Secret Spot Quarry on my Birthday

Posted on August 5, 2018 by jwj

My birthday is July 22nd and for the past fifteen years I have always taken my birthday off from work if scheduled and gone rockhunting somewhere…when it falls on a weekend, I always go to one of the quarries, this year it was the Secret Spot Quarry that I decided to go to. I let all my close rockhound friends know and Al was the only one that could go with me…I took it easy on him and we didn`t leave til around 6 am…we worked several pockets around the walls while Onxy did a lot of swimming in the water holes….

and we noticed the pile nearly removed from this section of the wall, so we worked our way carefully over to that section…as we did, we noticed that someone had been really nice to leave a large beach ball sized poker chip cluster laying next to the edge of the pile…I picked it up later and gave it to Al to take home as his very first yard rock. here it is….

After a few hours of searching and combing thru several pockets, we split up…Al stayed on one side of the pile when he found a large area of pretty white druse plates, he took several home with him…meanwhile I was on the other side and found a nice dogtooth pocket in the wall, and began pulling some clusters big and small out of the pocket. Al came over to assist me, bringing me some extra wraps and buckets, I let him know as soon as I had them cleaned up, I would let him pick some out to take home if he wanted. Here are a few of them all cleaned up with Iron Out a few days later…..

…and the one on the bottom in the image above, looked quite nice all by itself in the image below….

….and here is one of three larger clusters soaking in the Iron Out, has two large calcite crystals on it….

…I cleaned it up along with several pieces of wavellite that I collected back in March, while I had the Iron Out working for me…back to the quarry tho…we got out of there shortly after the dogtooth pocket as the heat was coming on strong..on the way back, despite his need to return home by 5:30 pm…he decided to stop off at Missouri Hick and buy me a late lunch for my birthday…thanks again Al !!

Pocket City Wall at MFQ

Posted on June 16, 2016 by jwj

Onyx and I had not been rockhunting for a few weeks, so we drove down to MFQ on Sunday May 29th to see what we could find there. My buddy Jim had been laid up recovering from surgery and so I had no information on the quarry down there, just figured we would drive down and check things out. We got a later start, and arrived about 10 am, finding that the entire west side of the quarry where they had been pushing the hilltop back lately, had been terraced and walls of rock replaced all the clay dirt…..

…the first photo shows the far west end of the area and the lower photo shows the right side of the new area going into the coved wall. I laced my boots up and grabbed my tools and gloves and started a surface hunt from left to right and when I reached the short wall on the right side, had quite a surprise…pockets all over it….

…and I don`t even know if the photo above even does it justice, as the pockets were hard to see until you walked right up on the wall. I was able to photograph several of the pockets as I worked on them as you will see from here on….here are a few of the first ones I started working….

…and pretty soon it was evident I was going to be there for quite a while, because after working several pockets that were visible, I discovered there were one to two pockets more behind the pocket I was working on, hence the name pocket city….so I grabbed another bag of cloths and a bottle of water and kept on pulling crystals from pockets….

…pulling plates of crystals like these out…

…including some nice black dogtooth crystals….

…and this unique pocket too…

All in all, after four hours, I had six bags full of wrapped crystals and plates, some gorgeous stuff, will post some more photos as soon as I get them cleaned up.

MAGsters Rockhunt Missouri 2016

Posted on April 13, 2016 by jwj

Members of MAGS, the Memphis Archaeological and Geological Society, a club I am a member of as well, came up to Missouri two weeks ago to go rockhunting with me at the SS and MFQ areas. Also on that day, I was contacted by a guy out of the Chicago area named Bill, who had his own blogsite….he had contacted me the week before by email, said he was an avid fan of my rockhunting blog site…this site….and that he enjoyed my stories and photos…I was floored, because I had been reading his site recently about some locations he had been to recently, and told him that I enjoyed reading his stories too. He and his girlfriend Debbie were up in the KC area at that time and would be traveling back to the Chicago area by way of the scenic route, they were planning to drive to Potosi to look for druse…I advised him that they might want to avoid that area, because recently many locations where we used to be able to go to and collect both druse and barite at, had become closed to rockhunters. Many of those areas are very rural properties, they have become infested with meth labs and overzealous rockhounds, so property owners in that area are no longer tolerant of rockhounds on their property there. I suggested that he instead join MAGS members on their druse hunt with me…he and Debbie stopped off at my home to visit with me and see my outside rock collection. Before heading on to Potosi for the night, they decided they would drive over the next morning to join MAGS as members and go with us to the druse hunt.

Many of the MAGsters drove up on Friday afternoon, April 1st, some camping out in various areas, some staying in motel rooms…. Onyx and I drove down early Saturday morning to meet them at the meeting spot. We arrived a few minutes before 8 am and soon after, Bill and Debbie showed up, and then some of the MAGS members started showing up as well. WC, the club President, had told me a week earlier that he was not sure how many were coming up for the trip, he figured it might be a small group, but as more and more folks showed up, I decided we had better relocate to a larger parking lot just north of where we were at now.

