{"id":3687,"date":"2013-01-14T17:23:33","date_gmt":"2013-01-14T17:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jwjrocks.com\/?p=3687"},"modified":"2024-07-04T04:17:52","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T04:17:52","slug":"a-holly-jolly-dogtooth-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jwjrocks.com\/?p=3687","title":{"rendered":"A….Holly…Jolly…Dogtooth Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

What a nice day it was for rock collecting Saturday, January 12th…couldn`t ask for a better day in the middle of January, one of our coldest months normally, and I was feeling better after a week of a nasty cold, so Missy and I loaded up and headed south to meet up with Docia about 9 am at the secret spot. It was around 55 degrees when we started down there, and even though it didn`t warm up \u00a0much more than that, we were just fine with it…the forecast was a cold front pushing through around noon and rain developing between noon and 2 pm for that area, so we had about four hours of dry weather ahead of us. What was coming in later that evening wasn`t very good either…. it was gonna go from nice to nasty in the next twelve hours, so we would enjoy it while we had it.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Missy and I arrived about 8:30 am, ahead of Docia, who said she would arrive nearer to 9 am, and we set about to seeing what we could find. The back side of the pile had been removed, leaving us with two new walls to inspect for pockets down near the ground floor level….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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I started looking at the fractured areas of the east wall first…wanted to look at the north wall due to great success there the past few weeks, but there was too much debris to dig through down below, where the east and south walls were clear and easier to check on. It soon began to warm up and I took my jacket off and hung it on a nearby boulder, and took a closer look at the pockets to the left of my jacket…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…and about midway between you see a small hole above…as I approached it, it was obvious to me that a pocket was lurking behind it just waiting to be discovered…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…and lurking inside this pocket, was a beautiful yellow poker chip crystal, attached to bubbly gray druse….\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…and off to the side about two feet was an exposed area of the wall, appeared to be half of a pocket, with a nice big poker chip attached to the druse bubbles of the left over pocket….real pretty but hard to remove from the wall….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…and off on the other side a couple of feet away…I found a nice pocket that contained several orange dogtooth crystals in plain sight…a good sign of things to come from inside the pocket….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Docia arrived soon after I grabbed another couple of bags from my truck. I took this next photo to show several pockets in a direct line with each other…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…and closer up, showing several crystals, combos of poker chips and druse, sitting on the front edges of each pocket, just waiting to be plucked out….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…and more waiting inside to be removed as well….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…after cleaning out each pocket, I moved to the next…this next one had a combo and cluster sitting side by side on the front edge…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…here is the cluster out of the pocket and up close….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…and the combo removed and up closer….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…and the very next one I pulled out from the mouth of the pocket was this cute little combo….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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As I was working on these pockets, Docia started out way down the wall to my left looking for more pockets and then moved down to the right of my jacket and toward the south wall. After finishing up these two pockets, I moved left about three feet and discovered two more pockets in the fractured section of the east wall….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…the fractured, broken up area in the middle above, only produced a few small combos, turning out to be a very shallow pocket….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…while the pocket on the right, actually opened up into two openings and produced quite a few palm sized combos and several single poker chips….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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After cleaning this one out as much as possible, I checked up and down the wall, but didnt find any more pockets to check, and moved down the wall toward the south wall, where Docia was busy pulling out beautiful dogtooth crystals from a pocket she found ten minutes prior…..<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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I walked down and asked her if there was room for two up there and she said sure, and pointed to a pocket she hadnt been able to get to yet and told me to feel free to check it out. I walked over toward it and as I started to climb up the loose slope, I looked down and saw this pretty piece of bubbly druse with a big yellow dogtooth crystal attached to one end of it…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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It has obviously rolled down from a pocket above, but I wasnt sure if it was the pocket Docia was talking about or another one up there nearby, possibly located between that one and the one she was working on now, so I climbed up and checked the area in between but didnt find anything substantial, so I then looked up at the pocket she had pointed out to me…from her higher vantage point, she \u00a0could see some dogtooth crystals up high inside the pocket, where I could only see a few smaller orange crystals sticking out of the muck below…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…and just as I climbed up and created a spot for my bag, she yelled over and said, hey look at this….one she just pulled out of the pocket she was working on about ten feet to my right….\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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As soon as I got comfy, I began carefully working my way into the pocket, and soon began pulling some beautiful orange dogtooths out from the much, covered over and out of sight, working my way up to the higher points that she had been able to see before, that I could now see as well…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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….within moments, I pulled free a couple of larger chunks of crystals with dogtooth points sticking out all around them…she called over and told me that I should give her one of them since she graciously allowed me to check out the pocket…I climbed down with this one, to my other two bags below…not wanting to merely place it in my bag above…and told her she could have it since it was the one she asked for…..<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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I turned around to climb back up the loose slope, and didnt take two steps and looked down to see this nice chunk of druse and yellow poker chips at my feet….picked it up and turned around to set it by my bags before climbing back up to the pocket….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…and I no sooner got back up there, then I started pulling one dogtooth after another out of the pocket…didnt take long before I had one bag completely full. Docia climbed down to take one of her bags back to her suv, and on her return, handed me another bag to fill as well. She also wrapped up the one I gave her and then climbed back up to see if she could find more pockets. Soon after, it began to rain on us, a light sprinkle at first, that turned into a light steady rain, a little after 1 pm. Since we were finding some nice pockets now, we decided to stick it out a bit longer.