This past weekend I drove to Marion, Kentucky for the annual Ben Clement Mineral Museum Celebration held June 4th and 5th, including digs at six mines and a rock
show in the county museum next door to the mineral museum. I had heard from some friends that were planning to also attend so I knew I would be digging in good company on Saturday and Sunday, but I also had a few things I had to take care of on Friday before the main event even began. I decided to leave Missy with my parents due to the excessive heat forecast for the weekend in Kentucky. She is a great companion to have along but due to her color and excessive thick coat, she cannot handle the heat very well, and this weekend her master almost couldnt
handle it very well either. 🙂 I would have been worried about her the whole time had she been with me and knew she was in good hands with my parents, who love and appreciate her company as much as I do.
Earlier in the week, I had received an email from a good friend in Illinois who asked me if I could bring some pretty Missouri rocks to his wife for her water garden in their yard, said she only has plain looking brown southern Illinois rocks in it now. I picked out some nice druse quartz for her and loaded them up Friday morning. I took the southern route through Potosi and Farmington, stopping briefly at Farmington for some Long John Silvers and good A & W Root Beer, before continuing south and east
to Illinois…crossing the wide Mississippi River at Chester and then dropping south on Hwy 3 toward Murphysboro and Ron`s house. I arrived pretty close to my estimated time of 1 pm there and after a few minutes of chitchat, we went out and I unloaded the pretty druse quartz from the truck for her lilly pad pond in the backyard of their residence. Dorothy had showed it to me through the back
glass of the kitchen windows and it was quite nice with a beautiful waterfall, which at the time was on the fritz and they were waiting for their son Brian to return with parts to fix it.
Soon after, I headed east to Marion through stoplight city…remind me to never go that way again on my way to Kentucky…I have never seen so many stoplights every mile or two…no sooner does one get up speed at 55 mph and then all of a sudden you see a stoplight ahead and then you have to reduce to 45 mph…so a 23 mile stretch of roadway becomes a 45 minute stretch of driving time instead of a 23 minute drive…couldnt pay me enough to go that way again is all I`m saying.
As I crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky, I noticed that the water was well within its banks this time, as opposed to past times this spring when I crossed it and discovered it way outside its banks, water sometimes consuming thousands of acres of farm land inland….and after letting my mom know I had made it to Kentucky okay, I contacted Dillon, a new model that I planned to photograph that
evening at Lake Barkley, to add to his portfolio and mine as well, to let him know I was running about thirty minutes late, thanks to that nice stretch of roadway in Illinois. We arranged to meet at the museum in Marion and go to the
lake from there for the shoot and hoped it wouldnt be so hot as to melt him or me. 🙂
I arrived in Marion about an hour later and found Tina taking a quiet moment with Ed Clement and BJ insidethe museum, and met Bill Frazier`s wife as well, chit chatting a bit before unloading the crystals I had brought them for
the silent auction during the rock show the next two days, with the help of Tom, Bill`s son in law, who is also a paramedic locally and a rock and mineral collector as well. Tina was doing her usual multi tasking very well. I assisted
her and Bill`s wife in identifying and pricing the crystals I brought them, while waiting for Dillon to show up.
Once Dillon showed up, we headed down to the hotel so I could check in and cool off from the heat a bit and talk a bit as well. After a short interview, I photographed Dillon in a variety of outfits he brought along and then we headed
out to shoot a few photos outside and drove over to see the Castle of the Cumberland….
which is a maximum security prison that resembles a beautiful architectural castle that sits on a bluff and overlooks Lake Barkley, complete with turrets and medieval features, built in the late 1800`s with manpower
provided by over three hundred prisoners and twenty stone masons who cut and used stone from local quarries, even building a narrow gauge railroad track and train to haul the stone from the quarry to the building site. This is the only
maximum security prison in the entire state of Kentucky and also where the death penalty executions are carried out, these days by lethal injection rather than the electric chair originally used. I have photographed this complex in years past from the northern shores of Lake Barkley at the old Kuttawa Park at sunset and sunrise, and had no idea then that what I was seeing across the wide expanse of water through my camera lens was a prison facility. Very neat place to see and photograph from the roadway only, well fortified and guarded too, lots of concertina wire heavily spooled along the outer perimeter fences surrounding the complex. I believe the history of the facility advises there has never been a successful escape there.
We headed back to the old Kuttawa Park area to shoot some swimwear photos and found some nice rocks along the water of Lake Barkley to shoot some great photos…since it was apparent we werent going to get a nice sunset, I pulled out my sunset filter and shot a few with it instead. The setting sun did assist by providing me some nice sunbeams on the waves and water as it set.
As we were preparing to shoot, one of Dillon`s female friends spotted him and came over to shoot a few with him, her name is Mandy and she was wearing a candy striper bikini…she was in the company of her bf and a few other guys from the local area and they were headed over to another set of rocks and a short bluff area on the back side of the park, where the locals use for a swimmin hole.