While waiting for some of the members who had spent the night in Park Hills, Bill and Debbie joined the MAGS Club and I was able to meet Charles Hill, the Field Trip Director for MAGS..I have been talking to him for months but had no idea what he looked like and vice versa I am sure for him…it was nice to finally put a face to the emails. My friends Carrie, Jeff, and Bentley from the KC area, arrived soon after, camping just north of the meeting spot, and I was able to visit with them as well. WC and a few other members arrived soon after from Park Hills, bringing Betty Marler with them…I hadn`t seen Betty in a couple of years and wondered how she was doing. One of her nephews brought her over to join us and she looked and sounded just great…it was a real joy to visit with her that day, she and her husband Lloyd were some of the founding members of the Park Hills Mineral Club, they host the Park Hills Show at the old Federal Mine each year, which over the years has become a well attended and well liked show each year in June.

We soon were all headed down the road to the druse location, everyone following me in single file and we soon arrived there…I pulled over and directed everyone into the entrance, some driving up a small hill to the right and others pulling in to the left side to park…we had several vehicles but had plenty of room for all to park off the road. From there, everyone booted up, grabbed tools and buckets and headed out in different directions to hunt for druse quartz….

05 Bill and Debbie of Chicago

…while there, one of the local neighbors, who lives on down the road, and had invited us to her property when we finished collecting there the year before. stopped by to visit with us and see how we were doing. After collecting there all morning, we drove to a second location, an area that I have often referred to as the secret spot. There were some MAGsters who had inquired about getting some larger druse, and so we drove there because as Onyx and I had discovered a few weeks prior on a scouting trip, there were several large chunks of druse quartz there, and the members that drove over there looking for them, found several nice ones to take home with them. We were there for a couple of hours and then I led a few of the rockhounds still with us, down to the home of a good friend of mine who is a Viburnum Trend mineral dealer…he doesn`t charge an arm and a leg and is very knowledgeable about the minerals that come from the area mines as well. He had several pyrite encased double terminated calcite crystal pieces as well as lead cubes…..

….and those who purchased from him left very happy. Onyx and I headed home, scheduled to meet them at MFQ the next morning at 8:30. Once home, I loaded up the bed of my truck with twelve buckets of grab bag material for the club`s annual show which is held the last weekend in April each year.

Early the next morning, a fire truck woke me up going by my house at 4 am, enroute to a house fire north of town…Onxy and I drove out to the location, where I photographed the fire for the local paper….which I do quite often. It was a devastating fire, the family escaping with only the clothes on their backs and had to break in a front side window to get their grandson out as well.

Forty five minutes later I was back home, editing up a few photos for the paper before heading south once again to meet the MAGSters at the MFQ. We arrived a little after 8 am, to find a couple of members from Mississippi there waiting, and soon after, Charles, Mike, and the rest arrived and we all proceeded down to the coved wall area and spread out to look for goodies, which were high in abundance that day, including many dogtooth crystals found laying all over the place, prime for the picking….

24 Eminence Quarry 26 Eminence Quarry

I walked up on the knob in front of Charles in the middle of the center mass of rock and found a pocket at the base of it…everyone was busy with their own finds, so I grabbed my new mini mattox and was able to dig it out shortly after….

…soon after that, Chuck Reed and family showed up from the St Louis County area…Chuck and his daughter Mackenzie recently joined MAGS…he and I are also members of one of the St Louis area clubs, however MAGS is very proactive with field trips for its members where many clubs these days are not…field trips can be the very lifeblood of a club these days. We hunted there for another couple of hours before folks started heading for home…while I was out helping others find some nice crystals to take home with them…Bob Cooper, the Membership Director for MAGS, transferred the many buckets of grab bag material that I had transported down there in my truck, over to his heavy duty diesel truck to transport back to Memphis. If you find yourself down in the Memphis area the last weekend in April looking for something to do and see, The Earth Wide Open is a great rockhound show to attend there, something for adults as well as the kids. More info can be found on the show at www.theearthwideopen.com

We were finding alot of dogtooth crystals laying all over the floor of the quarry, as well as in several of the berms next to the walls…there were many pockets high up on the wall and it appeared the they had likely rolled out of the pockets and fell to the floor, many of them undamaged by the fall. Needless to say, many who found them, were quite happy with their finds, much easier to pick them up then to have to work a wall pocket to find them. Chuck and his family followed me up to my mineral dealer`s home shortly after everyone took off for home, and we purchased a few more crystals there before heading home as well. A long weekend for sure, but a very worthwhile and nice time visiting with good friends.

Lately, I have found out that several who read my blogsite stories, try to figure out where I am going to rockhunt at. Let me advise you first, that some of the locations I go to, are on private property and require permission to go there…I have that permission to go there and rockhunt there…if you do not have it, or you dont want to make the effort to get it, do not go and trespass there thinking just because I wrote about it, you can use my name to get access, or that it entitles you to go there as well. Those landowners won`t buy your story either, and you will wind up in jail for trespassing, or worse.

