Last weekend, my good friend Virgil was up from Oklahoma with a friend of his named Larry, and they stayed Saturday night, after digging for poker chip crystals with me at the secret spot. Sunday morning they headed down to Eminence when they decided the weather might clear enough for them to look around down there, before heading home. I didn`t hear back from Virgil til the next day, when he sent me a long and detailed email about what they found…lets just say, I should have driven down there with them. Looking at my work schedule, there was no way I could get down there weekend wise til a week and a half, and after reading his emails, I didn`t want to wait that long, so since I was off Thanksgiving Eve and Thanksgiving Day, I decided I was going down there one of those days. I checked with Docia to see if she also had time to go and we decided on Thanksgiving Eve…I had to work the night before but was able to get a short nap and then Missy and I took off about mid morning and headed down there. I drove Hwy 63 south out of Rolla, a very good highway since they made it an alternating three lane highway a few years back, and made good time. Since I hadn`t had anything to eat since midnight, I stopped and grabbed a few snacks. Once I got to the quarry, I never even opened the bag, lol. I arrived to find Docia already poking around the piles on the lower right side as you enter….

..so we began looking at the pile immediately to my right and I only found a few limonite chunks containing a few poker chip crystals…we then moved to the lower pile on the left side, in the photo below…

and this next photo shows a continuation of that pile to the north…

we found several poker chips right below the surface of the gravel of the quarry floor at the base of the pile, several of which were nice looking clusters on their own, and then we climbed up on the rubble pile and found some even nicer ones….Docia was digging out some singles in a particular spot halfway up the pile that she located some nice ones on top, while I climbed around the pile about a third of the way up. I then looked up and spotted a beautiful poker chip perched on the edge at the top of the pile…yes my camera was in the truck at the time, so I didn`t get a photo of it then…I climbed up to the top and when I got up there, I stopped in my tracks, stunned by what I saw…not one crystal, but three…of the same color…and texture…and formation…and shape… I told Docia they looked like one that had broke into three or four pieces…

…in the photo above, you see the one I spotted on the right side…the piece on the left is one I saw near it, as well as the one in the photo below…

…I went back to my bag and retrieved a few white cloth towels to wrap them up with…I didnt want anything to happen to these three crystals…from there we walked around looking for more crystals and boy were there plenty to be found…as long as you were willing to look and dig, and we were…Docia found a spot up on top and started digging down to find more…and as I was returning with the towels, I found a big boulder with a crystal face on it made up of big poker chip crystals…

…and was able to chip two separate sections off the boulder…the section on the right in the photo above, now looks like this cleaned up…

While walking around, I also found this large boulder …

…and as I stepped around it and looked down, I saw several crystals on the front side of it, including some dogtooth crystals….

and saw some loose crystals in the sandy gravel below the boulder, lots of potential for more goodies broke off and hanging around down under…so I called Docia over to help me dig it out….she had finished up her pocket and came right over….

…and while we were digging them out…Virgil called to see how our progress was coming along and we told him we were finding nice stuff all over the top of the lower pile so far….as I talked to him Docia kept digging and finding crystals….

..including this nice crystal piece that Docia unearthed from the gravel below the boulder while I was talking to Virgil…

 

…and saw these crystal faces poking out of the dirt to let us know we weren`t quite finished digging yet…..

…she also chipped a few of the crystal faces off that I had seen at first on the front of the boulder, several of them contained dogtooth crystals like this one…

…and here you can see several of the smaller crystals that we found under the boulder, sitting on top now, including the two larger ones at the right side of the photo….

…and needless to say, we filled a couple of bags from it alone…from here we drove over to the south wall and decided to check it out due to having some information on it having some good stuff in it….

..and then walked up to the upper area to check it out…Virgil had told us that he and Larry located alot of great stuff up above, some different looking calcite chunks, some massive green chunks of calcite, some chunks weighing an estimated five hundred pounds each…and some nice pockets along the wall too…so we took a stroll to the top bench and at the edge of the bench where the rubble pile started, we saw the massive chunks of calcite that Virgil was talking about….

…this one above, looked alot like cave type formation calcite…to the right of it, I saw the ones Virgil had described to me by email…etched and with black organic stuff on them….

