This has been an unusual month of August for us, because it is normally a very hot month, temperature wise daily, and last year we had temps averaging from 102 to 108 daily, but this year, we are quite the opposite. Most of the first three weeks, the temps were in the 80`s, and then as we progressed past the middle of the month, the temps began to slowly climb, and now, the last week, we are in the high 90`s, and while still cooler than last year, the humidity makes one think our temps are much higher. Plus we haven`t had any rain for two weeks and are hoping for some relief soon.
I took off the 18th so I could return to MFQ and see what could be found….my supervisor had returned from her vacation and I had more overtime built up, so took the day off to do some collecting…Missy and I arrived mid morning to a beautiful cloudy day. I grabbed my tools and bags and made a fairly quick walk around to see if I could find any pretties laying loose in the gravel or dirt, then dug around at the base of the cove wall to see if I could locate another pocket…
….not finding any, I then scraped around on the wall to see if I could locate any there. I found a few shallow pockets and pulled out a few nice crystals, then took a short break for water. The temps were climbing into the low nineties and I then grabbed another bag and headed to the knob to see if I could locate another pocket there….
I first climbed up to the pocket that Ray had found a few weeks back that was chock full of nestles chocolate colored dogtooth crystals…this was no easy task this time because there was a lot of loose gravel and dirt on the way up on the left side next to the rock knob….
….so I had to find a different way up that was more solid and not prone to sliding down on me as I climbed up. I climbed up on the bigger rocks to the right of the knob, they are firmly entrenched and not going anywhere anytime soon, although some of the smaller ones moved a bit on me under my feet as I moved over to the knob pocket. I decided to dig around in the original pocket to see if I could locate anymore missed crystals…the last time there, I had found a few that were either overlooked or left behind….someone had worked the pocket a bit more extensively after Ray had worked it initially. However, whoever was there after Ray, had left behind about a half dozen really nice dogtooths, laying in the loose dirt when I found them. Here is how the pocket looks now…kind of L shaped in the rock wall….
I found a couple more while up there, and then decided to scratch around the pocket as well…and while digging around in the loose dirt at the front of the pocket, I started finding some dark gray colored poker chips, then a small cluster popped up…and the next thing I knew, a few dogtooths surfaced as well….after wrapping the few up and placing them in my bag, I decided to take a short break, go grab another bag with more wrapping cloths, and headed back to the pocket. I climbed back up and within a few minutes, some larger dogtooths were uncovered, leading me to believe there was yet another pocket under the original one that Ray found…and soon enough, I was pulling this one out next….
…and then I pulled several more out, many of them smaller dogtooths, but very pretty and frosted over. Following are some images of the crystals I found there…took me about an hour to clean out the bottom pocket completely….
Afterwards, I took Missy to Alley Spring Mill and we took a walk around the mill pond and photographed the mill…and she was able to get a few drinks of good cold water, too….it sure is a very pretty old mill….