This is why I do not list the locations many times, because some assume that they can go there without permission. Do the ethical thing, abide by the laws of the land, make the effort to contact the landowner yourself and secure permission to go there and hunt. It`s not any different from any other type of hunting on private property.

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

Took My Buddy Mark Bishop to MFQ

Posted on March 1, 2016 by jwj

A few weeks ago my buddy Mark Bishop from northern Georgia, emailed me and told me he heard that MAGS, the Memphis based club I am a member of, was going to be coming up to Missouri to do some rockhounding, and taking some other trips in the southeast as they often do throughout each year, so he decided to join MAGS to reap the benefits. I told him, as I have told him and countless others in the past, MAGS is by far one of the best clubs I have joined, their members are some of the nicest people I have met in the rockhunting hobby and many are good friends now as well. Mark said he and one of my other buddies in northern Georgia, Jeff Deere, wanted to come up and rockhunt with me at MFQ that weekend as well….Jeff has been talking about getting up here for a while now to hunt with me…he is affectionately known as Jeffadilla to a close circle of friends of ours… named that by Mike Streeter, a good rockhound friend from North Carolina and geologist as well….if you ever saw Jeff digging, you would know why we call him that.

Mark was going to be driving up to KC to see his sister and Mom, wanted to check and see if I had the weekend off to take him to MFQ as well. I checked my calendar and just happened to be off that weekend, so I told him that Onyx and I would meet him there about mid morning on Saturday the 20th. I contacted my buddy Jim, who recommended lodging there, that Mark could stay at on Friday night, and then Jim called me a few days later to tell me that a blast had occurred so we would have fresh material to comb thru, plus the weather was going to be about 75 degrees down there that day…a win win for us. Onyx and I got up early and were on the road soon after stopping by the donut shop. Mark called before I was 40 miles down the road, to say he had finished breakfast, checked out of the cabin there and asked if I minded him ambling over to the quarry to start looking…I just chuckled, figured he wouldn`t be able to wait on me.

We made good time getting down there, despite a little fog on the drive down, arriving a little after 8 am. This is the view from the east side looking west…the last time I was down there, the ramp from the east side to the coved wall was completely blocked and covered in rock scattered all over the floor from the prior blast, which was centered on the east side of the nose rock sticking out there…

…and this time the blast was just east of that one…..

Mark was already working over some small boulders near the wall at the back of the blast pile when we arrived…..after changing into my boots, I grabbed my tools and bags and started walking the pile to see what I could find as well. We found a few spots where there were obvious signs of a pocket at some point, possibly one that had landed intact for the most part with some damage resulting in the fall from above, but several crystals intact and beautiful…and many of them were green poker chip crystals…which we find alot of on that side of the quarry, yet most of the time, we have found that the green crystals shatter more easily. One has be extremely careful when chipping the green crystals out of the pockets, placing your chisel way back from it in order not to break it while chipping it out. I rarely am able to get one out intact with no blemishes. After a couple of hours, I had filled two bags with crystals already, and had a few bigger ones as well…the day was heating up into the 70`s. I stopped for a water break, grabbed another bag, and Mark joined me in walking the wall to look for pockets. We found some nice ones on the east side of the pile and I was able to chip some nice combos out of them to give to Mark….

…and while we were over next to that pocket, Mark found another plate with two or three large green poker chips nestled in some pretty druse as well….he took the photos of me above working the pocket I found, and I took these pics of him holding the plate that he found….

…and after working the coved wall and other areas along the wall, he showed me his finds…he was one happy camper….and glad he had made the drive and stopped off to hunt with me…..

…and from there, we drove over to visit with a friend of mine who sells Viburnum Trend minerals…he always has great material for sale and doesn`t charge an arm and a leg like some dealers will do. Mark picked out a few nice selections, getting a variety of minerals and crystals for his collection, including some of the greenish yellow double terminated calcite crystals encased in pyrite that came from pillar pockets at one of the mines and may never been seen again. I have several of those in my collection as well….

…from there, Mark headed north to I-70 and then west to KC….while Onyx and I headed home…shooting these beautiful sunbeams on the way….

All in all, another great day of rockhounding with good friends and great weather….jwjphoto7@gmail.com if you would like to chat.

MFQ Again on the 16th

Posted on January 25, 2016 by jwj

After a few weeks of bad weather, flooding, then snow and ice, I decided to take Saturday the 16th off, so I could return to MFQ and do some rockhounding again. Nathaniel was out of the country with his chef activities and Chuck was tied up with his college classes and flooring work, so as soon as I got home from a long night at work and caught a three hour nap, Onyx and I headed out. We took the scenic route this time and saw a few deer and turkey and a few people outside their homes burning leaves and that was about it.

We arrived with enough daylight left that I had four hours to collect in….

