Rockhound Friend Ray Roth Visits

Posted on September 27, 2013 by jwj

True to his word, Ray Roth came up to see me on his way to Keokuk, Iowa last week, and stopped off for a few days to go rockhunting with me.

I had a rough week before he arrived, tooth pulled on Tuesday, thought it was gonna be cut out but the oral surgeon was able to get ahold of it and it came right out…or at least it felt that way…after all I was very numbed up and could only feel the pressure thankfully. The week before that, somehow, I re-injured my right arm…yes the arm that I injured in a fall while rockhunting earlier this year, but also injured it thirty some odd years ago as well while at college, and still have no idea how I re-injured it two weeks ago..memory isnt what it used to be any longer. Original injury was a tendon injury, from helping a trooper friend chip out his ice covered driveway so he could get his patrol car out, treated back then with a sling and tylenol, and doctors orders to rest as much as possible for two weeks…so I treated it this time with pain meds, arnicare salve, a tens unit, and lots of rest when possible…I say possible because the tendons are in my elbow joint and I have to use my arm everyday, and no matter what you do with your right hand or arm, the tendons come into play no matter what you are doing, whether you are moving your fingers like typing, or moving your wrist or arm. Between the arnicare and pain meds alone tho, if I had something I had to do with it, both products sure made it feel quite normal….course when they wore off, it was quite a different story.

Ray was on the road most of Saturday and stopped off in Van Buren for the night…he told me he would be off the road by 6 pm and eating supper while watching the LSU football game, lol….so we made plans to meet at MFQ on Sunday morning around 8 am. St Louis Ray and I got up early Sunday morning and drove down to meet Cajun Ray and led him to the quarry. It was a little froggy when we arrived….

…but it soon burned off and we were left with a gloriously beautiful day of normal temperatures and sunshine all day long, with nice cool breezes as well. As we pulled into the cove area, we discovered the knob that we had been working the past several weeks, was all but gone…..

……now just a few piles of rocks left at the bottom of the wall…we checked the piles first and found a few remnants of clusters, then checked the wall pockets and St Louis Ray spotted a pretty crystal cluster sitting about ten feet up in situ matrix…and was able to climb up and retrieve it without any problem. For the next couple of hours, we scraped along the wall and found a few pockets of small clusters….

After checking this wall, we moved on down to the east to the other blast zone and while St Louis Ray wandered down to his special place further east, to find more vugs in boulders, Cajun Ray and I searched the remainder of the blast pile and found some goodies…Ray checked along the edge and I up the slope a bit, found a pocket that had apparently blasted down from the high wall intact, and buried near the top of the pile. After pulling half a dozen small clusters out from under some small boulders, I went back to retrieve a few bags and wound up filling two with wrapped goodies alone ! After another hour of this, we decided to head to the secret spot and see if we could find anything there…Cajun Ray had never been there but had heard about it from several of my posts. It hasn`t been blasted in a while there now, but we were able to liberate some goodies from some older pockets there and found some vugs in some boulders that had some nice druse and poker chip combos as well. The water spots there made for some great reflections late in the day there, too….

After digging all morning and into the afternoon a bit at MFQ and then a few hours at the SSQ, Ray and I wore out by 4:30 pm and decided to call it quits….my right arm was ordering me to stop now….I hadn`t overdone it again yet, but it was telling me it was time to stop for the day and I decided to listen. We were covered in dirt and dust, and had several goodies to clean up yet from our digs, plus Ray needed to check in at the Wagon Wheel Motel in Cuba and get cleaned up for supper. We checked with St Louis Ray and he was ready to call it a day as well, so we loaded up and headed home.

After taking St Louis Ray back to his truck at my place, I cleaned up quickly and headed back to meet Ray at Mo Hick for some fantastic BBQ in Cuba. I had to stop off at my parents house and drop off some goodies that Ray had brought up with him for them…gumbo goodies and some great brownies from a company in Louisiana too. When I got to MO Hick, he was already sitting inside admiring the beautiful cedar wood interior that Dennis the owner, had made on his own.

The next morning, Ray drove down to my place to get one of his tires fixed, he had picked up a nail somewhere along the road up to Missouri and while it wasn`t leaking, he wanted to get it repaired before driving on up to Keokuk and then back home. I took him over to Harry`s Tire Service in Sullivan, where I always get my tires serviced at, and after about 20 minutes, the guys there had him in good shape once again and ready to travel. We decided to head to my house so he could see my collection and while there, decided to have breakfast at Cracker Barrel before heading out to hunt more. My parents met us at CB and paid Ray back for the gumbo and cajun cooking goodies that he had brought up with him and given to them the day before. After a great brunch, Ray and I headed to the new druse spot to check it out…it had rained pretty good a few days before and as I told Ray, that`s the best time to search there.

We walked up to the top of the hill as seen in the photo above, first…as I explained to Ray after arriving and getting our boots on…I have had better luck finding beautiful bubbles up there. We each grabbed a couple of bags and tools and headed up the hill with Missy in hot pursuit. I stayed to the left and walked up a trail that had been drastically eroded by heavy rainfall and Ray went up the little road going up the hill to the right….within thirty minutes, I spotted a pile of dirt and on closer inspection, found several plates of smokey colored druse quartz…one of my favorite colors there…I walked back to the truck to get more bags and wraps and returned to wrap them up.

About two hours later, we both had three or four full bags each and were a bit tired, but we managed to take a water break, then walk over to the other side and check the drainage ditches and filled yet another bag each. By this time, we were both done in for the day, and we headed back to town. After cleaning up, I met Ray over at our Chinese Buffet Restaurant and we had a great meal there…Ray topping off his meal with two huge dips of ice cream. Here are some neat sunbeams I shot on the way to the restaurant….

