Fletcher Mine Additions to My Collection

Posted on July 12, 2015 by jwj

I picked up some beautiful calcites and chalcopyrite to add to my collection back in May from my friend Dave….

…then a few weeks later, he let me know that he had some stuff in that was even prettier, double terminated calcite crystals many of them three to four inches in length, and surrounded by, even embedded in clusters of gorgeous pyrite !! I had to go take a look and to say I was astounded would be an understatement….

…so here is what my collection from the Doe Run Mines looks like now…well should say this is one countertop out of five now….

…then there is this shelf as well…..

…as this one….

..and then I changed the first one around a little….

…hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I do…I picked up another batch of them from him on Friday, do not have them photographed just yet, not even unwrapped yet…but I will get there eventually. 🙂

jwjphoto7@gmail.com

Ben E. Clement Mineral Museum`s 2015 Annual Show & Dig

Posted on June 11, 2015 by jwj

I am back to work after taking a week off to rest up from the last few weeks, taking care of Missy and saying goodbye was pretty rough to go through and just exhausted me more than you can imagine…we spent sixteen years together and looking back now, I can safely say it was immense joy and she was a great companion to have in my life, and I really miss her. She was with me on almost all of my trips in and out of state rockhunting, sightseeing, and pretty much everywhere in town and the local area, even to fire calls when I was photographing for the local paper. She even made it to a barn fire with me in a fire truck one day, a few years back, when I wasn`t able to leave her in my truck at one of the stations out in the country, on a very hot day…I just lifted her up into the cab of the pumper and off we went to the fire and she rode just fine…think she enjoyed that as much as I did….lots of good times to remember for sure. I didn`t go anywhere much or do anything much, while I was taking care of her the last couple of weeks she was with me, stayed home and just took care of her and spent every minute with her, picking her up and dusting her off each time she fell over or just didn`t have the strength to get her legs up under her to walk, day and night….one of the last trips she made with me was down to the Fenton area to pick up a huge crystal cluster that I purchased from a friend who was moving from a house to an apartment and had no more room for…..

…my nephew Zach met me at Eureka and rode with me and Missy down to Fenton and he helped me in loading it into my truck…it weighs alot…covered with lead cubes and chalcopyrite on the back side and base…..

….and it was all both of us could do to load it into the bed of my Colorado pickup, mainly due to its size and weight both, hard to move clusters with sharp edged crystals around. After wrapping it up good, I returned him to his car with much appreciation, and then Missy and I returned home, where my neighbor Glenn O`Leary helped me unload it and place it into one of my flower beds…..

I am doing better now and definitely appreciate everyone`s prayers, thoughts, hugs, and good vibes the past couple of weeks, as I move on to the next chapter of my life.

Last week I drove up to the Kansas City area to look at and test drive some newer trucks, I had been looking at Toyota Tacoma pickups for some time, always liked the looks of them and they have always been great workhorse trucks with good mileage too. While I have enjoyed my Colorado pickup the last six years, and put many miles on it, I couldn`t afford a newer one, they cost almost as much as my house did when I purchased it several years ago and they sure aren`t going to last as long as it, and a used one wouldn`t gain me much either, so I turned to the Tacoma`s instead. I test drove one at Jefferson City on the way up, and I have to say the salesman, Terry Volkart at Riley Toyota up there, was a very nice guy to deal with and talk to…while I did not purchase the silver Tacoma from him there, I definitely would have had no problem doing so due to his honesty and great personality to deal with there. I was very impressed with the staff there and while they made me a sweet deal on their Tacoma, the one I found waiting for me at Lees Summit the next day, was just a bit better.

After spending the night in Columbia, looking at a couple of trucks there, and having a late dinner with a good friend, I drove on up to Blue Springs the next morning and visited with Carrie Siems, a good rockhunting friend and dropped off a good will package of nice crystals from some area Doe Run Mines for her son Bentley, who was sleeping in that morning, and then drove on over to Lees Summit to meet up with Ken Auch, the salesman with Dave Cross Motors, who I had been talking to by email the past few weeks regarding a red colored Tacoma pickup. While I was unable to get up there to check it out myself, I had a friend in the KC area that was able to drive over and take a look at it for me. Jim Shelton and his wife Leah Raye Green Shelton, have been great friends for many years…Leah Raye`s parents Bill and Vi Green were our next door neighbors on Vine Street in my early years of growing up in Sullivan, Bill got my Dad started on the Sullivan Volunteer Fire Department over 55 years ago and found him a job with Complete Auto back then as well, transporting Chevrolet and GMC cars and trucks to auto dealerships in the Midwest. Jim is retired from his job of inspecting and troubleshooting the huge turbines that GE built and operated all over the world…he is one of those meticulous guys that inspects and checks out every detail on a fine machine, and boy did he do just that when he drove over to check out this truck for me. Ken and the other salesmen were very impressed with Jim and his inspection methods, leaving no stone untouched or turned over. He reported back to me and I decided I was definitely going to take a hard look at it if it was still there when I arrived…it was and I was equally impressed with it after a short test drive on I-470 and thru some of the local roads of Kansas City as well…I liked the color of it too, it seemed to be a darker candy apple red in the cloudy light that day up there, but in direct sunlight, it would turn to an almost fire engine red instead. After some back and forth on their truck and mine, they finally made me a good deal that I couldn`t pass up, and I drove home in it that afternoon, arriving home in time to get the truck packed and ready to roll down to western Kentucky the next morning, to assist Tina and her staff with the Ben E. Clement Mineral Museum`s Annual Gem Show and Fluorite Digs in Marion.

For the past few years, I have driven down there to free them up to take care of other responsibilities and hosted the Eureka Mine both days for them. The first year of that required me to get up early each morning and drive to the mine to start the pump, pumping water from the pit so that rockhounds showing up after the 9 am start each day, would have easier access to dig in the pit of the mine. I would also open the gate on my way in and then open the gate to the parking area in the cow pasture across the road. While the pump was pumping water from the pit, I always made a walk around the tailing piles and edge of the pit to see if I could spot anything promising so that when the diggers arrived, I could point out the promising areas to them and then would help them throughout the day to find some beautiful crystals there.

This year, I didn`t have to rise so early as the old water filled pit was no longer being used, a group of us had been there a few weeks ago and helped them dig out a new pit area and it was not water filled for the most part. After stopping off at the museum on my way to the mine Saturday morning, and visiting with Fred, one of the board members, and Tina`s husband Brad, wishing him a Happy Birthday, and Bill Frazer, who gave me a key to the gate, I drove on down to the Eureka Mine….Bill owns the property and is the President of the Museum Board, and is a tremendous supporter of rockhounds down there. I then opened the gate to the parking area and made my walk around the tailings piles and new pit to find the promising areas to point out to the diggers once they started arriving. I parked my newer truck under a big shade tree next to the mine pit and this is how it looks in shaded light and direct sunlight both….