…so we didn`t waste any time getting started…above is the view to the east from the coved wall….my buddy Jim had told me Friday that there was no material on the ground that he could see, so no new blasting had taken place in a while…the last time we were there, they had material on the ground in three different areas to clean up and it was apparent that they had cleaned up that huge blast pile and the one to the right of it, both of which would have been visible in the photo above if they had still been there. In the middle of the coved wall tho, there were the remains of a small blast pile….

…and very little to the right of it….

…so I decided to check the remains of that pile for crystals first and then make my way to the right…altho now, in retrospect, I wish I had started on the wall to the right first, and made my way to the left, cause I found some really nice dogtooth pockets along that wall to the right by the end of the day. When we arrived, there were also some folks on the far left side with a trailer, and some four wheelers, told Jim I thought they were four wheeling up at the top, but as it turned out, they were actually cutting trees up there and using the four wheelers to drag them down to the truck and trailer. They were up there all day too. When I reached the center of that pile, I found a huge boulder set into the loose stuff and a large opening in the boulder, where it appeared someone had found some nice stuff and pulled it out, leaving this huge opening in it….you can see it behind my truck over the top center below….

…and closer up in the photo below….

…I began checking the pocket and on the sides and top of the pocket, I found some beautiful poker chips with matrix encrusting and enveloping them, inseparable from the matrix, and soon I was pulling several out that had big and gorgeous dogtooth crystals sticking out from the ends of them as well, some were a bright orange color and some were a bright chocolate brown with some irridescent razzle dazzle to them. It took a couple of hours just to clean that pocket out, let me tell ya, and then I was able to move over to that wall to the right, and when I did, I found four pockets in a row in a seam a few inches wide at the entrance, that looked very promising. By that time, the sun was beginning to set, and I had to work fast….

…the pockets were along the bottom third of the wall and are only faintly visible in the photo below, right in the middle and above that white line across the bottom of the wall….

..in short order tho, I was able to remove several small plates of orange dogtooth crystals and some larger brown ones as well, one pocket even had some green and brown mixed colors of calcite…I filled two bags of wrapped crystals pretty quickly and then Onyx and I got out of there, but not before snapping a few photos of my truck with the new Cooper tires on them that a friend had requested on the Tacoma website…Onyx decided to pose for me from the passenger seat so I snapped a few extras….in one photo he was licking his chops as if to say…” come on dad, lets get out of here, I`m hungry “…..

Another Dandy Dogtooth Pocket Day

Posted on October 19, 2015 by jwj

Earlier this week I decided I was going to drive back down to MFQ and see if I could find anything good, after checking out both of the most recent blast piles last Sunday, and finding some nice yard rocks. I figured after they stirred up both piles a bit, if they decided to work both piles evenly that is, that more material could be uncovered…little did I know what lay in store for me.

I had talked to Nathaniel and he decided to ride down with me and on the way down, he told me that he sure would like to find one of those chocolate brown colored dogtooth crystals….little did he know what lay in store for him. I always pray for a few things before I make each trip…I pray for a safe trip for Onyx and I, pray for no flat tires, and I pray that I will find some pretty crystals and minerals. Sometimes when I get where I am going and there is some rock overhanging a pocket in front of me, I will say a quick prayer to keep me out of harms way and when I find nice stuff, I thank God for that as well. On really hot days, when the wind stirs up and brings us a nice cool breeze, I thank God for turning on the fan, too…and I usually thank him for nice weather as well….I realize he is super busy, but I believe in keeping the lines of communication open.

We didn`t get a real early start yesterday morning, but as I told Nathaniel, it wasn`t gonna get light til about 7:30 am, and it was gonna be cooler than what we were used to so far, so if we arrived around 9 am, with full sun, that would give it time to warm up a bit. We loaded up the truck as the sun was rising prettily…..

On the way down there, we spotted two bald eagles in a tree top next to the highway…..as soon as we passed them and confirmed it, I turned around and returned so we could both photograph them, pulling off the side of the highway to do so…..as I turned around, one took flight and passed overhead, leaving one in the tree for us….

…we had to approach from the side so as not to spook him, and after a few seconds of snapping images, he took flight…we just kept shooting images….

…a local farmer stopped by to make sure we were okay and told us that there were alot more eagles that could be seen along the river at Houston. Nathaniel used his phone camera and I was shooting with my Nikon D200 and zoom lens. I wasn`t sure what I had in my images until I got home last night and looked at them after loading them into my computer, sometimes my autofocus doesn`t work as well as I would like it to…needless to say, I was pretty happy with my images of the eagle. As I told Nathaniel, I have never seen two eagles in a treetop like that, so I took that as a good sign for our day ahead.

We got on the road again and when we arrived at the quarry, we found the pile on the left side to be quite a bit less than when I was there the week before. The pile was steeper so there would be no climbing to the top, and we could see stuff sliding down so we both donned our hard hats and grabbed tools and bags….

….setting out to check for signs of pockets. Nathaniel went to the right from the middle…..

…..and I went to the left from the middle, stopping at a big boulder 20 feet from the middle, where it appeared that a few pockets were located, one under the boulder, and one or two on the left side of it……

…pretty soon, Nathaniel went past me to the left and set up camp about ten feet from me, finding some openings in what appeared to be a vuggy wall….

