even more….

I found the top rock to be growing thicker on the sides, so I decided to try and go further to the right, as the roof rock was thinner to the right…and I was able to chisel through….

and create a back entrance to the growing pocket….

and removed this big chunk of druse in the process….the one on the right side of the photo….

Docia had already left and I had decided to stay and see what more I could find…Missy and I left after removing these crystals and when we hit the top of the hill, were greeted by this beautiful sunset…