…and this is what the mine area looks like these days…the old pit on the left side where the trackhoe operator is cleaning out a bit on the south side when we were there in May…and the new tailing piles to the right and behind Alan and I…I was pointing out the bench of fluorite to Alan, that bench runs right up through the new pit area and is chock full of pockets of beautiful cubes of fluorite…..

and here is it as it looked last Friday from the logging road that runs alongside the mine pit….

…as I walked around the tailing piles, I noticed alot of tracks left from deer visiting the area….

…we rarely see the deer but always see the evidence of their presence in the area. Here is the new pit as it looked that morning from the tailing piles side looking back to the road where my truck is parked….

…and the old pit to my right as well, still filled with water although not as deep as in years past. If you look farther back, you can see where the diggers drive in and enter the cow pasture at the very back of the photo to park at….

…and here are areas in the bench of the new pit where fluorite can be seen…one of the many promising areas to start searching at for cubes….

…this turned out to be a very promising area where a lot of pretty cubes came from this past weekend by many diggers….

…and this is an old shallow shaft that we uncovered during our machine dig, now filled with mud and was a few feet deep, providing some a nice cool respite from the heat that weekend….

…and before you knew it, the first wave of diggers started coming down the road and arriving to start digging for fluorite…pretty soon, there were several of them digging into the tailing piles, what we consider soft rock mining and digging, and some were tackling the bench and vein in the new pit, which we refer to as hard rock mining….I would give them their choice on their arrival and point out the areas for each one and let them decide where to go start digging at…..

…there were also some areas further up the road on the right side where we had Danny, the trackhoe operator, stir up some old tailings in the woods and some folks found some nice cubes laying on top up there during the day too. By midday on Saturday, there was a family with four little gals that showed up briming full of enthusiasm and ready to tackle anything…their parents sat down up above the new pit and watched their girls go at it, working on the tailing pile removed from the shaft area….

…while these two guys decided to dig in and handle some hard rock mining on the bench nearby….

…the guy on the right stayed hydrated throughout the day and by the end of the day had found some very nice cubes of fluorite, he was one of the many happy diggers that went home that day with some nice material for his collection….Mary one of my fluorite friends traveled up for the annual show again and is seen below on the far side of the old pit checking out one of her favorite digging areas there, while a young family dug into the slope below her….

…and some were simply content to dig into the softer dirt of the tailing piles above us where one can find some nice plates and chunks of cubes dug up by the excavator, you just have to be wiling to stay and dig til you find them in there….and willing to withstand the temps as they rise throughout the day, once you find a good spot to dig in though, some bring umbrellas and park themselves there for the day…

…one of the little blonde gals decided she needed more tools, so she returned to Mom and Dad to get them, and then had to cross the muddy trough between them, despite my warnings to them and everyone else that the mud there could be quite soft and deep, she decided to cross there anyway…much to everyone`s amusement….

…and after getting stuck and extricating herself from the soupy mud there, not an easy feat especially after you have been digging there awhile…she decided to do the long jump across it…

…and flew over it like a graceful deer too….

…their Dad told us all on their arrival that this was his work crew, he was going to let them do the manual labor, but later as they became tired, the tables changed and Dad had to get down into the mud to show them what hard rock mining was all about to extricate the pretty stuff. Here they are at noon, giving Dad the bad news….

There was another young Dad there, this one from the Mayfield Kentucky area and had the beginnings of a baseball team with him…four nice young lads who proceeded to walk around and check out the entire place….

…and this Dad had no problem getting down and tackling the hard rock mining in the pit either….

…while his youngest boy discovered there was not only water in the creek next to the mine, but tadpoles as well and for a few minutes, the focus of his boys shifted from pretty crystals to tadpoles….

…and after a short water break at noon, everyone got back to the job at hand….

…and by 2 pm, even more diggers had shown up to embrace the unusually high temps for so early in the season, and dig in….some left and went to check out the other three mines offered for the weekend, and some even returned in the afternoon to the Eureka Mine, which holds the most promise for finding nice cubes…I always take a few flats of older material from my collection over the years of digging there, to give to the rockhounds who either strike out and don`t find anything at all or find just a little stuff…always like to see folks leave there happy….specially the little ones….

…and about 2 pm, a young couple walked up to me as I was standing on the road over the pit, watching the diggers below and handing out advice when requested…and introduced themselves as Cody and Misty…I had talked to them the week before on the McRocks board website…they are a husband-wife team of geologists who moved to the Jonesboro, Arkansas area to teach geology at the local state college there, and came over to have some fun and find some cubes of fluorite as well. After pointing out the lay of the land there, they chose to get down into the pit and dig in themselves and see what they could find…

…and a few min later, I got down into the pit to show a young Dad from Wisconsin, where to look for nice cubes along the bench…it was an area where most people had been walking on all day, between a promising looking pocket and the bench…once I uncovered that area, the young Dad revved back up and began looking more closely and trying to find some nice plates for his young son Zach, who was starting out at the age of eight…which is about the same age that I started rockhunting too….once we uncovered the bed of cubes, Cody and Misty came over and helped out too…

…and shortly after, the young Dad pulled out a nice plates of beautiful cubes and their family packed up to return home with some nice cubes for Zach`s budding collection. Cody and Misty and Mary decided to tackle the vug that was now uncovered and full of cubes, some of them measuring about three inches square…..

…Cody became stuck in the mud and at one point lost one of his sandals even….

..but was able to retrieve it shortly after….lucky guy….sometimes you never find them til years later….

…and then was able to more fully concentrate on the vug of cubes instead….

..and while down there in the mud and water, he decided to take my advice and feel around below the bench for more vugs and pockets…..

…finding none, he decided to see if he could pop out some cubes with Mary`s pry bar instead….

…and was able to do so with some limited success….popping out a couple of smaller plates on the side closest to him….after that, everyone decided to pack it in and call it a day….

…and get cleaned up to head to the hotel and supper at the Oasis Southwest Grill and Steakhouse….here is Cody and Misty showing off one of their finds at the base of the pit wall earlier in the afternoon, shortly after they arrived and dug in….

if you have any questions or wanna say hi, give me a shout at jwjphoto7@gmail.com

Cancer Claimed My Buddy Girl Missy

Posted on May 31, 2015 by jwj

Many of you who know me and have gone rockhunting with me here locally, or on my travels out of state, know that my buddy girl Missy accompanied me for the past several years…she basically traveled with me everywhere except to work. She was the sweetest dog I have ever had, very loving and very protective as well, a Border Collie for the most part with a little bit of Black Lab mixed in…..