…and pretty soon after that, he was telling me that he had some nice dogtooth crystals inside…

…..I had walked back to the truck to get my flashlight to look inside my pocket at the base of the boulder, and I grabbed my camera as well. When I returned to the wall to see what he had found, he was pretty excited and I saw that he had good reason to be excited…..

JACKPOT !!! I was excited for him and told him to get his phone out and photograph them before and after, then told him how to remove the ones that were anchored in there, after carefully removing the ones that were loose, and to go ahead and wrap them up soon after removing them if possible…yes Virgil, I told him to wrap them up, just as I wrap mine up as soon as I can after removing them from the pockets…and yes I told Nathaniel all about you, Virgil….lol….

….I then returned to my pocket and said a quick prayer, that while I was glad Nathaniel had found a great pocket of dogtooth crystals, I would sure like to find something similar as well…

…..and what do you know…the next thing you know, I am pulling dogtooths out of my pocket soon after too….Nathaniel took some photos of me with my finds, every time I pulled a nice one out…

….he said I was killing him pulling one after another out…as he was chipping that huge plate of his out of his pocket….

…and in no time at all, we had been working those pockets for about three hours, opening the mouths of the pockets pretty big from the small openings we started with. Nathaniel had to open his up big time to remove that huge plate that he was chipping out, that alone took him about thirty minutes to do. When I was finally able to open mine up more, I shined my flashlight inside to see what all I had yet to pull out, turned out to be about fifteen inches deep inside and almost two feet across, with a massive base of chocolate colored calcite latched on to the top of the boulder and pointing down, those were the singles I had pulled out before, having broke off the base and were just laying there when I started reaching into the vug.

When that pocket ran out on me, I moved a few inches to the left and right and found a few more and then another pocket under the boulder on the left side of it, opened up….

…as I was checking it out, pulling a few plates of black and brown sparkly druse out, Nathaniel finally liberated that huge plate of dogtooth calcite crystals from his pocket, he turned around with it in his hands and a big smile on his face, and I snapped this photo of him holding it….

…and here is another photo of another nice one he pulled out of there as well….

….after a short water break, we loaded Onyx up and drove over to the other side and checked out the wall over there, and found some more nice pockets of dogtooth crystals once again, spending about 90 minutes before heading for home. I stopped off at Rocky Falls to see if there was any fall color there, and found some nice color and some kids there…..Nathaniel remembered swimming there as a kid growing up in the Ellington area….

…on our way home, we saw several deer including a doe and two fawns, both fawns were as big or bigger than their mama….sure was nice to see so much wildlife, made for an even better day. Here are a few of my crystals from my pockets Saturday…..

…and a closeup of Nathaniel`s huge cluster, that he photographed yesterday and sent to me……

…..it still has him pretty excited…which is always a good thing. 🙂

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

Protected: Secret Spot and MFQ With Rockhound Friends

Posted on October 3, 2015 by jwj

How I Spent My Labor Day Weekend 2015….MFQ

Posted on September 16, 2015 by jwj

That`s right…Onyx and I spent our 2015 Labor Day Weekend at MFQ on both Saturday and Sunday, after receiving word from my buddy down there that a new blast occurred on Friday afternoon. We drove down early Saturday morning, arriving about 7:30…..sure was a pretty sunrise to greet us tho along the way….

…and we saw some deer and a wild turkey on the way down, so I knew then it was going to be a good day ahead….the fog increased as we drew closer and I knew it was going to be a hot one once the fog burned off….

…and here is the before in the fog, and after the fog burned off later in the morning, images of the pile that greeted us on our arrival….

As I was lacing up my boots for the day ahead, and one snapped, I briefly thought I sure hope this isn`t a bad sign…luckily for me, within five minutes that thought went quickly out the window like a rock was attached to it. After switching to my spare boots, I started up the right side of the pile…..

…and came upon these boulders about halfway up, and circled around them to the left and then back to the right, looking carefully around each side of them, picking up a few nice loose crystals all the way around them, and then came to the right side of that one that appears to be in the middle on the right side…

…and wait til you see what was on top of the boulder to the left of this one…

whooeeee…. I was in dogtooth heaven……

…I climbed back down the pile to get my hammer and chisel and another bag of wraps as well as a bottle of water…luckily for me that nice mass of dark colored crystals above chipped out of that boulder rather nicely….while you might not be able to tell here, many of them turned out to be dogtooths, too….turned out to be alot of red druse in the pockets surrounding these beauties too….

…by 9 am, the fog was burned off and luckily for me, there was a vast area of shade remaining to work with, and stay cool inside of, since I had a lot of territory to cover ahead of me. I was only halfway up the pile and seeing poker chips laying all over the place, many of them with dogtooths sticking out the ends. I was in poker chip heaven for sure…another prayer answered….