…and he was right, they were weird looking, formation wise…some had some wispy looking formations on them….

…..and the one below you can see still has some black on it, but also has some pretty yellow and green crystals too…

I decided to see what else might be there, so I left my bags there, and Docia decided to stay down on that ground level and see what she could find. I climbed on up with my rake and poked around the back side…here is the view looking back the way I came up….

…and looking the other way….

…which is the direction I walked in from, and started finding some nice big chunks of crystals in that yellow stretch you see there on the left..that`s a section of limonite with crystals galore in it. Docia took some photos of me from down below, walking around on the upper bench….

…and here is the view I had from above looking down below…

I found a nice chunk about the size of a beach ball and had carried it back to my bags, but didn`t make it to the truck later…will tell you why in a bit…about twenty feet further and to the right, I discovered the pockets Virgil had worked in the wall….

…I started checking out the pockets and wow, was I amazed…just using my hands, I started pulling beautiful pieces of calcite druse and poker chips out of these small shallow pockets…the poker chips were rolling out of the pockets like marbles into my waiting hands…within about ten minutes, I was like, what a time not to have a bag with me….Docia came up behind me to check on me cause I was so quiet, and I asked her to get me a bag…but her back was hurting her so she wasn`t able to bring me one…so after filling my sweatshirt pocket and with my arms full of crystals, I finally stopped and climbed back over the pile to my bags…there was one pocket full of calcite druse that I wanted to get back to for sure…

…you can see them here in the middle with the red stains to them..there were a series of them in this one section and I pulled some absolutely beautiful plates and balls of druse out of them, finding out this morning while cleaning them that some of them had chalcopyrite inside them….as I finished cleaning them out, filling half a canvas bag with them…I looked to my right for more pockets and saw a chunk of stone sticking out…I reached over and pulled it out and turned it over and this is what greeted me….

…and I was like…wow I don`t know how much more of this I can take…I looked around and thought to myself…can it get any better than all of this ???? 

I mean, I was like WOW…. blown away so far by all the good stuff just rolling out at me…God was sure being good to me…I thought surely this is gonna be all I`m going to find up here, there won`t be anything more to top this…and all I can say…. is never say never….I looked to the right and didn`t see anymore pockets, so I looked left and down to the ground my eyes traveled, and quite literally, I couldn`t believe my eyes…I took four steps to my left to get a closer look..and there it was….a big very dark colored poker chip crystal….laying in the dirt, pictured here on my sink counter after cleaning up today….

…and not believing what I was seeing, I looked around and lo and behold, more to my amazement, there were even more poker chips laying all over and many were a dark chocolate color…I grabbed my bag and kneeled down to get a closer look and began picking them up and putting them in the bag…and started digging down and finding them all over the place in a four square foot area, at the base of a big boulder with a few crystals attached to the face of it…

…and closer up….

..I yelled out for Docia but didn`t hear her at all, so figured she was prob on the other end of the bench and just couldn`t hear me…finding out a few minutes later,  that she had walked back down to her truck to take a break for her back. I filled my bag as quickly as I could and tried to see if the boulder would move…it didn`t budge, it was solid, possibly attached to the wall, so I filled my bag with all the loose black and brown crystals I could find, and believe me, I searched all around to see if there were any others there, finding another large chunk loose in the dirt, but since it didn`t have anything more than massive calcite on it, I decided to leave it there…finally my bags were full and I decided to return to the truck with what I had…and boy, did I have a load of nice stuff….I got back to the original spot on the bench where another bag was waiting for me, and shifted the heavy bag to the other hand and started down the hill to the truck. It only took me four rest stops to get to the truck, the bags were so heavy, thankfully it was downhill. Once I got there, I showed Docia what I had found and she liked them as much as I did. We decided to head for home after a long and fruitful afternoon of digging. This morning I cleaned up most of the material that I brought home, and it was almost as much fun as finding them yesterday, mainly because when they are dirt covered, you arent completely sure of what you have, but once you wash the dirt off and see the beautiful crystals underneath, oh my gosh, the excitement comes right back to you….here is a sink full of crystals washed off that I found yesterday in that pocket of chocolate colored poker chip crystals at the base of the bench wall….

A few words to sum up the drive down…NOTHING SHORT OF AMAZING !!!