…and even those who I have not personally met, but who have followed this blog site, know of her from my stories with photos over the years. She was faithful and generally stayed by my side or close by when I was rockhunting at quarries and mines…..

…I acquired her several years ago from the Humane Society`s local office and she and I became inseparable for the next sixteen years, she traveled with me on my vacation trips in the fall to Colorado and Arkansas, fire calls when I went to photograph the scenes for the local paper, shopping, sightseeing, and pretty much all of my rockhunting trips in and out of state as well.

She even went to a few fires with me, riding with me in a fire truck or two even. I was out delivering flowers for Watson`s Florists one day, in my personal truck, when my pager went off for a barn fire in the Japan area, north of town. We were close to Station 3 so I drove over there, got the pumper out, loaded her up into the cab, and away we went responding to the barn fire. We were first on the scene, finding the barn well involved in fire…I had the ac on full blast for her in the fire truck cab and she was fine, we were fighting fire when the rest of the fire department arrived to assist us and no flowers were harmed as I was done delivering when the call came in.

Shortly after coming to live with me, she alerted me to smoke filling my home one night, before the smoke detector even sounded that was twenty feet closer to the smoke source…which turned out to be my old fridge compressor catching fire under the fridge and igniting the linoleum floor. I called the fire house and the guys came down to check it and found the source to be the fridge compressor. For a dog that didn`t bark much, she sure had a knack for it at the right times and had no problem alerting when someone was approaching the house or door to a motel room as well. She even chased some guys down the street after they tried to break into my Ford Explorer several years ago, parked under my carport…I never heard them but she sure did…needless to say, they never came back.

Missy began experiencing some problems with her mobility a few weeks ago and I took her to my local Vet to have her checked, figuring I would need to get her a cortizone shot for arthritis….however after checking her out and taking an xray as well, the news was much more grim than I ever expected. Dr Koch confirmed his suspicions with the xray and told me that she had a large tumor growth attached to her spleen…I felt like someone had just punched me in the stomach and I just about broke down right then…luckily, he knew exactly how I felt…he has 2 Border Collies as well…and he gave her a shot and suggested that I take her home for doggy hospice care.

I was relieved yet dreaded what was to come eventually….I watched her slide downhill the next two weeks…she took one more trip with me to pick up a huge crystal that I purchased from a collector nearby, but she eventually stopped eating even though my Mom and I were trying everything…the girls at Du Kum Inn were cooking her hamburger patties for us and she ate them for about the first week, we even tried canned dogfood cause it was softer for her, but she eventually just completely stopped eating everything and just continued to drink water all the time. Her mobility got worse, she was sliding on my wood floors all the time, so I put more rugs down to help her get around better and that helped her out alot.

After a couple of weeks tho, her breathing became more labored, to the point I worried that she would suffer a heart attack, and she got to the point that she could no longer get around much at all, I was carrying her up and down the few stairs…and I decided it was time to put her down…something that everyone can tell you that I did not want to do, but I could not bear to watch her get worse and struggle to breathe, so earlier this week on Tuesday, I took her to my Vet and had him put her down…it was a matter of time at any rate, her age was against her for surgery to remove it, and she had lived four years past the average lifespan of Border Collies, so I felt blessed to have had her for that long, even though I truly miss her to this day. My house is empty without her and mornings are the hardest time cause she was always waiting for me at the door when I came home from work, always as glad to see me as I was to see her. One of my dispatcher friends sent me a poem that relates to our pets as angels on loan to us….

…and I truly look forward to the day I see her once again as spelled out in the Rainbow Bridge poem that my friend Peggy had sent me as well…

…I truly appreciate all of your thoughts and prayers for Missy and I over the past few weeks and hope to find yet another sweet and loving companion pet again soon.

Machine Dig Eureka Mine May 2015

Posted on May 5, 2015 by jwj

For the past ten years, I have joined with a small group of rockhound friends from all over the country and performed a machine dig at the Eureka Fluorite Mine in western Kentucky…for a couple of reasons. Our main goal has always been to help the folks at the BE Clement Mineral Museum, by digging out the old mine pit, which provides safe digging opportunities for rockhounds of all ages for the remainder of the warm season. By doing so, we remove alot of heavy silt and mud from many of the digging areas, mud that would require hours of hand digging to remove to even get close to the crystals…believe me, we have been there and have done the hand digging ourselves in the first couple of years before we even found out we could use a machine to remove it…we literally wore ourselves out but the rewards were well worth the efforts, too. There are some that would criticize us for what we did, call us opportunists and other things, and yet, given the chance, they would have done the same thing albeit for different reasons than ours.

It is becoming increasingly difficult each year to find places to go and collect rocks and minerals, a passion of mine since I was about eight years old, a passion shared by thousands of people worldwide. The folks who operate the mineral museum at Marion, Kentucky, share that same passion and have opened their hearts to thousands of rockhounds for the past ten years, sharing the passion as well as their making several old mines available to dig into to find buried treasures. Many of the mines in this area of western Kentucky date back to the 1800`s and early 1900`s and were originally operated and mined for zinc and silver, then fluorite later on. The Eureka Mine has always been known for beautiful deep purple and yellow fluorite cubes, occasionally a rockhound will find small lead cubes and sphalerite attached to them as well as smithsonite in a beach sand color, and we have found pockets of greenockite as well. Several years ago, the board members of the Clement Mineral Museum decided to make some of the old mines in the area, available to rockhounds on certain dates each year…that expanded to one public dig per month from April to October and an annual gem show and dig the first weekend of June. Their efforts paid off and thousands of rockhounds in the past ten to fifteen years have greatly benefitted from it…it has become one of my favorite places to visit a few times a year. My group normally performs a machine dig early in the springtime, however this year we were not able to locate a trackhoe operator that was available to work with, so we had to wait until one became available, and that was last weekend.

After driving down and scouting the exploratory digs performed in April, I checked with my group to see if anyone was interested in a machine dig for May this year, after Bill told me that he could find us a trackhoe operator to work with. Several in my group had begun contacting me back in January and February, indicating that they were interested in traveling to the Eureka Mine again to look for fluorite and asked if I would be interested as well…I definitely was and so I set about finding out who was still on board with the idea. It turned out that several were going to be unavailable the first weekend in May, so I had to recruit a few new guys to join me…Alan Schaeffer is a good friend from the Memphis Club MAGS that I am also a part of, and had indicated to me on my way home from my spring trip in Arkansas, that he would love to join me on my next dig there, so I naturally let him know about it and he said yes. Jeff Deere, one of my good rockhunting friends from northern Georgia, also was on board but was tied up that weekend so he found a great replacement in Mark Bishop, and soon there were three of us…Alan found another guy to join us, MAGS member Marc Mueller, and we were set. I let Bill Frazer know that the four of us would be down there ready to go Saturday morning.