We were gonna go horseback riding the next morning, but my friend who has the horses, got called into St Louis Tuesday morning so we postponed to Wed morning instead and spent the day goofing off and cleaning up our finds from previous days. Ray decided to also give his suv a good wash and then re-arranged the rock load so that he would be sure to have some room for geodes once he got to Iowa.

Ray came over to my house bright and early on Wed morning…ready to go horseback riding…..I asked him where his jeans were cause he was wearing shorts, and he said he figured he would be okay in shorts…lol…he rode with me up to my friend`s horse farm out of Bourbon, the Meramac Farm Bed and Breakfast Horse Farm….its a Century Farm, over 100 years old, they have a few horsebarns there, one is over 125 years old and built with wooden pegs instead of nails…you can see them in the huge loft beams. They have several horses there and easily accomodate groups for trail rides with over 900 acres of farmland and forested hills. This is a view of their farm back in 2009 from one of their hilltop views….

...and it shows both barns and the original farm house where my friend Carol, has lived much of her life, the farm in her family for many generations. Tragically in 2010, during a severe storm, the farmhouse was struck by lightning and burned to the ground despite the best efforts of several fire departments who responded. Despite the tremendous loss, Carol and her family and staff, bounced back from it and built a new farmhouse, a North Carolina style farmhouse, complete with a bright copper colored metal roof…

…and a beautiful white picket fence surrounding it….it`s like a bright beacon from the roadway and is just as pretty on the inside as it is on the outside. We arrived at the farm a little after 10 am and found Carol and Jerry saddling up horses for us…Ray was no sooner out of my truck and walking across to meet Carol…..

….when she asked Ray, if he had any jeans to ride in….I just chuckled when he gave them his answer…they shook their heads and said, okay…they were waiting on a lady that wanted to go riding that morning as well and she was running late, having trouble finding their farm. Carol pointed out an Eagle perched high in a dead tree top way across their north field, about three hundred yards…I put my camera lens on it, but it was still way over there…

and my lens wasn`t able to pull it in sharply at all….

We signed the releases and got saddled up while waiting for her to arrive. Here you see Jerry adjusting the stirrups for Ray as he is sitting on his horse….

…and soon after, we were on the way…we rode down into that north field first, as Carol wanted to see if we could get closer to the Eagle, but as soon as we got into the bottom of the field, we saw that the Eagle had flown off. This is a pretty pasture, I go there often in the spring when bluebell flowers bloom all over the place on the river side….

…and we soon were up on the main road, on our way to the back side of the farm where more pretty trails awaited our arrival…here you see Ray and Jerry bringing up the rear of the trail ride….

…all in all, we had a great two hour ride…it had been ten years since Ray had gone horseback riding and only four years for me. He texted me the next day to let me know he was out looking around and finding geodes, but was being picky as to what he was going to take home with him due to the restrictions on space. He was a bit sore while up in Iowa geode hunting, but had a great time while here.

James 🙂

jwjphoto7@gmail.com

MFQ Early September too….

Posted on September 12, 2013 by jwj

Sure is a beautiful day today….Thursday, September 12th, that is….weather forecasters have been telling us all week that today we would break the hot spell and cooler weather would return…..while I had my doubts, I knew last night that something was coming our way cause my sinuses were out of whack again…had to take half a zirtec and some alleve for my toothache and arm pain….the zirtec worked and cleared up my breathing, the alleve alleviated the pain, and combined, they both put me to sleep early last night, giving me a good ten hours of rest.

Woke up this morning to a nice cool refreshing breeze from the north, and while it has dissipated somewhat this afternoon, it sure is a lot cooler than it was yesterday…we haven`t even hit the projected high of 86 today, so far it`s only 82 out there and we still have the occasional cool breeze. Rain is forecast for this evening and I`m looking forward to that as well…and they are telling us now that we wont hit the mid eighties again til late next week. I think our cool down has finally arrived. Missy and I went down to MFQ again the last couple of weekends and brought back some great stuff again. I`ll combine both hunts in this story, along with photos.

The first trip down was on Labor Day itself…I had taken off the day before from work to rest up, and we rose early Monday morning to drive there and arrive at dawn…because it was due to be a bit warm that day. We took the easy route down and as I was making a highway change, the sun was just starting to rise in a big yellow fireball in the red predawn skies….

We arrived about an hour later and it was fairly cool, so I wasted no time in making a surface search of the area…the knob was still intact for the most part, but it looked like the machinery had been up on it dragging some of the bigger rocks at the base, back away from it, which is good because they could be a real hazard to walk over and around,specially with your hands full of beautiful crystals…..

…after a surface search, which turned up a few nice chocolate brown twins and triples that someone had obviously left behind for whatever reason, I started cleaning out the pockets in clear view. After clearing some of the loose stuff in plain view, I began digging back into the pockets and pretty soon, I had my hands full and my pocket apron full as well. I always wear a carpenters apron when I go rockhunting, it has two large pockets in the front of it, so I call it my pocket apron. After filling it up, I took a break and wrapped up the better ones and then continued digging. I was concentrating on these pockets to the right of my bags….

…which took about an hour to clear out…then I concentrated on the pockets to the left of my bags…

…and after cleaning them out, I stood back and looked at the knob once again, and spotted what looked like a few more pocket possibilities on the right side, and explored them….

