I normally have to work on my birthday and this year was no different…I had checked at work to see about taking the day off, as it fell on a weekend this year, but one of my co-workers had taken a week of vacation and it was one of his vacation days, so then I looked into taking Sunday off, but another co-worker had taken it off to head south on a week of vacation, so I just waited til Tuesday instead.

Missy and I met up with Docia at 5:30 am at our secret hunting spot and were greeted by a pretty sunrise on arrival…

Since we arrived so early and the sky was a bit cloudy, we had to wait an extra thirty minutes for good light to even illuminate our hunting area well enough to spot any pocket indicators. We both set out to check the area and quickly discovered even more material had been removed, so we walked around it first to check and see if there was anything left behind…we found a few small odds and ends, and one the size of a bowling ball that had one chip on it sticking out, but that was about it.

After walking around and checking a few areas with the rakes and getting a good workout, the only thing I had found of any substance, was a blue colored poker chip twin with a dark gray interior, reminiscent of the blue hole I had found last fall….

Docia soon called me over to where she had found what appeared to be some nice indicators of a promising pocket nearby…

..to the left of her boots, you can see scratchings in the gravel where she began searching and found a few odds and ends, single crystals and some chunks, and moved up the hill to where she is seen sitting, and then started digging out some nice big orange colored crystals…

….these guys sunlit here….

…and while sitting there, as I returned with my camera, she pulled out this pretty little druse plate in front of me…

…..and as she picked up her whisk broom and started cleaning up the area she was digging in, more big crystals started popping up out of the dirt right in front of our eyes, and the only words that were coming out of our mouths were  WOW, WOW, WOW….

…and within seconds the pocket had expanded about eighteen inches across and started moving to the right, with crystals popping up all over this dirt field…

….and as you can see in the two prior photos, there are crystals and plates all over the place, like the ones in the next photo…

…two photos back you can see a big rock where the pocket was moving to the right…it stopped at that rock, or so we thought, til we discovered it was loose and pulling it out and turning it over, discovered this as well…

…a big druse plate acting as one of two anchors for the extensive pocket…and as soon as I pulled this anchor plate out, I pulled this beautiful combo plate out that was positioned underneath it….

….and again, more WOWS and our minds just amazed at the beauty that we kept finding and pulling out of the dirt and gravel in front of us…I was so glad at this point that Docia had invited me to join her in digging and exploring this pocket…the next photo shows the remaining anchor druse before I pulled it out of the way…

..and more crystals seen in the dirt as well as many we have already pulled out and placed up on the ledge and now backlit by the rising sun….

..Docia decided to put her 2.5 lb hammer up there to give you an idea of their size and perspective…

With the two large anchor druse plates out of the way, we discovered a ledge behind with some poker chip inclusions embedded in it and even more loose crystals in the dirt…

..and the next suprise to pop out of the dirt was this beautiful  plate with chips attached…

..and we soon came to the start of the roof of the main pocket, and began to dig down deeper…

….and this ledge is what was hiding behind the anchor druse plates…

..we cleared the pieces of rock out of the way to the right and started seeing indicators of more crystals and plates very quickly…

…so we carefully began removing those…I was reaching in and pulling them out and handing them back to Docia and she was placing crystals on the ledge with the others, plates on the plate area, and chunks were tossed down the hill…within a few minutes I could see plates hanging upside down all over and crystals underneath all over…

..including this bright yellow colored crystal…..

..that actually turned out to be a two or three color crystal, the bright yellow just one of the shades of it…and as I removed more goodies, there were still more to take their place…

…and more plates of some of the prettiest druse we had ever seen, coming out of this pocket, some visibly hanging upside down and some only visible from the backsides…

..and it was about this point in time that we began to notice some of the crystals coming out were exposed at the very top of the point in a dogtooth formation in a bright yellow color, some showed signs of erosion by the poker chip forrmation surrounding the inner dogtooth crystal…check out this one on the ledge right above the hammer in the center of the photo…

 

…and we were pulling out these colorful druse plates too….

..and by now, the pocket has deepened even more into a small caverns, big enough almost, to crawl into…

..and we began pulling even more plates out….

..and we were taking turns reaching back to our shoulders to reach them and anything else we could remove, although not without great effort one way or another…

..and pretty soon, Docia was telling me about a large plate that she could barely reach and was loose, but something was holding it in there…so she got her hammer and chisel out and began working the front of that cavern roofline back so she could reach in there more easily, and within just a few moments, pulled this beautiful large druse plate out…

…one we discovered a few seconds later, has some marcasite embedded in it because it was sparkling multiple colors in the sunlight…something we hadn`t seen in this location til today….she also started pulling out multiples of dogtooth crystals as well….

…one that you could look down into from the top with a unique view…

..by this time, we were both tired and it was beginning to get very hot outside, and so we decided to call it a day, but not before Docia attempted to crawl back into the caverns pocket and pull a few more dogtooth crystals out…

…she has been telling me for weeks now, how she would like to find a pocket big enough to walk or crawl into and she came very close to getting her wish today.

The next few photos show some of my picks from this pocket, all cleaned up…

…..and some of the poker chips with the tips exposed…

..and another triple chip with the tips exposed in the next one…

..focus is slightly off on some of these, but you get the idea I`m sure..