I again drove down there after my shift ended at work early Friday morning, and arrived around noon at the museum. I visited with Tina and Sherry for about an hour and then drove out to make sure I had the right key to the gate…and even though the gate was wide open, it turned out my key wouldn`t open the lock, so I returned to the museum and found board member Russ there…Russ also works full time in geology related work and accompanied me back to the gate to resolve the lock issues. We drove on down to the mine to make sure no one was down there trespassing and looked around a bit…passing the trackhoe parked on top of the hill….

….they had a torrential rain shower a few days before and there were cubes and hints of purple laying all over the tailing piles and the bench, as well as pieces of fluorite left by the group there in April…some nice stuff even, which greatly surprised me, but as Russ said, they must have found some really super nice stuff if they left this material behind. Needless to say, I was even more ready and rarin to go the next morning.

As I drove over to the hotel at Kuttawa, I passed through some beautiful flower fields at Fredonia….

…I had never seen these flowers down there before, having never been there before in May, so they were quite a sight to see and a local young man there told me they were ground up for canola oil, so most folks called them canola flowers he said.

I drove on over to the Days Inn and got checked in and then took a nice nap….woke up in time to have supper with Alan when he arrived and checked in. Marc arrived from Memphis soon after and we walked next door to the Oasis Southwest Grill and Steakhouse, one of the best steakhouses in the country in my humble opinion. I eat there all the time, food is absolutely great and the service isn`t bad either. Steve, the General Manager there, is one of those guys that truly cares about the quality of food and your dining experience, he moves around the huge dining areas and checks on everyone…and if something is wrong, he does his best to fix it. Alan found that out that night….I ordered my usual, one inch thick grilled pork chops with a bbq glaise on top…he ordered the eight ounce filet mignon medium rare…as soon as he cut into it, he knew it wasn`t right, overcooked…so they took it back and left him with his veggies. He soon had consumed the veggies and they were nice enough to bring more with the new steak, which now was undercooked…this time Steve came over to check with him, offered him another steak cooked right this time…they left him with the undercooked one, and said they would be back in eight minutes with yet another steak…I know how he felt, been there myself before and he was hungry, so he wound up eating both the undercooked one and then the properly cooked one, and got two steaks for the price of one. My chops, as usual, were cooked to perfection. Marc had appetizers, having ate before he left home. We all retired early in anticipation of the dig the next day, Marc camped out on the lake nearby.

I was up early Saturday morning, expecting Mark Bishop to arrive around 6:30, as he decided to leave Georgia about 3 am and drive up thru Nashville…and as it was, he arrived about 30 min early and we were able to have a short breakfast there at the hotel, Marc joining us soon after. After a short stop at the donut shop in Eddyville, we were headed to the mine to meet up with Bill Frazer, who arrived there just ahead of us and unlocked the gate. We visited with Bill for a few minutes and then heard the trackhoe fire up on top of the hill…while waiting for the trackhoe operator to walk it down the hill, I took some photos of the new pit area as the guys walked around surface collecting….

Pretty soon, we heard the trackhoe come walking down the hill…Bill had told me the operator would have to veer off the road into the field on the other side and cross the creek at a pasture crossing, so I walked over and opened the gate for him….

…and then walked it over to the mine where he stopped and introduced himself as Danny, said he was looking for Mr. Johnson, lol….

…we lined out digging plans out for him and he got started right away…first order of business was to try and retrieve the pump hoseline that was mired in the mud, for the museum, who had been unable to remove it by manpower….

..and as soon as he got that completed, we had him work on the new pit area, removing some mud and cleaning it out in general to make it easier on us as well as any other diggers to find more crystals…the next three photos were taken by Mark Bishop and shows Danny digging into the new pit area….

…while I point out the fault area fluorite at the base of the bench to Alan…

..pretty soon it was apparent to us that we needed Danny to turn over the bench so we could see if there were any better material underneath….first photo by Mark Bishop….

…we then checked the bench area for cubes while Danny did some work with the tailing piles behind us. I then had him dig into the tailings on the north end of the pit and stir them up a bit for future collectors too….

…he then walked it back over to the south side and cleaned out the bench pit wall on the road side for us….

…there was a mudhole down there that turned out to be extremely deeper in mud than what we thought, at least on the wall side, while on the bench side it was maybe ten inches deep at most….you can see it in the light colored muddy spot in the photo below….

..and here Danny is removing about four feet of mud from that one little spot alone….photo by Mark Bishop….

…as the guys were digging into the overturned bench area and pulling some nice cubes out…I walked up the road with Danny and the trackhoe and had him make an exploratory cut across the other area across the road….

..during this cut, he came across some massive orange colored fluorite, there were no cubes at all, just massive spar, but it sure was pretty. Danny lowered me down in the bucket once again…I have to say it was smoother than any elevator ride I have ever been on and I felt completely safe too…I pulled some pieces of it out of the wall and we found some in the tailings above too. Afterwards, I had him stir up some of the old exploratory piles laying around the forest floor near the logging road, and then we paid him and thanked him for his immense help to us.

We divided up our finds and Mark Bishop headed home to Georgia….while Alan and Marc and I continued to dig around and find some good material before wearing out about an hour later. After another great dinner at Oasis, Marc headed home to Memphis, and Alan and I stayed over and then Alan headed home in the morning and I drove over to MFQ to check out the quarry there…check out my next story on that part of the trip….I pulled out the biggest poker chip cluster I have ever found there. 🙂

if you have any questions or wanna say hi, give me a shout at jwjphoto7@gmail.com

Eureka Mine Scouting Trip April 2015

Posted on May 5, 2015 by jwj

I drove down the day before their first scheduled open dig in April, leaving work on Friday morning at sunrise….

….and boy what a beautiful sunrise it was…..

….arriving in Marion by noon. After visiting with Tina and Sherry at the museum, and taking them some goodies to sell in their museum gift shop to further help them in their efforts, I went with Bill out to the mine to see what they had already dug out…finding that Bill had dug into the older pit area on the south side and over to the old logging road. They had made an exploratory trench cut in October of 2014 and a large vug of beautiful fluorite plates were discovered in the bottom of that cut at the very back wall of it….

…..so this dig expanded upon that effort to locate even more purple, as Bill stated to me. He had the operator stop digging as soon as they started seeing purple….here is how it looked when I scouted it in early April….

…and found some pockets of purple fluorite all over the place in the new pit area, most of it centered around this bench left in the middle….