…and as it turned out, there were alot more pockets there than I originally thought, so I cleaned them out as well, finding some very nice goodies in them. Not only that, but the pockets I was finding here, were much deeper than pockets previously found there….

…after digging for a few hours there, the heat was beginning to catch up, so I put Missy back in the truck with the ac on, changed into dryer clothes and then packed up. I had five bags full of beautiful wrapped crystals, a few dogtooths in them, and was quite happy with my finds. I then drove over to the new blast area to check it out….

…they had worked it back to almost the wall by this time…

Not even a week later, I was off for the weekend, and missed a chance to go rockhunting on Saturday, which would have been a little cooler, so Missy and I got up early on Sunday morning and took off for MFQ once again. There was a chance of scattered showers and after checking the radar, it appeared that there was a line of showers moving to the south from the north and hovering around Columbia as we headed out the door, so I figured we would have five hours of clear skies before rain would move in. We took the smooth and clear sailing route again, stopping off for a sausage and egg biscuit and fuel, before driving on….after arriving we found that the knob had been worked over with the machinery, and the entire right side was basically gone….

…quite a change, but as it turned out, for the better because there were quite a few pockets exposed and just waiting for the right collector to come along and harvest the bounty inside them….…and harvest we did…there must have been twenty pockets alone in the face of the newly worked over knob wall, many of them just staring me in the face when I walked up to take a closer look at it…so I went back to the truck and retrieved five bags and started pulling cluster after cluster out of the pockets, wrapping them up and placing them in the bags. Within about thirty minutes, I had one bag full and was working on the next one…but I`m getting ahead of myself. I had made a short walk around the trailing end of the knob pile before starting on the pockets, and then climbed up to the top of the pile above the knob. I found several pockets along the wall up there and pulled some nice crystal clusters out of those pockets too….

…enough to fill one bag…and while up there, a local guy drove up and set up an archery target on one of the gravel piles below me and sighted in his crossbow. I carried this bag back to the truck and grabbed another couple of bags and then climbed up to the face wall of the knob to start exploring the new pockets there…

…after pulling out what I could find, I dropped a few boulders down out of the way and found even more pockets behind them….in the photo above, you can see where I have done just that…

…and after pulling a couple of nice twins, joined at the hips, out of the large hole that resulted in this maneuver, I started pulling some uniquely shaped black poker chips out as well….

…at any rate, I quickly started filling one bag after another because at times, these things were rolling down the hill out of this large pocket, like chips from a slot machine…

…I was trying to find the source of the black poker chips and clusters, but was unable to pinpoint where exactly they were coming from. Within the hour, though, I had filled two bags with wrapped poker chip beauties and then I decided to trigger a slide or two to get some heavy boulders hanging above me, down and out of the way….

…and within a few minutes, I was able to safely trigger the slide and get the large boulder down and out of my way…

…and bringing down quite a few more above and to the side as well….

…and after filling two more bags full of goodies, I decided to take a break and get some food and water down, then go check for more goodies elsewhere…I wanted to scout out a couple of other locations while there as well…noon was fast approaching and the cloudy skies were beginning to clear off…the rain never did materialize…. and I knew as soon as the clouds cleared, the humidity and heat would return. After a short break, Missy and I drove over to the new blast wall area to check it out some more too.

I climbed back up to the top of the pile to check the area I had found a crystal or two the weekend before, and only found a short shelf of crystals, so I climbed back down and walked along the wall looking for pockets. I rounded a small corner in the wall and came upon a likely looking spot and pretty soon, I had exposed about ten pockets. I could feel the heat coming on strong, so I began to pull crystals out of the pockets and wrap them and place them in bags as fast as I could…Missy had decided to stay in the air conditioned cab and within a few minutes, I couldn`t blame her a bit….

…in one section of this area, I found ten pockets, small and shallow, but lined with some of the most gorgeous druse I have ever seen and some very nice poker chips as well….

…I cleaned them out as well as I could, requiring the use of my hammer and chisel, which only served to completely wear me out with the heat really building up by this time. I changed clothes and decided to head for home, stopping briefly to snap this photo of the wall I had just worked….

MFQ Again Mid August

Posted on August 27, 2013 by jwj

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 a spring fed creek nearby and she was able to get a few drinks of good cold water, too….then we headed home.

MFQ First of August

Posted on August 19, 2013 by jwj

Ray returned from vacation the first week of August and rode down to MFQ again with Missy and I on the tenth, recharged and ready to again see what we could find there. We ran into some full and running creeks….no water was over the highway, but they had definitely had some heavy rainfall there the night before. I found out later, about seven or eight inches of rain had fallen throughout the night time hours and had ended just before our arrival.

As we entered the main river valley from the west, we stopped at a scenic overlook to check out the heavy fog rolling across the valley below….

…s

…since we had gotten up early to arrive early, the sun was coming up over the higher layer of the fog as we were about to head on down the road….

…we arrived a few minutes later to a pretty blue sky filled with fluffy white clouds….sure was a nice cool temp when we started there, too….

…prob largely due to the storms that had cleared out just prior to our arrival….this quarry always drains real well…I have never seen more than a few water puddles there…and only water puddles, no mud…which suits Missy just fine for when she gets thirsty and hot….

…well the knob was still there, looking much the same as last week. Ray poked around it for a bit, climbing up on the other side to see if he could locate any pockets up there, but didn`t find much and so then he grabbed his hammer and chisel and headed east down to the other end in search of boulders to cob down…..