Onyx was staying pretty close to me today…he found a bed of soft dirt about halfway down the pile in front of me, after climbing up with me and walking around the top to check things out before I got up there…he took advantage of the soft dirt and laid right down there…

he stayed there til the shade burned off…..as I got to the top of the pile, I started finding a few more chunks of crystals with the red druse prominently stamped on and around them….beautiful stuff for sure….

…I climbed down from the top into this little niche of a depression and checked the wall for pockets…not finding any, I turned around and spotted this boulder in front of me, with a small looking vug at the base, so I grabbed ahold of what looked like a loose piece at the base of that vug and pulled out and back, and a gorgeous cluster of brown dogtooth crystals came loose from the vug and boulder. Here is the boulder after I have opened up the vug some…I will post photos of the cluster a little later….

…and some of the vug itself after I had halfway emptied it…this boulder is about five feet tall, and that vug was about 2 feet deep and every bit of fifteen inches wide….about a foot high in front…..

…in the image below, the cluster on the right is what I pulled out first to reveal the vug….the cluster on the left was the next one waiting for me inside the vug, has a nice dogtooth sticking up on the right side there….looks like a blade sticking out….

…it took me the better part of an hour to clean out the vug…after that I wandered back up the middle of that depression and found some breathtaking chalcedony type chunks of what looked like red and yellow druse with poker chips embedded in them…I`m describing them after the fact of cleaning them up, but when looking at them with the dirt and dust all over them, all I could tell was that they looked like chalcedony and were red and yellow colored….I found about half a dozen of them….

…they were in the last bag I cleaned up, yesterday, so I will try and get some photos of them tomorrow to show you what they look like cleaned up. By this time it was approaching 11 am and getting hot…so I grabbed the bags and headed for the truck, having to make a couple of trips back up to get some of the chalcedony chunks, wrapping them in my t shirt as I was by then, out of wrapping cloths. By the time I got back down to the truck, and got Onyx inside in the ac, and those beauties wrapped up in bubble wrap, and changed into clean clothes, I was pretty done in, and had only covered a third of the pile. I decided to return and see if I could check the rest of the pile the next day. I had no other plans.

Onyx and I did the same thing the next morning, only getting an earlier start this time, this time finding an ever prettier sunrise on the way, near some old stockyards enveloped in layers of fog with the sun rising over the top….

…then I found it evolving some and shot the sun rising up over a small barn in front of us at the the next intersection….

…and catching some foggy sunrise scenes on down the road too….

…arriving to find the quarry enshrouded in fog once more. I climbed up to the top of the pile once again and began finding dogtooth crystals all over the place along the top of the pile, and every five to ten feet were smaller boulders with clusters of poker chips covering them…and loose ones in the dirt and loose rocks below….I didn`t take my camera up there with me this time, but I recall finding about five pockets embedded in the dirt under a few boulders. I was able to split one boulder open and found the interior of the two halves coated with sprays of brown dogtooth crystals. here are those two haves with the spray of dogtooths inside one of them…

…and some more images of the chunks of red calcite druse that I found laying all over the place as well, must have come out of huge pockets when the blast occurred, they were literally laying all over the place…and in boulder vugs too….

…and then I found a boulder up there at the top that had some beautiful clusters of crystals on the top…I wasn`t sure I would be able to chip them out, they looked like they were solid but lo and behold, they came right off the top with just a few whacks on the hammer, and I was astounded….here they are all cleaned up with just a little bit of damage to the ends of them…

…and I found this one down in a pocket in the dirt nearby….

and here are some of the many nice dogtooths that I found in those dirt pockets and vugs….the nicest one being this plate that I was able to chip out of one of the boulder vugs…

Another great day that wrapped up a great holiday weekend for me…Onyx and I packed up and headed home by 11:30 am and rested up the rest of the day. Hope everyone else had a nice holiday weekend too !!

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

First Field Trip For Two Young Rockhounds

Posted on August 27, 2015 by jwj

Earlier this summer I was contacted by good rockhound friends Matthew and Carolyn Lybanon of the Memphis Club MAGS, they emailed to tell me that they would be up in the St Louis area the weekend of August 22nd and 23rd and wondered if I could take them rockhunting on Sunday the 23rd. After checking the calendar to make sure I was off that weekend, I answered them and said I would love to take them rockhunting that day. They were interested in finding some dogtooth calcite crystals so I knew exactly where I would take them, the secret spot and MFQ. In the weeks leading up to their visit, I drove down to both locations and did some hunting and digging to see if I could spot some specific locations where we might open up a pocket.

During one of those visits I found out that Onyx likes to swim, one of the quarries has some water holes that are about three feet deep on one end…the only problem with that is that I have to give him a bath a day or two later as that water has been there a while and is a bit on the dirty stale side of things, but that`s no big deal either, he smells better and I get a good workout in doing so.