…none of that was really spectacular looking, but did indicate that there was some good stuff to be found in that general area, it was down at the vein or fault level, which is where we have found it in years past. There were also several old bottles found during this dig in October, like this snuff bottle I located in the tailing piles…

…and on up the old logging road that runs along the mine, Bill had some exploratory digging done, looking for the fault that runs alongside the logging road, as indicated on the old maps…..

….and where I found a small plate of nice cubes that morning….

…there were some other cubes laying around in that same area, again giving me good indicators that more could be found there. I walked back down to the new pit area….

…and climbed down into the pit area to do some looking around…finding a few pockets of cubes and digging out a couple of basketball sized chunks with some cubes on them as well….

…I decided to stick around and see if I could help the rockhounds the next morning at the open dig. I arrived at the museum about 8 am and visited with Tina again, who told me that Bill was tied up with some work and asked if I could provide the group with a safety talk and then lead them out to the mine…we stepped outside and I gave them some history on the mine and then they followed me through town and out to the mine. After I pointed out some good areas to check out, based on what I had observed the day before, they scattered out and began digging….

…and this group went up the road to the other spot where I found the plate of cubes the day before….

….I was up there when a gal pulled out a huge plate of cubes after digging down two feet into the pile to liberate it….let me tell you she went home one happy camper….I walked back down to the new pit area and found this group on break…

I left there about 1 pm that day and headed home and heard later in the week from Tina that they had found some nice stuff after I left…the young couple in the photo above were sitting in a prime spot and should have pulled out some nice plates. The couple across in front of them, were from the St Louis area, not far from where I work even, and the guy by the green bucket is from Effingham and on the volunteer fire department there…there was a family from Ohio that liked to go flint hunting too.

Arkansas in the Springtime

Posted on April 10, 2015 by jwj

Ray Roth called me back in February and told me that he was getting tired of the winter blahs and weather and would like to meet me at Hot Springs in April. Ray was going to Texas for a metal detecting treasure trip and visit some friends there in early March, but figured he would be back and ready for Arkansas by the first of April. I was able to secure enough vacation time at work to get nearly a week off and we coordinated our schedules to arrive there on the last day of March. Initially, my parents were going to ride down with Missy and I, they were homesick and wanted to see their birthplaces and visit with family and friends there, however some unplanned things came up that prevented them from going with us. My Mom and Dad were both raised in the same area of western Arkansas on dairy farms, in dairy farm country, an area that I am also very fond of.

This time of year I am normally down in western Kentucky with friends helping the staff of the Mineral Museum at Marion to expand the collecting opportunities at the Eureka Mine, enabling rockhounds to go there and dig more easily throughout the remainder of the warm season to find beautiful fluorite treasures. This spring tho, the staff was unable to track down any machinery to assist us in our efforts and we had to delay those plans…that enabled me to meet up with Ray at Hot Springs instead. I contacted my buddy Adam Lagaveen and let him know I would be driving down there on the 31st and he said he would be ready to meet up again and provide me with some nice stuff and more info on the Mt Ida area. Adam is a super nice guy and a wealth of information on quartz crystal collecting in that area, as well as a very talented craftsman of Native American artifacts…you should see the Indian knives and arrowheads that he has crafted from raw materials like rainbow obsidian and novaculite in various colors on his FB page at Adam Lageveen`s Lithic Art…truly beautiful stuff !! Adam was also raised in the area that my parents are from and knows some of my second cousins. Combined with the info he had provided back in the fall, I had researched several locations to check out this time and was looking forward to seeing what additional information he had for me.

Missy and I got on the road the morning of Tuesday, March 31st, at an early hour, down around Springfield by the time the sun came up over the horizon. By the time we pulled into Fayetteville, it was time for a break…I had called a young lady that I had talked to online a few weeks prior, she wanted to sell part of her rock and mineral collection, so we agreed to meet near Razorback University. She had some nice crystals in her collection and after selecting some and coming to an agreement on a fair price, I wrapped them up and gave her a few nice dogtooths from Missouri….here are a few of them….

We headed west to Sallisaw on Hwy 40, passing through Van Buren on the way, and we observed some recent storm damage, a tornado had ripped through there a week prior and heavily damaged some motels along the interstate…weather that we were really hoping to avoid on this trip.

We arrived in Sallisaw twenty minutes later and drove over to Adam`s house…he had some tubs of quartz crystals laid out for me to take a look at…and as we were putting Missy into his fenced in backyard, I noticed several flats of an old mineral collection that he had recently picked up…looked like some spectacular pieces of malachite with some calcite druse on some of them, and then there were some calcite crystals with a vibrant blue colored glaze all over them, with an iron ore type matrix on many of them…the blue coloring glaze was a turquoise blue shade, that I was unable to figure out…but they sure were captivating and beautiful to look at…

…and some that looked like malachite too….

….I picked up a couple of the flats of this beautiful stuff from Adam as well as some quartz he no longer wanted and he gave me some info on some places to collect fossils in Scott County near my grandpa`s farm and the Mt Ida area both, before we headed on south. I decided to stop by the fossil location first since it was on the way and so we headed south from Sallisaw to get there about an hour later…which by that time, the temps were up in the high 80`s, so I just stopped by to photograph it and then drove on down to Hot Springs. I had planned to get into HS by 4 pm and meet up with a new rockhound cause I had some flats of Missouri and Kentucky minerals and crystals to give to him, help him with his growing collection. I had also planned to stop and visit with Faith and Bill, the former caretakers at Miller Mtn Mine, now retired and living just east of Mt Ida on Hwy 270, but wasn`t going to have time to do that today, so I called them to let them know we would get back up there later and visit with them. Missy and I arrived in HS about 5 pm and drove over to the condo that I rented from April, who I had rented from on my fall trip down there, too.

This time we were staying in the downstairs condo and it turned out to be just as nice as the upstairs unit…however it was def warm and spring, as there were several bumblebees hovering right around the front door…at first I thought they were hornets…I called April to see if she knew about it and she said she would call the Maintenance guy and see if he could come spray for them. He did show up later and sprayed but apparently the spray didnt have any effect on them, cause they were there every warm day, only leaving when it cooled down on Saturday and Sunday. Turned out they were bumblebees tho and the biggest ones I had ever seen, too…guess they grow them big down there…I didnt let it bother me much, was there to enjoy myself and put it out of my mind soon after, just had to be aware of them when you came and went.