…and pretty soon, I could hear him working on some boulders. I began working on finding more pockets in the cove wall…and by the time he had finished cobbing down some boulders filled with pockets of…get this…ivory snow colored druse quartz….I had found and cleaned out two pockets…he let me know that he was ready to head to the new druse spot anytime…I had just taken a water bottle break and was walking back to the cove wall, wanting to take another look at one area before calling it quits…I put my mini mattox into the dirt and pulled back one swath of dirt and rock…and OILA !!!….. there was a beautiful chocolate brown dogtooth crystal sitting there in the dirt mixture….if I recall, the first words out of my mouth were HOLIE COW…loud enough that Ray, who was walking back to the pile on the east side…heard me and turned around. Then a second later, I found yet another and said it again, loudly, and he came to see what I was finding…and by the time he got there, I had found a pocket of them and they were rolling out of the pocket into my hands…literally….he decided to stay and help me dig it out and one turned into at least two or three….enough to fill two bags….THEN we headed to the new druse spot.

We arrived about a couple of hours later, and although they hadn`t had the same amount of rain up there…the clay mud on top, at least, was a bit soft and gooey. Luckily the construction crews that had been working there the past few months, had likely experienced the same thing and brought some white rock in for traction…

….it was obvious they were no longer excavating the clay dirt now and I drove up the hill to search the south side since we had searched the north side the last time there.

I didn`t get the camera out but suffice to say, we found a ton of bubbles in all different sizes in all colors…my favorites there are the citrine yellow and the smokey colors…Ray even found a lot of pink colored bubble pieces. After collecting for a couple of hours, we headed home with lots of pretty goodies.

MFQ End of July

Posted on August 13, 2013 by jwj

Missy and I loaded up the truck and headed down to MFQ again on the 27th…Ray was on vacation out east and we had nothing better to do…it turned out to be a very pretty day on our arrival down there….

…I mainly drove down to take a look because some friends from up north were traveling down to Marion, Kentucky for a public dig and wanted to swing by on their way home, so went down to scout it out again to give them a better idea of what could be found there…I was going to have to work the weekend they were gonna be there. It was a bit cloudy when we arrived but that helped keep the heat away as well and all in all, it wasn`t a bad day to collect at all…Missy took off on her forays and adventures to check the place out as is her norm these days…

…the knob that Ray and I had been working lately, was still there, but I didn`t venture over to look at it cause it was much the same and still had a lot of rock hanging up on top that could be tricky to work around, so I headed over to the cove wall that we had been finding some beautiful pockets in, instead….

…the last time there, I had found some beautiful stuff, so I decided to nose around and see if I could locate another pocket of beauties…within minutes I had located yet another great pocket and this pocket, much like the last few, really kept going and going and going and….

…and was located just a little higher up on the wall….

…it took about three hours to clean it out, and I filled about six bags full of wrapped goodies, including quite a few dogtooth crystals again. As we left, I snapped a photo of the new blast pile, which they have cut down to size quite a bit in the past week…

,,,having cut it back to the wall almost, and they pulled a bunch of boulders out into the middle of the floor area and were cobbing them down with that big hydraulic jackhammer attachment, doing a fine job of it I might add, and I found some beautiful beach ball pieces of pretty stuff there as well, and loaded them up too…here are a few of my finds from today and the week before as well, as I finally found some time to photograph them….

the next couple of photos show small curved plates of dolomite druse with chips on them…very pretty and sparkle immensely beautifully in the sunlight….

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

More Pockets at MFQ Yesterday

Posted on July 15, 2013 by jwj

Missy and I returned to MFQ yesterday, driving down early morning to beat the heat, plus the fact that for whatever reason, I couldn`t sleep well the night before, so got up and headed that way. We had a good trip, Missy perked up in the seat when we had three deer come out in front of us ….she was alert and looking for more deer after that…the sun was coming up across fields of fog and it sure was pretty in the farmlands area….

We arrived at the quarry about 8 am and the cloud cover provided a nice and cool morning shade all over. It was cool enough there, I left my long sleeve blue pullover on til about 9 am.

I did an all over search at first, located a few nice larger pieces, and then explored the knob that Ray and I had been working on the past few weeks.

Someone had been there since we were last there and rolled out a huge boulder from the beautiful large brown dogtooth pocket halfway up the pile of the knob. I didn`t see much of any thing good on it so I climbed on up to the pocket and saw where they had explored all around and above the boulder…but they missed one spot…I reached back in the space behind where the boulder had been sitting in the pocket and pulled out a beautiful black poker chip with a gorgeous bright golden brown dogtooth on the top of it !!! EUREKA !!!!!

I pulled out a few more smaller crystals and then moved over to the wall and worked my way around to the pockets I had found near the base of the coved wall and started checking for more crystals to each side.

After a small cave in of rocks and gravel mix from above, and not finding much more than druse plates, I decided to move to the right and look along the wall for more pockets. I moved about fifteen feet over and found three pockets of calcite druse…

….we always check these because they are often associated with poker chips as well. These three were only druse, but it pays to check them. I moved over to yet another knob area…..

…and found a couple of areas where someone had dug into the wall, high and low, looking for pockets…upon looking closer at the lower one, I discovered that whoever had worked it, didn`t do a very good job, cause they left a whole lot of poker chip crystals in the bottom of it…

….so many that I was able to fill three bags full of wrapped specimens and pull out two gorgeous clusters of green and brown poker chips nestled in sparkley calcite and dolomite druse !!!

I spent a good two hours cleaning this pocket out…I took out all the crystals that were left in plain site, then reaching back, discovered two more pockets behind this one, one going left and one going right…both of them chock full of small green poker chip clusters and some with some golden calcite druse all over them as well. I had to move some small boulders out of the way to get to them but believe me, the small amount of effort was well worth it !!