After shooting there for an hour, we headed back to the hotel and then walked over to the Oasis Southwest Grill for a good steak dinner. This is one neat place to eat at, great steaks and seafood, and I have had some delicious center
cut pork chops there as well. I enjoy eating there when in the area.
I walked down to the office and checked my emails after Dillon left and ran into Steven and April Gibbs from the MAGS Club in Memphis, one of the clubs Docia and
I belong to as well, and two of my good rockhound friends that had contacted me about meeting me there to rock hunt with me. I then retired to bed early and prayed
for good weather, great fellowship with the other rockhounds and some great finds. After watching a little bit of tv, I was out like a light.
Apparently the hotel staff at the Days Inn never check the accuracy of the clocks in the rooms they clean cause mine was set way wrong…sitting an hour ahead when it was really an hour back. I failed to notice the difference while
in the office area checking my email and woke up Steven and April about 30 min early, only noticing the difference after I started down the road toward Eddyville to get some breakfast. Once I stopped at Miss Neta`s Donut Shop in
Eddyville, I called Steve to apologize and told them I would make it up to them. I grabbed a few donuts and donut holes for later and drove over to Marion to check out the Amish Village since I was running way early. I spotted these pretty horses on the drive over…
Not seeing anything impressive at the Amish village, I drove back to the museum and met up with the earlybirds and a few staff members who had arrived early. I was the first one to pay my fees and sign the waiver, and get in line so to speak. By 8:30 am, people were showing up in large numbers and after paying fees and signing waivers of liability forms, we all headed out to the mines we chose to dig at.
In the parking lot, I was requested by a couple of ladies from Florida for a ride to the Eureka Mine as they didnt think their car would make it down the mine road. I moved my fire gear to the bed of the truck to make some leg room
for them in the back seat and off we went, taking a shortcut to Hwy 60 that Bill Frazier showed me once, and then drove on out to the mine from there. We arrived at the mine in short order, parked in the field downstream, grabbed our tools, buckets, and bags, and walked
up to the pit to see how things looked now. We saw that the pit water was being pumped down to a workable level and proceeded to get down into the pit and start looking at some potential areas for pockets. As we walked around to the path to the pit, followed by Steve, April and the Florida rockhounds, and noticed a few others tagging along as well…Tina had put the word out on me I found out later. As soon as I stepped down on to the path, I started seeing cubes sticking out of the clay dirt bank all the way down and pulled a few nice smaller clusters out and handed them back up the line to the Florida gals.
Steve went to my left and started digging down into the bank below the pump near the loose gray rocks, while April and I started digging to his right about three feet…within about 20 minutes, Steve started pulling out grapefruit sized clusters with purple and yellow cubes on
them, and we knew we were in a good spot to dig. Steve showed us the level he was digging at and the depth he had dug into and we duplicated our hole and all of a sudden, April and I started pulling similar size clusters out
as well.
In the bank between us and the big dirt pile, along the creek, Marc Mueller, MAGS Field Trip Director, was walking around surface collecting all over while his wife was digging into the bank when all of a sudden she let out a whoop and called him over to take a closer look at the beginnings of a large boulder of fluorite in the bank…he stayed and helped her dig out a beach ball boulder
that prob weighed well over two hundred pounds easily. Marc decided to rig up a pulley rope between a few trees and winch it out, however the boulder ultimately
decided it didnt want to leave the pit no matter how many people tried to help Marc remove it.
Others were digging in both of the tailing piles and occasional cries of “Jackpot” could be heard from time to time throughout the day, as people came and went. April, Steve, and I, along with the Florida gals, continued to dig
and expand our pockets, and boy did the heat begin to build as we did so. At about this time, one of the Florida gals spotted an arrowhead while digging around some tree roots up above us on the banks, one which was fairly perfectly formed and just had a small notch in one of the points corners. This turned out to be one of two arrowheads found this weekend at the Eureka Mine.
I remember taking a short break around noon to get another bottle of water and stretch my legs while April continued to dig…and when I returned, she and
Steve took a break and went to rest and relax a bit. On my return with my bottle of water, I also grabbed an old t shirt and hung it over my hat and used it as a shield against the glaring sun which was beating down up on us hot and heavy. I also slathered a generous amount of pf 50 sunscreen on my arms and neck, and then returned to the hole and dug some more.
It was about this time that Steve
decided not to return to digging, instead opting to do some surface collecting and watching us from the shade where he also kept a watchful eye on us as well as the Florida gals, who were by now entrenched in a hole in the bank to our
right and as deeply entrenched as we were. They were also pulling goodies out of the mud and dirt as much as we were and once their buckets were filled, they opted to depart earlier than planned due to the heat mainly. Steve opted to take a break and to give them a ride back to their car in the museum parking lot while April and I continued digging in the hole.