I met up with Justin soon after we arrived at the condo and started handing off several flats to him…including some dogtooth crystals from the secret spot and Eminence both, as well as some pretty fluorite pieces and some Doe Run Viburnum Trend specimens too…his eyes just kept getting wider and bigger as I handed him flat after flat of goodies. I invited him to have supper with Ray and I soon after Ray got into town and called to let me know he was there…Ray stayed at the Long Island Lake Resort on the longer island south of my location. We decided to meet up and go to the Italian restaurant in the plaza across from the Hot Springs Mall…Justin had heard about it as well and wanted to check it out too….April had recommended it when we were there in the fall. We had a good meal there, but I couldn`t believe the price for one glass of sweet Reisling wine…it was $ 9.25 a glass…geez, I could have bought three bottles of it for that price….Ray was astounded as well. I had the spagetti and the meatballs were the size of baseballs…only been to one other Italian restaurant where they were bigger, one in Florida had them the size of softballs !! It wasn`t as good as my Mom`s homecooked spagetti and meatballs but pretty good after a long drive down there. Justin promised to stay in touch and hoped to be able to go with us over the weekend days but had to work each night til 5 pm, so our day trips would not work out well for him…we hoped he could join us on the weekend trips.

The next morning I woke up from the couch in the living room, having crashed there after the news…the sliding glass door was open and the waves outside the condo put me right to sleep….I shot the beautiful sunrise the next morning…

As Ray and I were having breakfast at Mc D`s and were gonna head up to Twin Creek Mine and check it out…I called Bill and Faith to see if they were home…Bill said they were waiting on some carpenters but would park their white van out by the road so we knew which driveway to turn into…we arrived about 25 min later and found them in a nice brown split level ranch home with a two car covered carport on the east end of the house, on the north side of 270, one mile west of the Garland County line…we passed this beautiful waterfall right across from the old Monte Cristo Store and Rock Shop just before the County line…

….that waterfall is hard to see in the photo and I wanted to walk down there and get a better photo of it, without all the trees in the way, but there is a house on the hill right above it and its private property, so didn`t take any chances. The old Monte Cristo featured a gas station, store inside and they sold quartz crystals on those big racks in front…here is a link to the history of it in its heyday http://www.city-data.com/forum/arkansas/878079-exploring-arkansas-60.html

Bill looked soooo much better than the last time I had seen him, which was at Miller Mtn Mine before they retired, he was recovering from surgery then and just looked worn out…he looked more like a younger and vibrant Bill this time and Faith looked great too…they were setting up their crystal shop in their home and doing very well. We visited with them a while and then got a basket of quartz each…their baskets are ten times better quality than any baskets you will find elsewhere, hands down better than any baskets at Miller Mtn Mine, too…the last one I bought at Miller Mtn last fall was half full of clay dirt and the teeny tiniest crystals you had ever seen…almost needed a magnifying glass just to find them…and several plates of sandstone with nothing on them !! Wont find me going back there for awhile and certainly not buying anymore baskets there either !! If you want some good baskets, stop and see Faith and Bill at their new shop in the Joplin area east of Mt Ida, they are two miles east of the turn off to Mountain Harbor Resort and great folks to visit with, can fill you in on the history of the area too. My basket was full of golden healers and some smokey plates too. I was very happy with my basket this time. 🙂

From their house, we drove on over to Twin Creek Mine…to reach it you turn on to Logans Gap Road, next to Judy`s Crystals shop and go to the top of the mountain, about a four or five mile drive…right after you cross a single lane bridge on that road, you will come to a y and just stay to the right, then you come to another y and again stay to the right and that is Collier Springs Road, while Logan Gap Rd continues up the hill to the left and paved. Collier Springs Road is a gravel lane that is a bit narrower….its a good road, not rough, but not real smooth either, average Forest Service Road….a few miles down that road and you will start up a big hill, go past the first gate that directs you to the next gate and then you come to the entrance to Twin Creek Mine….

…wish I could tell you that this road is smoother, but it`s not and is a one lane, so pray that you don`t meet anyone on it as you are driving down the hill to the mine, cause it is basically a one way track…I was glad we met no one going in or out cause I sure didn`t want to be the one backing up or down that hill….

…the signs on the road say slow…it`s because it is a bumpy road, not smooth at all, but just take it easy and you can make it in a car or truck……luckily it wont take you long to get there…and it opens up to the digging area at the bottom of the hill…you can see massive quartz in the woods on both sides of the road there too.

Ray and I grabbed our tools and met up with the hostess for the day, Lisa, who outlined the boundaries after we paid our fees, then we gathered our tools and headed for the wall…here is Ray heading back up the hill to the spot with his hammer….

….we met a couple next to us named Ed and Lisa, with their son, who dug up some really nice crystals from the road near the entrance to the digging area. We worked the wall near them and I soon began pulling some small clusters out of the tree roots while they were doing some heavy digging into the wall looking for a good vein to work…

…don`t know if they ever found one, tho….it was a little warm that day and I was wearing one of my long sleeve pullovers…Hostess Lisa kept coming up to check on me, she was just sure I was going to keel over with heat exhaustion. I told her I had plenty of water with me and was just fine…besides I was working in the treeroots and didn`t want my arms all scratched up..she did a good job of checking on everyone while we were there…here she is checking on some other diggers near the bottom of the slope….

….here is what the digging area looks like from the top of the hill where we were back to the entrance…

and vice versa….

…it was supposed to rain and storm by 3 pm, so we decided to take off about 2:30 pm…I did not want to be up on that mountain with lightning popping all over the place. I had a bag full of small clusters which cleaned up pretty nicely, plus I was able to chip out a nice smokey quartz plate that was in between a couple of sandstone layers, too. I was exhausted and ready for a nap on my return to Hot Springs…Ray decided to stop off at Burl`s Smokehouse on the way back and get a smoked meat sandwich, and I kept on truckin toward HS….by supper time, storm clouds started rolling in across the lake….

…and soon after, rain started coming down in sheets…..

…but by dark, it had cleared off and only a few raindrops here and there remained….Missy and I headed up the street to get some ice cream at the homemade ice cream store, and I took these photos of the wet streets and lights near the mall….

..it was another nice night, so again I left the door open and bunked on the comfy couch, and again the sound of the waves put me out soon after the news ended….we awoke to a cloudy sunrise….

After breakfast at Mc Donalds, we decided to drive down to Glenwood and check out the Pigeon Roost Mine tailings…I had been told that smokey quartz, calcite, and witherite could be found there…we found some pyrite there and lots of slate there, but nothing else…it was an old zinc mine that had apparently been pretty picked over….

…the next photo shows how enormous this place is…above the top of the rock is yet another pit and then you climb to those trees way up above….