It was 10:30 am before I finished cleaning it out and by then I was not only tired but famished as well, not having had any breakfast other than a can of Arizona green tea on the way down. I drank some more tea and then decided to check the pile on the right of the cove, where the machinery had been removing some of the base of the pile, and I started finding black poker chip singles, and small clusters all over the place, most with very little damage, some with some matrix attached. I filled my shirt up, as I hadn`t brought a bag with me, and then carried them to the truck, wrapped them up, and headed home.

We got home about 3 pm and after unloading my goodies, Missy and I collapsed and had a great three hour nap. Another good ending to a great day of collecting.

here are some of my finds that day….

MFQ in June Part 2

Posted on June 30, 2013 by jwj

Ray let me know that he was available to go rockhunting again on Saturday, the 29th, and he would do the driving this time he said. I made arrangements with my parents to leave Missy with them for the day, and we couldn`t have picked a better day weather wise…we nearly burned up the Sunday before and the forecast highs for this weekend were in the upper seventies…turned out to be a breezy day as well, much more comfortable to go rockhunting in at a place with little shade. Once again, we headed out mid morning and arrived late morning, and found some work going on in another section of the quarry. We drove over to the right side and checked out the older walls first, finding some pockets of dolomite druse and Ray found a pocket with some gorgeous white as snow, druse quartz soda straws…I have never seen anything like them that far south in Missouri, so that was quite a find by itself !!

After about fifteen minutes of poking around there, we drove on over to the blast area and started nosing around where we left off the week before. There was a trackhoe sitting there with a hydraulic jackhammer attached to it, it was obvious they had been busting up the big boulders in the past few days, down to basketball and small beach ball size. We crossed over them to get to the chunk of rock again….

…and we started in digging in pretty much the same area as we left off last Sunday….

…and we pretty much started finding pockets of crystals once again, in the same areas as the week before, too. Ray began following a trail of crystals up high and discovered a pocket of them, while I followed a pocket of druse that led to even more crystals. I was working on the left side of the major crevice in the middle, and he was working on the right side….

…and as you can see in the next photo, it was an absolutely beautiful day, there was a nice cool breeze blowing all day long, and the temps were seasonably perfect….

As I was nearing the bottom of the first few pockets I found, we pulled a large chunk of rock out of the way and it turned out to be covered with crystals including a nice pocket containing a dogtooth or two on one corner, here seen on the tailgate of Ray`s truck…..

After removing a few more boulders in key places, Ray found yet another pocket of crystals, mostly in clusters and removed what he could. We were still dealing with some loose rocks above us, so we were trying to remove them as safely as possible, knocking a few out whenever possible to make things safer.

We finally took a break and as I was returning from getting a good drink of cold water, I noticed Ray checking out the right side of the pile, where it sloped up next to the wall. I walked over and we started making our way up and checking for pockets along the way, in the wall, finding a few small pockets but nothing major. Once I reached nearly the top, I looked over to the chunk of rock we had been working on, but way up higher, and saw a small shelf of dark gray crystals sticking out. I made my way over and was able to pull a few out…I noticed an area of crystals about five feet below me and suggested that Ray check it out, so he made his way over and no sooner sat down, than he started pulling out some beautiful deep brown dogtooth crystals, many of them with a sugary looking frosting all over them. Within minutes, he had opened up a HUGE cavernous pocket that was chock full of more of these beauties….

This next photo will show you how high up he was working this pocket on the sloped pile from where we had been on the floor below…..

…about thirty feet up at a sixty degree angle, yet compared to the rest of the wall behind him, he doesn`t look that high up….and it was about this time that I noticed his big blue bunny ears…..

…course they only looked that way from a distance….

…and here is that beautiful HUGE pocket up closer that he was working on….

…and here he is working the pocket even more, as I am climbing back down the rocks and pile, carefully, with my camera in one hand and a crystal in the other….luckily there was a nice staircase near the bottom, complete with a ramp….

…and just before I reached the bottom, I looked up and he had pulled out yet another large crystal with a dogtooth coming up off it….

…and then he went back to working it yet some more….

…and from the front, you can barely make him out….

…we took another break and got some more water, and discovered we now had shade…figured it must have been around 4 or 5 pm now…

…after the break, I decided to walk over to the other wall and see what I could find. I was getting tired but still had some energy left and wanted to find a pocket as nice as the one Ray had found up on the slope. As I walked along the edge of the short pile against the wall, I saw some crystal pieces that had rolled down from somewhere above. I looked up higher and saw that someone had been digging around a little bit so I moved up and dug into it as well, It appeared to go left as well as to the right, so I kept on digging and soon enough a small hole opened up going back toward the wall, As I explored it more, a deep pocket opened up and I was soon pulling out one small cluster after another, and then another pocket opened up below and above as well. Within 30 minutes, I had put enough crystals to the side to fill two bags full, and I kept on digging. I pulled a few out that had bright yellow dogtooth crystals on them as well, but most were just simply poker chips nestled in the pretty dolomite druse. After a bit, Ray decided to come over and see what all the excitement was about…he had been hearing me say ” holie cow ” several times…I took a break to go get some water and another bag with wrapping material, and he took over digging for me…

….I started wrapping them up, and he brought me some wrapping paper and a roll of paper towels as well, as I had exhausted my supply of wrapping material with the prior pockets. Ray walked back over and began looking for more pockets…

…and working a pocket that I had worked on the right side earlier in the day….after knocking down more boulders….