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Not long after the rain started, she told me that she had found yet another nice pocket, and pretty soon I could hear Docia talking to herself…a few minutes later, she \u00a0let out a loud whoop……she had found a very nice chunk of calcite covered on at least three sides by big beautiful orange dogtooth crystals….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…I looked over and she was so excited by it, she was actually shaking…she said later it may have been a combination of excitement from the crystals and cold from the rain and cooling temperatures. She decided she had enough excitement for the day and began wrapping up her goodies and preparing to leave. I decided to stick it out a little longer and see what else I could find. I moved over to her pocket and pulled a few goodies out while she was still there, and then after she left, I pulled even more out. I will get some photos taken of them as soon as I get them cleaned up later this week.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Well it`s Wednesday and I was finally able to get those pretty dogtooth crystals all cleaned up and photographed…I first had to do a little re-organizing and clearing out some room in my kitchen floor and sunroom, before I could even get to the sink to wash off the dust and dirt….here is the before photos….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…of the kitchen floor above, and the sunroom below is the before….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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….and now there is much more room in the sunroom as shown below, Missy has much more suntannin room now to stretch out during the sunny days….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…and the kitchen floor is still a work in progress, we`ll just say. I did clean out the shelves on both sides of the sink before I started, giving me more drying off room for the dogtooths…speaking of which, here is what I now have cleaned up from last weekend…..\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…a mess of dogtooth singles above, this is just a few of the many singles I pulled from that last pocket that Docia turned over to me, below are a few more….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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I actually pulled a few singles out the first few times, but then while feeling around the edges, I snagged a much larger treasure and this is what I pulled out next….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…and here is the other side of this beautiful dogtooth combo that I pulled from the pocket….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…so I stuck my hand back inside and I`m moving around the edges again, and pulled out several more singles, and then latched on to a larger piece that was in the middle…could feel the one end and it felt like bubbles of druse on the one end I had ahold of… and once I worked it loose, this is what came out….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u00a0….and below is the view from the other side of it….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…Docia was still there when I pulled these out, but she was wrapping up hers and trying to get out of there before she got soaked, so not sure if she saw them good or not. Plus they were covered with a fine coating of dust, too. I really like the colors in the druse as well as the dogtooth crystals attached. After pulling two nice sized pieces from the pocket, the next couple of combos that came out, were quite a bit smaller, but very, VERY nice…like this nice little chunk of bubbly druse with attached twin, double terminated dogtooth crystals attached to each other and attached to one end of the druse bubbles….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…and then to top it all off, wouldnt you know…the NEXT one that came out felt like a single crystal all by itself, but when I got it out in the light, \u00a0IT was DOUBLE TERMINATED also !!!!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So here they are side by side….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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….I was like WHOA…..and stopped to do some wrapping before \u00a0I placed either one in the bag…and grabbed a few more bags too…then reached into the grab bag once again and came out with this little guy…..<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…well by this time, Docia was driving off and I reached back into the pocket and rummaging around inside, snagged up on another large one, could feel several points and after working it loose from the middle once again, pulled this one out of the pocket…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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……and another view of it below….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…I pulled alot more singles out again and then snagged yet another larger one inside the pocket and pulled this fourth combo out….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…and the other side of it here….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…I was having a hard time getting them out, scratching my arm up a bit on the boulder, and catching my sleeve by this time on a dogtooth attached to a plate on the left wall at the entrance to the pocket, so I started wiggling the front end of this plate and finally worked it loose…it turned out to be L shaped, which meant I was going to have to twist it a bit to get it out, and then wound up having to chip a bit of rock out of the way to make it easier, and then finally got it out of the pocket, and essentially, out of my way as well…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…and by this time, I was becoming wetter due to the rain picking up once again, and the temps were still falling, so I was getting a bit chilled. I decided I would reach into the grab bag one more time and see if I could find a good sized chunk, and that would be that…and after rummaging around inside for a few seconds, I located a loose one and pulled this last combo out….<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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…I was quite happy with what all we had found, but after a week of cabin fever, ingesting all the zirtec and cough syrup, and not getting my workouts and exercising in, I was a bit tired and was ready for a little nap. Once home, I postponed dinner and jumped in the hot tub to warm up, then took a nice little nap, which helped the recovery process alot. Tomorrow I hope to clean up a few more crystals. \ud83d\ude42<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

if you have any questions or wanna say hi, give me a shout at jwjphoto7@gmail.com<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a nice day it was for rock collecting Saturday, January 12th…couldn`t ask for a better day in the middle of January, one of our coldest months normally, and I was feeling better after a week of a nasty cold, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dogtooth-calcite-crystals","category-druse-and-poker-chips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jwjrocks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jwjrocks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jwjrocks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jwjrocks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jwjrocks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3687"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.jwjrocks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9748,"href":"https:\/\/www.jwjrocks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3687\/revisions\/9748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jwjrocks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jwjrocks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jwjrocks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}