…from here, we decided to drive up to the Oden area and check out the old Clear Creek Mine after hearing so many good things about it. I followed the directions I had to it, but when we arrived, I wasn`t sure if we were on the right road or not….it was lined with quartz but no mention of that had been made by my friend who gave me the info on the mine. We pulled up to a gate that was closed in a small wide spot on the road…we could hear machinery operating at the top of the hill on the other side of the gate….I told Ray I was going back to the main road where I had a signal, and call my buddy and make sure we were on the right road…I didn`t drive far before I met an suv coming down the road…I pulled over for it and waved the driver down. It was a young lady and I asked her if we were on the right road after explaining what we were doing down there. She was on her way up to the top of the hill on the other side of creek from the gate, where her husband was operating the machine we heard, and said she would check and then return with an answer for us…true to her word, she returned in about ten minutes and told us we were not on the right road, that the mine we were seeking was over the mountain to the west of us. Not knowing where to check to the west, we decided to drive to Mt Ida and have lunch. We stopped at the Dairyette cause I knew they had great burgers there years ago, plus good shakes and malts. It was beginning to heat up, so I took my food and headed east as I didn`t want to leave her in the truck any longer than necessary. Ray stayed and ate his lunch there before heading back to Hot Springs.

Having the rest of the day free, Missy and I drove over to Gulpha Gorge and Lake DeSoto to check out the spring color and the old powerhouse with its waterwheel, plus the waterfalls nearby….

…and very little color at Gulpha Gorge, where I am more used to shooting fall color than spring color, however I would have thought there would def be more than a few redbud trees in bloom here, I only saw spotty dogwood trees in bloom…..

Later in the evening, I met one of my local buddies at Colton`s Steakhouse and enjoyed a good steak dinner. The next morning was a bit chilly, so my sunrise images show a bit of blur, however there was a bit more color in the clouds, just out of view to the left side….

Ray had decided to meet up with local friends and go metal detecting and fishing today, and I was meeting up with local friends for some hiking later in the day. By mid morning, Missy and I were driving out to check on a local waterfall and to check out some other areas as well.

It was a bit windy in the morning, but cleared off my mid day….Ray told me the next day that he had only lasted about an hour out there in the wind fishing. By that evening, tho, I had some down with a severe stomach ache and didn`t feel like doing much of anything, sipping on a seven up which helped to relieve much of my discomfort later on. By morning, I was feeling a bit better.

After a beautiful sunrise on Saturday morning….

…I drove up to Scott County to meet up with Virgil Richards to look for fossils at a location that Adam had told me about last fall. Ray decided to remain in Hot Springs, so Missy and I were on the road shortly after 8 am…a nice crisp morning cooler than the prior days by at least twenty degrees. We arrived and met up with Virgil by 11 am and drove over to a reclaimed coal mining area nearby….

I had stopped off here to check it out after leaving Adam`s house on Tuesday and let Virgil know about it on Friday…he decided he needed an outing so we decided to meet up at Bates about 11 am. We drove over to the high wall….

….. and checked the pit below where we found just a few fern and leaf fossils in slate….it`s a well known area that has been heavily picked over…..

…and some were in a mix of organic matter that was petrified and colorful that reminded me of petrified dino poop…..

…some of the pieces I picked up crumbled to the touch, due to the exposure to the elements and some stayed intact…I hope to return and check this site again, paying more attention to the organic matter next time, where the fossils were definitely intact and stronger, plus more colorful…this area reminded me of the Mazon Creek Fossil area in Illinois. We lasted for a few hours there, the temps began rising and by the time we finished, it was quite warm…as Virgil turned to head west back into Oklahoma, we noticed smoke rising not too far from us, signs of a possible forest fire that was quickly gaining ground with a brisk wind driving it….

On the way back to Hot Springs, I stopped off at Burl`s Smokehouse and picked up some chips and a couple of sandwiches, deciding it would be best to eat on the light side for a few days and see if that helped. This is a place I have passed by on several occasions and wondered how good it was…Ray liked it and I had some local friends that stopped there last year on one of their trips to Hot Springs and really enjoyed it as well…inside I found a neat old rustic building where they make sandwiches to order…they have chips and wines there, too, and the biggest home made cinnamon rolls I have ever seen…had my stomach been stronger, I prob would have bought one to eat later on.

Missy and I continued on to HS and made arrangements to visit one additional site in the morning. It was a full moon that evening and I stepped out on the balcony to shoot a few images of it illuminating Lake Hamilton….

By the next morning, my stomach felt a little better and I decided to try the one last site, before Missy and I headed home. The sunrise was a cloudy one, but there was def some red in the skies to the east…that should have been a tip off for us….

The weather forecast the night before indicated that the skies would be cloudy but the rains would hold off til 11 am, so we figured we could get a couple of hours of digging in. We hit rain before we arrived at the location at 8:30, and after talking with the owners for a bit, we drove up the hill and began checking out the areas near where we had dug on our previous trip there. For the first hour, Ray and I turned over many pieces of massive quartz, before we started finding a few smaller clusters of crystals. I then decided to check out another area closeby and soon found a larger cluster of bigger crystals…by this time it was raining more steadily and I decided it was time to stop for the day. We packed up and headed out, and soon Missy and I were headed up I-30 toward Memphis, where we planned to stop and visit with Matthew and Carolyn Lybanon, rockhound friends in the MAGS Club. Matthew is the newletter editor and Carolyn is the Hospitality Director. Carolyn called as I was driving thru Benton and told me not to eat anything, that they planned to have a late lunch and that Missy and I would be joining them for dinner. As I entered the Memphis area, I discovered they have quite a bit of construction going on with their highways….

…..reminded me of the mess involving I-64 in St Louis a couple of years ago….I passed a unique structure as soon as we crossed the mighty Mississippi River, a pyramid shaped building emblazoned on the highway side with Bass Pro Shops on it….

…..and soon enough we were pulling into the Lybanon driveway.

We had a great time and good food and talked about rocks alot…they showed me their collection and I showed them what I had found and shared some of my finds with them…Carolyn had made me a beautiful oval shaped window made up of stained glass and some pieces of fossils and crystals as well…it is displayed on a metal stand and was quite pretty. They also gave me a huge ammonite that they found down in the Denton, Texas area on one of their fossil excursions down there.

After a nice two hour visit with them, Missy and I got back on the road and headed home via Hwy 63, which I discovered soon after leaving Jonesboro, was another hotbed of construction activity…Arkansas crews appear to be attempting to widen the roadway for several miles to the north. I spotted several sunbeams near Jonesboro…..

We arrived home safe and sound by midnight and decided to lock the truck and leave the unpacking to the next day.

Here are some of the quartz crystals I brought back with me….some beautiful stuff….