.shortly after he did, I was trying to chip out two beautiful big clusters, and the inevitable happened…I mashed one of my fingers between the rock and the hammer. Luckily i was able to remove both of them still and then wrap up the remaining crystals and carry everything back to the truck, where I stuck my finger down into the ice cold water in my cooler…boy did that hurt even worse…for a few minutes only thankfully…fingernail was already turning blue tho….

I also grabbed a couple of aleve and took them as well, and within twenty minutes, the pain was starting to subside…I walked over and checked on Ray. After returning to the huge chocolate dogtooth pocket one last time and pulling out a very large boulder with a few crystals attached to it, and cobbing it down, we decided to head for home. We were both happy with our finds from the afternoon and it appeared that rain was coming our way as well. On the way home, we spotted this beautiful double rainbow….

…and then soon after we began seeing the sunlit clouds as the sun was setting….we were the only ones out on the roads, so when we came across this nice scene, Ray came to a stop in the road and I shot this sunset photo….

MFQ in June Part 1

Posted on June 30, 2013 by jwj

Sorry folks, been doing a lot of rockhunting this month, starting with the first weekend at Marion, Kentucky at the annual Gem Show and Fluorite Dig at the Eureka Mine, and then stopping off at a new quarry on the way home from that…and the past two weekends I`ve been taking a new friend rockhunting to a couple of quarries in south central Missouri and found out that he shares the same enthusiasm for it as I do. I`m a bit sore today, after eight hours of extensive digging at MFQ yesterday, but it was well worth it, cause we opened up about ten huge pockets of chocolate brown dogtooth crystals, some of them were big crystals, some were a bright yellow dogtooth nestled into dolomite druse crystals, and several pockets of poker chip clusters, some of those were nestled into the druse as well. Ray even found a pocket of pure white druse quartz soda straws and was able to remove a few intact. I`ll start with last weekend`s trip first.

I talked to Ray about a week before Sunday the 23rd, and he let me know that he was off and available to go with me finally. He has a lot less free time with his job, than I do, and was finally able to get away for a day, so I jumped at the chance to take him and comped out on my short night to take him rockhunting. Despite the excessive heat forecast for the day, we headed south about mid morning and arrived late morning, and pulled into the middle of the blast pile remains. Ray immediately grabbed some tools and headed to the tall wall right in front of my truck and began looking for pockets….

Soon after climbing up the short pile there, he found a pocket and began chipping out some crystals….

I looked to the left and this is what was left of the blast pile looking west….

He wasn`t over there for long though, he wandered around a bit and then came over to check and see what I was finding in the solid chunk of blasted out rock on the west side of the pile. After getting my boots on, I had first walked over to the east side piles and found a few very large yard rocks that had crystals all over them, decided I would look at them again later if I needed to, and then walked to the west side pile and found some pockets of dolomite druse at the base of a large chunk of wall that appeared to have separated itself from the wall and fell down into the middle of the pile on blast off. Ray joined me there and we were soon finding pockets of chocolate colored dogtooth crystals with eroded poker chip formations around them and appeared to have been sprinkled with brown sugar as well. I didn`t take my camera over close to that chunk of rock, because there was dust and small rocks raining down on us all afternoon, below you can see Ray putting some of his finds into a boxtop after wrapping them up about thirty feet away from the chunk of rock…

I did zoom in however to show you some pockets we found at the base of that big boy….

Boy was it hot that day…guessing it was about 95 when we arrived and the humidity was something else as well…felt like a wet blanket wrapped around me much of the day…we took a lot of breaks and went through a lot of cold water, at times pouring it into our hats for a nice refreshing splash when we put our hats back on. I know my limits when it comes to heat exhaustion and warning, and let me tell you, we both hit our limits on the exhaustion part a few times that day and had to sit down a bit and take a breather. We were finding so many nice crystals and hated to, but had to…one of those priority things. I was glad I had brought enough water with me, we were wringing wet within fifteen minutes after our arrival. After one of our breaks mid afternoon, we decided to knock down some of the big boulders on the right side of that chunk to make things safer for collecting, here is Ray using one of my pry bars to knock some down on the right side….

…til things finally looked much safer…..

….we worked on pulling a few more out and then left about an hour later, and headed to another quarry to check things out there…as we were heading there, we saw black storm clouds to the north. We arrived and hadn`t been there long when the wind suddenly picked up and turned much cooler very fast, we watched the storm clouds roll our way and then split off on either side of us. We stayed about an hour and found a few pockets, Ray located some nice druse plates, and then we headed for home. I had the following weekend off and told him to let me know his schedule then, and we would go again. Here are some of my finds all cleaned up from the quarries….

…and here is a mess of the clusters found too….

…the next photo shows a dogtooth exposed in the lower end of a crystal, coming out at the top end, nestled on a base of matrix and dolomite druse…

…and more dogtooths….

Spectacular Dogtooth Crystals and Clusters

Posted on June 21, 2013 by jwj

I got bored the other day on my day off and decided to drive back down to the new spot and see what else could be found…Missy decided to tag along since it wasn`t extremely hot and we arrived about mid afternoon. In the next four hours, I discovered hundreds of spectacular dogtooth crystals and clusters in a few gooey wet clay pockets, which started going deep on me fast, and as I dug down into the wet clay even deeper, I discovered some blue and brown colored ones underneath a bed of bright yellow and orange ones !!! I was blown away…I wrapped them up double in the terry cloths I had and filled five bags completely full !!! I was so happy with them that I headed home with an hour of daylight left. I started working on cleaning them up this afternoon, some of them are double terminated, and there are some twin dogtooth crystals in this batch as well, one of them was about six inches tall and had the brightest yellow center I have ever seen on a dogtooth……

Here are the crystals and dogtooths I found, now all cleaned up….