I`m so glad that I grabbed that old t shirt to shield myself from the heat, as it climbed to about 105 that day and we dug for about six hours in that heat. By the time 3 pm rolled around, we stood up and looked around and determined we were the last ones there, besides Phillip and Shirley, the mine hosts for the weekend. We decided we had dug enough for the day, loaded up our bags and went
to get our trucks to load up there at the mine. All three of us had filled three buckets each with goodies and boy were we beat. I was looking forward to a short nap and a good steak dinner that night though. We headed back to the
hotel to get cleaned up and get a short rest in before supper that night at the Oasis.
After a great steak dinner with Steve and April at the Oasis Southwest Grill, I retired early and had a great nights rest. They are a great young couple from Memphis and truly great friends as well. After both of them lost their jobs
earlier this year due to the recession, they both found new jobs, Steve became the Marketing Manager for Graceland in Memphis and April found a great job with Service Master in Memphis. I met them the first time either at the
Blackrock Arkansas pink dolomite digs or up in Missouri when Docia and I took several MAGS members to the National Forest area to look for some beautiful drusy
quartz. They are a lot of fun to work with and Steve is a workhorse with tools too. 🙂
Sunday morning rolled around and after a good nine hours of rest and after checking my emails and checking out of the hotel I headed to the Food Giant in Eddyville to get some more of the delicious donuts from Miss Neta`s Donut Shop, which is closed on Sundays. I then
headed on over to the museum and on the way spotted these cattle enjoying a nice early morning swim…
..and this pond nearby that has a lot of farm implements on he northeast side of it…
..once at the museum, Steve, April, and I decided to go out to the Lafayette Mine this morning and check it out…we had been hearing reports all day Saturday from folks who had gone out there, of large yard rocks being found all over the place near the lake and upper piles and pretty stuff being found as well. After signing our forms, and
after talking to Fred, one of the board members of the museum, we headed out to Mexico to the Lafayette property. We quickly checked a few piles near the
entrance….
…where Phillip had suggested checking while there, and the only thing I found there, besides a few ticks, was a solid piece of yellow down in the edgeof the trees by the pile. I brought it home just in case I didnt find anything else there, which I didnt. We drove back past the lake as far as we could and walked around other piles near the roadway but never located much of anything there except a few ticks and chiggers. We opted to return to the Eureka Mine and see what else we could find before heading home.
When we drove into the parking area, we found only four cars there and as we walked up on the pit, we observed Phillip and Shirley digging in the big dirt pile and three people digging in the pit, two in the holes we created on
Saturday. I could see there was plenty of room to their right so we walked down and set up shop to the right of Mary, from Ohio, and a gentleman we didnt know, who was enlarging the hole that Steve had dug in on Saturday. Mary was working the hole April and I had been in much of Saturday.
Mary we saw, had dug six inches deeper back into the hole, and also had dug down at least two feet, finding the top of the vein that runs under the mud in the pit all the way across it. she had pulled out at least one grapefruit sized
cluster and had several smaller ones as well. When we stopped digging Saturday, we had come up against a rough layer of pitted material and Mary found that layer pretty quickly and went beyond and found some nicer stuff in behind it. Steve went back to his truck and retrieved a shovel and immediately began digging holes two feet deep for us to check out on the right side of Mary`s pocket. As soon as we heard the spade hit the bottom, we knew we were in a good spot as we were spotting crystal faces and cubes looking up at us in the light that was hitting the bottom of the hole. After Steve widened the hole for us, we
reached down and began pulling clusters out of the mud right and left. We reached down and cleaned the mud from the corners and crevices of the vein rock and soon we were pulling plates from the bottom of the vein area too. Within an hour I had filled three bags with clusters and goodies, had two plates sitting on the ledge above me and we were seeing evidence of large cubes sticking out of the back walls of the pockets.
I stood up to take a break and noted the time as 1 pm, we had been digging for two hours and so I decided to go grab two more bags and a bottle of water. When I returned, April took a break and Steve got into the original hole he worked on Saturday, the other guy having left the mine already. As soon as Steve started digging, he started finding more stuff, some of it busted up pretty badly and some of it in good condition. While April was out, I pulled three large pieces out of the hole and was working on four more when she returned. Tina`s husband had come down to relieve Phillip and Shirley for a bit and check on us, he discovered the pit water creeping up on us and pumped it back down and washed off a few of our bigger chunks for us as well.
Steve was working on a very large piece that he intended to give to his mom on their return, for her flower garden. Mary was in the process of packing her trailer and heading back and by 3 pm, we had pulled several large pieces out
with cubes on them as well as a few plates and clusters of all sizes. I was quite happy with what we had found and we divided up the big ones and packed our trucks to head back to the museum and then home. It was 3 pm and we were the last ones to leave the Eureka Mine once again. We headed back to the museum where I gave Tina a few more druse pieces for her own collection as well as the museum to sell and then we went inside to check out the rock show…I only found a few things in there that I liked and then I headed home soon after. Arrived home about 10 pm after stopping off for some more LJS and root beer. Missy was waiting on me when I arrived and after a nice dip in the hot tub, I was soon sound asleep once again in my own bed.
here are a few photos of my finds…
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