…and some I found in the basket I purchased from Bill and Faith…..

if you have any questions or wanna say hi, give me a shout at jwjphoto7@gmail.com

More Red Druse at MFQ

Posted on April 10, 2015 by jwj

Two weeks ago, I had a call from a good friend who told me that there would soon be some activity going on at MFQ. I had a day off coming up so decided to drive down there and see if I could find anything nice, before my anticipated trip to Arkansas, as I wanted to get some good stuff to take with me and give to a new rockhound friend that I had found on Facebook. Missy and I got up early and drove down there on Saturday morning, spotting deer and wild turkeys along the way, always a good sign of things to come. When we arrived, we had a pleasant surprise, finding not only one recent blast pile in our favorite coved wall area, but also the original wall on the left as you enter……

I decided to check out the original section of wall first, and found one chunk of poker chips at the bottom of the pile in relatively great shape. I then drove on over to the east wall to check and see what was left of the blast pile there and see if the wall was anymore exposed than the last time I was there….and as it turned out, it was alot more exposed, one section standing out and appeared to be full of pockets….

…there was also a pile of huge boulders there and one contained a huge vug of calcite crystals…

…naturally I couldn`t just walk by without stopping to look and photograph it, but I kept on walking toward that area that appeared to have multiple pockets and boy did it. I worked that area for at least two hours, filling bag after bag full of beautiful druse plates and many of those plates had big flaky poker chip crystals attached….

starting in the pocket on the left above and then moving to that pocket on the right…..

…which just got better and better…..

..then I spotted yet another pocket and moved over to it….

…and filled yet another bag on this one alone, as it contained some nice dogtooths….

…and then I moved over to the coved wall…

…..have to say I was a bit disappointed as it did not produce very much of anything other than a few small plates of poker chips down at the ground level. However, I did climb up the pile and along the wall, found some great pockets full of BEAUTIFUL and VIBRANT red druse pieces…filled at least two bags of these beauties….

…I was very happy with the beauties I pulled out of the east wall pockets, which is where I recommended my buddy Ian collect at when he told me that he would be there on the morning I planned to be heading home from Arkansas…here are some of those beauties….

…it made for a great morning there…collected enough of those beauties to fill at least ten flats…if you have any questions or wanna say hi, give me a shout at jwjphoto7@gmail.com

Pleasant Surprise Found at MFQ Saturday…

Posted on February 12, 2015 by jwj

Missy and I arrived at MFQ mid morning Saturday, driving down to check out the clearing activity that was going on per my buddy Jim, who I called Thursday evening on my way to work. The forecast was for a very nice warm and sunny day, temps in the 70`s, but by the time we arrived at 9:30, it was still cool enough to require my blue sweatjacket. As we pulled into the upper parking area from the highway, I spotted the clearing activity on top of the hill….

…I then looked toward the back center wall, however I was unable to see the back wall due to a very high pile of rock crushed into chunks suitable for support and driveways….as we drove around this huge pile of crushed rock, I came upon a nicely sloped pile of untouched goodies blasted down from the upper bench…needless to say I was estatic because my buddy Jim was unaware of any recent activity, most likely due to his view from the roadway being blocked as mine was, by that huge pile of crushed rock. The pile was wide enough that it required four photos to show it….

…after quickly letting Missy out, I changed into my boots, grabbed my mini mattox, and made a fast walk around the front edge…it was obvious the only thing workers had done since bringing the wall down, was to clean up the front edges with the dozer. I didn`t find anything pretty out on the front edges, so I grabbed a bag and headed for the back wall, as I was able to spot some pockets from the truck. Within moments, I had spotted several nice druse pockets like this one….

…and from this one pocket came some very nice druse pieces like these two guys….

…after filling one bag full of wrapped druse plates, I moved on down the wall to the next several pockets, many of them similar but a few had some nice poker chips attached as well…as you can see from the next images, this wall was full of pockets…..look below the green line….

…and at one spot along the wall, I looked up, as I normally do, and spotted some beautiful black druse pockets way up there…about fifteen feet higher than I could possibly begin to reach….

…the next pockets I had to climb up to the top of the stepladder to access….right under that green/blue line….

…the material in front facing me, was loose, so after pulling it back with my mini mattox, it looked like this…

…I was cleaning away the loose stuff, looking for an opening to a pocket and oila !! one appeared….

…pulling a few nice plates of druse and poker chips out of this opening, resulted in finding yet another pocket right behind it….

…and pretty soon, I had yet another bag full of very pretty druse and poker chip plates. I went back to the truck to get yet another bag and to check on Missy. I no sooner returned and was down in the dip along the back wall….

….searching for yet another pocket that could possibly turn into four pockets like this one did, when my buddy Jim showed up to visit….I walked down the pile toward my truck to meet him about halfway….

…and where we both came to a stop to talk, I looked down and spotted some beautiful pieces of black druse and some black dogtooth crystals just laying all over…

…what a great meeting spot Jim selected to talk to me at…I owe him big time I would say. After we talked abit, he left to go work on cutting some more wood, and I looked around a bit more, picked up several more black and brown dogtooth crystals, and druse pieces, filling at least two bags full. I then looked to my left and spotted these two huge boulders with vugs of poker chip crystals inside each one….

…I decided to take a water break, and then returned with more wraps and another bag, as well as my hammer and chisel, and proceeded to get a good workout in, removing some nice clusters of big gray colored poker chip crystals from these vugs….

…and then I returned to the wall, where I found a few more pockets that contained those nice gemmy plates of druse and poker chips. I filled two more bags, my last ones even, of these plates. I then walked around the back side of the pile where I located some nice gemmy green poker chips, some with dogtooths, and some were small and some large yard rocks style….and set them up on a nice flat boulder….I ran out of steam about this time, and loaded them up last before heading for home….sure was a nice day.

Feb 23rd…..Due to two winter storms the last two weeks, I was unable to get out and hunt, so as promised, here are some of the dogtooths and druse pieces all cleaned up…..

MFQ on New Years Day

Posted on February 3, 2015 by jwj

What better way to spend New Years Day than go rockhunting ??? I couldn`t think of a better way to spend the day, specially since I was off the night before, and could get some good rest before making the long drive down to hunt. Missy and I woke up and headed down early, photographing the dawn`s early light on the way down there….

…Missy and I arrived and found the air a bit crisp at that time of the morning, and from where I parked near what was left of the blast pile, I could again see pockets up high, so I grabbed my stepladder and began exploring…..

…this first pocket above and below, working out to be a very good one. I filled two bags with beautiful wrapped plates of calcite druse with poker chip blades that sparkle and shine in the sunlight….

…more of these puppies….

…and of course while I was cleaning those pockets out…there were a couple of smaller ones on either side of that large pocket…Missy was content to roam around the quarry and check things out….

…we headed home about 4 pm, with four bags full of goodies. all in all a great New Years Day and great start to rockhounding in 2015.

Large Dogtooth Chunks Found At Secret Spot

Posted on February 3, 2015 by jwj

And while I am adding photos, let me add some photos of a few larger chunks of bubbly druse with big yellow dogtooth crystals spread out all over them….pulled from a few of the larger pockets I found this year…..