A few weeks ago, Tina from the BE Clement Mineral Museum in Marion, Kentucky, contacted me and told me that she had received a visit from a family located in Waterloo, Illinois, and there was a young man in that family that was starting out as a rockhound and looking for some assistance…she provided me with their contact information and I made contact with Mike Sabo last week, soon after they returned from their vacation. Mike told me his son Cianan was 12 years of age and just getting started collecting rocks and minerals and that they had not been out on any field trips as of yet. I asked them if they would like to go with us on the 23rd and after checking with the rest of his family, Mike said they would love to join us. I let them know what tools and clothing to bring and we were set for their first field collecting trip.

Last week I was working with a new guy named Josh and while talking to him, found out that he likes to collect rocks and minerals, but he too, had never been out on an actual field collecting trip, so I invited him along as well and he was able to go with us also. Sunday morning rolled around finally and Josh was the first to show up about 7:30 am….he, Onyx, and I had just returned from McDonald`s where we picked up some breakfast, and we were met at my house by Mike and Cianan. Luckily they had already stopped for breakfast and had no problem coming inside to talk with us while we wolfed down our hot cakes & sausage patties, while we waited for the Lybanon family to arrive. Matthew, Carolyn, and daughter Julie were due to arrive about 8 am, which they did, and then Alan, Debbie, and the twins arrived about 20 minutes later, finding most of us out in the backyard touring the rock gardens, and then walking inside to look at the rest of the collection including the dogtooth room. Everyone also got to meet Onyx and discover what a cute attention ham he is.

Soon after, we loaded up and headed to the secret spot, arriving soon with cloudy skies and cool temps still intact. Mike and Alan were driving vans, so we had to take it a bit easy going down the road at the secret spot due to the road being washed out in a few places…I even had Josh jump out of my truck and move a basketball sized boulder in the middle of the road as we were descending down the steep part of the hill. I had assured them the road was solid earlier so we had no problems, acquiring just a little bit of red clay paint is all. Soon after arriving and gearing up, everyone spread out to look for crystals and pockets….and Onyx naturally headed for the water holes….

…I took Alan over to a pocket that I had located two weeks before and showed him how the pocket expanded back into the hillside, explaining that with a small sledge hammer and chisel, he could prob get back into the deeper pocket and pull out some nice crystals and clusters. I left him there as he started hammering away, and headed to the other side to see if I could help others locate some likely looking areas to find crystals loose on top and what to watch for in terms of potential pockets. Cianan and his Dad were already checking out some old pockets and finding some loose crystals laying around on top. Josh called out and I walked over to where he was standing over a rocky bank with a ledge of poker chips embedded in the gravel and what appeared to be some openings in the dolomite ledge…he indicated he would work it but would appreciate some help, so I looked around and spotted Alan at another location and asked if he would like to help Josh work it…Alan came right over and teamed up with Josh to see how deep the pocket would go….

…I heard Carolyn and Debbie talking behind me and looked over my shoulder to see them checking for some sign of a pocket on the ground about thirty feet away…they were looking in an area that I had found several floor pockets over the past few years….

…and now that everyone was looking around and digging in, I grabbed my gloves and mattox and began to see if I could find a good pocket for them as well….soon after, I was joined by Cianan and we started digging into a couple of likely spots….

…I got a chance to talk to him for a bit and found out he was a pretty sharp young man and totally into searching for pretty crystals and minerals. Back at the house, right before we left, I gave him a couple of flats of crystals from the Viburnum Trend area mines that a friend had given me the week before…I had cleaned them up and got them sparkling again with some super iron out just last weekend. We were able to find some shallow pockets of druse and poker chips but no big pockets opened up for us…Josh and Alan pursued the pocket on the bank as far as they were able to and then wandered off to explore other options….I took a water break about an hour later and spotted Josh on the wall on the far side, looking for signs of crystals and pockets….

…and looked back and saw that Cianan was still hammering away looking for a pocket…a good sign of a dedicated rockhound in the making….

…then I heard some more hammering in the other direction and spotted Alan hard at work with two sidewalk supervisors behind him directing his every move….

…he was working some old pockets that I had discovered about a year ago, another location with potential to find more if a guy is willing to work and look for the pockets, moving a lot of rock to do so….

…in the meantime, Josh was down along the wall in the area that I had located several good dogtooth pockets during 2014…

…and Cianan continued to look for pockets and crystals in the clay dirt….

…by this time it was nearly 1:30 and we had been digging a few hours there, and we decided to drive on down to MFQ and see what we could find there…Alan and Debbie decided they were going to head on home to Memphis tho as they had a short night of rest in St Louis and were worn out now…and Mike and Cianan decided to head home as well, so the Lybanon`s followed Josh and I down to the quarry as soon as everyone else peeled off on to other highways. Josh took a nap while I drove south and soon we arrived …I had received word from my good friend Jim that much of the higher bench material had been dozed off to the bottom, so when we arrived, we found a huge pile of rock leading up to the bench above like a giant stairway…..

…we all walked over to the base of the pile and were pleasantly surprised to start seeing alot of red boulders and small chunks of red druse with poker chips and many with dogtooth crystals in vugs on the boulders too…..