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

BE Clement Museum Gem Show and Dig Celebration 2013

Posted on June 6, 2013 by jwj

Several of us had a good time in Marion, Kentucky this past weekend, despite a lot of rain and storms pelting the area Friday morning before our arrival as well as later into the night before finally ending late Saturday morning, turning everything at the Eureka Mine into a gooey muddy mess.

I arrived at the museum around 2 pm on Friday afternoon and found Tina supervising a busy crew of helpers, that were assisting dealers and vendors at Fohs Hall in setting up their booths and preparing for the rock and mineral show on Saturday and Sunday. I transported some more grab bag material, and some druse/poker chip pieces for their silent auction as well and they helped me unload that too. Tina`s daughter, Jesse, took me back to get a quick look at their new display room in the museum while there, a project that Tina and a few members have been working on since the first of the year and let me tell you, they have done a great job with the new display cases that were built by the Amish community handimen to the north of Marion, and they look great, they have each one holding specific crystals and minerals of a specific type/category, nothing is mixed up any longer. their cubed display glass cases were moved out away from the wall and their new maps were placed up on the back wall for easier viewing. this room is near the back, one before the black light room.

As I walked outside the museum with Tina, I ran into Lamon Flynn, who had traveled up for the gem show with his grandson and they were unloading their Kentucky agate to sell and a large display case that holds his agate keepers, to show off as well. We talked for a bit, he was asking about Ian from Colorado, and Peggy of the Twister Sisters and if she had survived the latest round of storms in the Midwest. I found out his grandson had just graduated high school and was preparing to attend college and become a police officer.

After chitchatting with them a bit more, I headed to the hotel at Kuttawa and got settled in there, and then had a great supper at the Oasis Steakhouse next door. I heard from my mom, who told me about the bad storms that struck the Oklahoma City area once again, we have family members there, and then the St Louis area later in the day, at least three tornadoes. I then watched the local weathercasters, who were calling for the storms to move southeast and hit the Marion area around 3 to 5 am, with rain then forecast to fall much of the morning. I wasn`t sure how bad it would get the next day, so I retired early to get as much rest as possible.

I woke up about 6 am and discovered the rain pouring down outside my room, not sure if you can see it in this photo, but it was coming down in sheets, I could only hope it would clear off by noon as the forecasters were calling for…

…and after grabbing some donuts at Miss Neta`s Donut Shop in Eddyville, I headed to the Eureka Mine…..and arrived about 7:30 am to begin pumping down the pit. I had contacted and offered to help Bill Frazer and free him up from his many other tasks for this weekend, and he accepted my offer. I pulled up to park near the mine and found a muddy mess all over the place….

Apparently between Friday morning and Saturday morning, the pit area received about five inches of rainfall, so when I arrived, there was an additional two to three feet of water in the pit more than normal, and as a result, it was almost noon before I was able to pump the pit completely down to where diggers could even access and dig in the pit. For the first three hours of pumping, I wasn`t even sure the water level had dropped at all.

By 10 am, diggers started showing up…Mary from Ohio, was the first to arrive and soon after, several more showed up.

By noon there were approximately 35 diggers at the Eureka and while many stayed on top and worked through the three tailing piles, a few ventured down into the pit. I can safely say, it was the sloppiest gooey muddy mix I have ever seen there, every step on top was about ten inches down in the wet sloppy mud and down in the pit, you were lucky if you didnt lose your boots or shoes…even those with the pull on galoshes were experiencing problems keeping them on.

Around 11 am, a carload of geology students from the University of Illinois at Champaign showed up and began digging.

A few of them were brave, daring to move around the muddy mess barefoot…..

They were walking up to take a look at what Robin had found in the tailing pile back behind them, what was left of the huge pile on the north side of the pit last year, and had been turned over a week before the show and dig. Robin had found some nice cubes and showed them what they should be looking for in the mud….

…and Robin had found some nice ones by the time the geology students arrived, one of them a nice small set of cubes seen here close up in his crate….

…including that green bottle that I found in the mud that morning at the top of the pit…I hollered out, ” who collects bottles ” and he answered ” I do ” and got the bottle. I have discovered people collect different things these days in addition to rocks….

Diggers were looking through the tailing piles on both sides of the pit, this guy checking out the pile on the south side of the pit…

and you will notice he has his rain gear on, as many of us did, until around noon or a little after, when the sun came out finally…some went without rain gear deciding a little wet wasnt gonna hurt them at all since they were gonna get muddy anyway…..

…and the mud created hazards on its own, making balance very important…

….and getting back to looking for fluorite everywhere…this next guy John, one of the Maryland crew, I found him down in the muddy water pit about an hour later, looking for crystals…I think he figured it was worth a shot since it was near the backfilled area…

…and here are a couple more of the Maryland crewmembers, washing off crystals in the outflow from the pump….

…but no matter what, people still showed up and continued to dig all day out there, in all age groups too….

…..above is Ohio Steve clearing out after searching all morning down by the creek bank, he actually found a rockhammer down there buried in the mud…..and below is my buddy Steve from Memphis, walking around looking for treasures on the north side of the pit….

…and more afternoon diggers shown and raingear set off to the side as the sun was now out and it was humid as well….

