Last week Ralph Burley, one of my rockhound friends from Ohio, came down to collect some druse quartz with Docia and I, so I took a couple of days off from work to take him to some special places to find some great stuff. We started off at a friend`s farm near Bourbon, where we have found some nice blue druse in one clay pocket near a creek in the middle of a field……which is the closest place to me, that I have found druse.

Here it is right out of the clay pocket…..

and the next photo shows it cleaned up quite a bit, but shot on a cloudy day…

…and here are two more pieces of blue druse pulled from the same clay pocket….these went home with Ralph the next day…..

this is some of the prettiest stuff I have ever found, color wise, and the color really comes out better in a shaded light rather than bright sunlight, for some odd reason. The clay stain even gives it a nice contrast too. Personally I dont care if I get all the clay stains off or not, due to that very reason. I know some people only like them cleaned up and shiny and to each their own.

The next day we met up with Docia and the Memphis MAGS Club at the National Forest, where Docia and I have often found some really pretty pieces, big and small, eroding from the dirt and clay banks. We decided this would make a great location for the club and since we are both members of MAGS, we invited them up to find some great material. And boy did everyone find some nice stuff, plus we had great weather as well. Ralph found a nice honey hole with some of the prettiest brown and yellow bubbly druse quartz I have ever seen, two in the ground that were quite large and several smaller pieces on the ground within thirty feet of the buried ones. Here is the first one he found, Missy is guarding it til he returns with his pry bar….

 and here it is up closer….

Well after about ten minutes, Ralph came to the conclusion that this thing was really deep in the dirt and possibly oblong shaped, so he gave up on it and moved over to the other one he found, which was even more beautiful and bubbly, about fifteen feet away.

He spotted this one after the other one, had them both dug out just a little when he called me over to take a look. This after only being here an hour maybe, and scattered all around both of these two beauties, laying on top of the ground and in the leaves, were at least twenty smaller druse quartz pieces with lots of bubbly brown and yellow druse crystals. Absolutely beautiful stuff. Here is a closeup of the second big one buried in the dirt.

Ralph was starting to wear out trying to dig down and pry this puppy out, so one of the MAGS members, Alan, came over and lent him a couple of hands and hammered the pry bar down more and then pried it out for him. Thanks Alan!

what a chunk of brown bubbly druse this thing was…and heavy..wow was it ever heavy, made your back hurt just to look at it…let alone think about lifting that puppy…..

….Ralph decided to take a break and walked up to his van to grab his hammer and chisels. I told him to grab a bottle of water while he was up there so he didnt overheat out there. While he was gone, I decided to look around and found a few more smaller pieces that he had located, even located a few of my own….

Ralph was able to cobb about fifty pounds off his beautiful bubbly druse chunk and was quite happy. We hunted and collected til about 2 pm and then went over to the Bixby Gas Station for lunch, light lunch for me cause I had a fire dept dinner that evening with prime rib, so I ate light.  Docia and Ralph chowed down on a huge taco salad that is homemade there…this place has great food and makes  a great rest stop, too. Has its own dining room inside too. They also have an ice cream bar, too.  All in all, a great day for visiting and collecting both.