…Carolyn took some of these home with her, she was ecstatic to find some beautiful stuff here….she likes to surface collect and this place was a dream come true for a surface collector like her that day….

I grabbed my new three pound hammer and chisels…my old ones were buried under quite a bit of tailings dirt in the old pit at the Eureka Mine by the trackhoe operator that we had problems with at the last machine dig….and I began cobbing down some of these boulders, as Josh decided to climb up the pile and see what he could find on top….

…joined by Julie down at the far end who was walking around on the base of the pile looking for more crystals too….and it was about this time that the sun finally made an appearance with the cloud cover rolling away….

..and about halfway up, Josh stopped a few times, finding some nice small clusters of poker chips intertwined into each other and successfully tossed them to the soft sand bottom near my truck to pick up later and wrap up to take home….yes Virgil, I was able to convince him to wrap them up before placing them into his backpack….

…about an hour later, Matthew, Carolyn, and Julie decided to head home, a five hour drive ahead of them yet to Memphis, and Josh and I wrapped up shortly after as well, the heat taking its toll on me and sapping my remaining strength for cobbing any remaining boulders. By this time, we had the back end of the truck completely packed with wrapped specimens, Onyx was soaking up the ac in the cab for the past hour, and we were ready to cool down, so we loaded up and headed north to Rocky Falls to do just that….

…one of those beautiful treasures of the Missouri Ozarks that some folks don`t know about…there were several locals there when we arrived, sitting out in the shallow edge of the pool in front of the base of the falls while their kids were sliding down the falls into the deeper base pool…..

…we were there about 30 minutes and then headed on up the road for home…about ten miles down the road, coming down a hill, we spotted a beautiful doe and two spotted fawns in a field on the right side of the road…I slowed down and shot through the windshield to capture them…..so pretty…..

…all in all a great day, albeit a long one, but full of so many enjoyable moments and time well spent with good friends….does it get any better than this ??? I doubt it.

James 🙂

jwjphoto7@gmail.com

MFQ in June 2015 With Ian

Posted on July 12, 2015 by jwj

Two weekends in a row, I was down at MFQ…once on my own in my new truck and the second time with my buddy Ian and my new buddy Onyx. The first trip down there, I had received a call from my buddy Jim that some blasting had taken place a day or two before, turned out to be the coved wall again but taking out more of the center wall too….

….so I was able to find some nice pockets along the wall, including some filled with green poker chips, and some filled with nestle chocolate brown dogtooths and black dogtooths, so I re-positioned my truck closer to those pockets in case I started filling bag after bag with some pretty crystals….

….in fact, I was up along the wall and working on cleaning out the third pocket when my buddy Ian called me from Denver, to see what I was up to…and I told him what I was up to…he reminded me that he was going to be stopping off a week later to rockhunt with me on his way back home from New York state…I promised him that I would leave him some material there. A few minutes later tho, I had located a pocket up higher on the wall than I could reach…..center of the photo below….it was about ten feet up from the pile….

…..so I returned to my truck and got my extendable handle rake, then returned to the wall, climbed up on four rocks I stacked up…had forgotten to bring my ladder that day with me…and then reached up to the pocket with my rake and gently moved it around, pulling down a few small black colored poker chip crystals, as well as raining down a few small pebbles on me too…

….luckily my hard hat deflected many of those from me..and soon I was bumping up against something more substantial in the pocket with the rake…I pulled it to the edge ot the pocket so I could look at it, and liking what I saw, very carefully snagged it in the jaws of the rake turned upside down, and lowered to my waiting gloved hands…

….the photos of the pocket above were taken after the fact…i was unable to see what was above me nor in the pocket itself, had to feel around with the rake and hope for the best…luckily I was able to pull out the best without any harm coming to it or me…

…I also found what looked like a few bat caves along the wall near the base of the pile…but Ian later determined they were prob bird nests inside them cause he was pulling out straw and bits of debris and twigs from them….

…later in the afternoon, storm clouds started rolling in, so I decided to pack my bags and vamoose back toward home….

..no doubt that it had been a pretty nice day for collecting there and I was happy with what I found….

…the following week, Ian met me at MFQ and we decided to tackle that one pocket again…my buddy Jim brought us a nice ladder and we were able to climb right up to the pocket…since I had pulled the nice cluster out the week before, I let Ian cleanout the pocket and take home whatever he wanted to….

…while he was chipping out some black dogtooth crystals from the pocket, I looked down below and saw my new buddy dog Onyx, strolling around the base of the pile…he never did stray too far, which was fine with me…since this was his first official rockhunting trip….

…and while Ian was chipping out a few for himself, I discovered some nice ones in the pile itself…like this big one that I dug out right below Ian a few feet….

..and while it didn`t go home with me, there were a lot of little ones underneath and around it in the loose dirt that did go home with me. After working on the black dogtooth pocket, Ian made his way down to the bat caves next and worked on them for awhile…

…I headed home about noon, stopping off to see my miner friend Dave and Ian headed home to Denver from there at the same time…getting into Denver around midnight.

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