One of the geology students, Cody, stood out when he showed up completely prepared for any type of weather in waders, and by the time he left for the day about six hours later, he was muddy from the front toes of his boots to the very top of the waders, looked like he had gotten down into the pit and rolled in it, but I can tell you Cody was one happy digger by then, having a few large yard rocks and some smaller cubed clusters as well for his muddy adventures. He was also happy because some rockhounds from Maryland….yes I said Maryland… had given him some instruction and assistance in hard rock mining as he was trying to tackle a pocket he found in the saddle in the middle of the pit. After learning how to hard rock mine some cubes, he was quite happy just to have learned the method, even though he really didnt extricate any cubes from the pocket. He was working over on the south side of the pit when Robin and Sandy joined me on the north side to take a closer look at the old tunnel entrance…..

….we tried digging it out to see if there was anything worthwhile in the mix, but didnt find a thing in it. After I explained the saddle to Cody, he moved to it to try and work the pockets, we then moved over to the south side where I began moving mud away from the base and digging down to the bench level and pulling out some small clusters of fluorite cubes. After a bit Tammy Bromley and her sister joined me on that side, staying up on top and sifting thru the tailing piles, after looking around on the north side all morning. Steven and April Gibbs arrived around 1 pm and stayed up on top working the spoil piles as well.

As I stated, there was an entire group that traveled down from the state of Maryland for the dig at the Eureka Mine, a club outing for them and after talking to them a bit, discovered that they do this quite a bit, and are planning now for an upcoming trip out to Utah to look for geodes red beryl, and agate. They had made the drive down here straight thru, and it required around fifteen hours. They stayed the entire day with us at the Eureka and around 4:30 pm, Bill Frazer came down the road to warn us of a dark storm cloud approaching from the northwest…we could see it coming down the valley but couldnt tell much about it due to the restriction of the trees blocking our narrow view of it, but as it neared our location, it suddenly changed direction and headed in a more easterly direction toward the highway from the pit. By that time though, all of us had bailed from the pit and decided we were tired and muddy enough to retire early for the day. The Maryland crew decided to stick around and take advantage of the waterfall under the bridge to clean up at before heading out, while the rest of us headed back to the hotel to clean up and go to the steakhouse. As I got to the intersection of Hwy 60, I could see the cloud that concerned everyone and saw that it was a roll cloud, a very long reaching roll cloud, several miles long and neat looking as well. They can be quite scary looking when accompanied by dark colored clouds. After a brief stop at the museum to talk to Tina, I headed to the hotel and stopped briefly near Fredonia to photograph the pretty horses that are always in the field next to the highway……

…and then I headed on south to the hotel to get cleaned up and then meet Steve, April, and her mom at the Oasis for a great meal and catch up on old times. They are great rockhunting friends from Memphis and I hadn`t seen them for about a year, so we caught up on events in the past year through supper. They are creating jewelry with their treasures these days so they were going to the show on Sunday morning. I had brought them some agates and other gems as well.

Sunday morning dawned early for me, it didnt seem like I had gotten enough rest and I had a long day in front of me. I arrived at the mine about 7 am this time and started the pump, the water level back down to its normal level this time and so it only took about 90 minutes to pump it down. I stopped after about an hour though and diverted the flow to the water hose and washed off the bench in case there would be any hard rock miners this time. Even though there were no hard rock miners there in the morning, there might have been some later on. Tammy and her sister were the first ones to arrive after Mike the host, and I put them down in the corner pocket I had been working the day before….

….and after helping them for a while, I took off for home, stopping off at the museum to give BJ the gate key and then walked over to the gem show to visit a bit. I bought a few pieces of agate from Mr. Flynn and he invited me back to hunt with him anytime in the Irvine area and I told him I would def do that. As he said, springtime is better as far as less leaves covering the ground, but early fall has its advantages as well, as the deep creek holes are usually drier by then too. These days with the recession still making things difficult for many people, there are many more folks out hunting for it and selling it on the side, so you have to be careful as some of them are a bit on the shady side.

I soon headed home from there, taking Hwy 60 to Paducah due to the restricted roadway and construction stupidity on I-24 from Eddyville to Paducah. I stopped in Paducah to fill my gas tank, gas there 3.37 a gallon and then headed west on Hwy 62 and 286 to Wickliffe, crossing first the Ohio River and then the Mississippi River on the twin steel structure bridges near Cairo…..

….as I entered Charleston, Missouri, I encountered the lowest priced gas pumps seen so far on the trip, at the truck stop there, 3.25 a gallon and kinda wished then, that I had filled up there instead. Oh well…

On my way home, I made a pit stop at a great location that a buddy of mine told me about in south central Missouri, and filled my entire truck up with beautiful clusters and single crystals of calcite and druse, some that were several inches in diameter and length, and in many colors including some pinks and greens. I had several huge clusters in the front passenger seat and the entire back seat filled up, as well as the bed of my truck…I had to leave several behind because I simply had no more room to put them. I found some gorgeous orange dogtooth crystals there as well, and carefully wrapped them up and placed in several of my blue bags.

Hopefully they will still be there in a couple of weeks when I return with a rockhunting friend from the St Louis area. I was very tired when I finally got home about 11 pm Sunday night, but also very happy. It looks like my next few days off will involve alot of crystal cleaning and catching up on my blog site as well, as I now have about a dozen bags of wrapped crystals to clean up. As soon as I get them cleaned up and some photos taken, I`ll post them then.

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

JWJ Rocks

Just another WordPress site

Rockhound Friend Ray Roth Visits

MFQ Early September too….

MFQ Again Mid August

MFQ First of August

MFQ End of July

More Pockets at MFQ Yesterday

MFQ in June Part 2

MFQ in June Part 1

Spectacular Dogtooth Crystals and Clusters

BE Clement Museum Gem Show and Dig Celebration 2013