Black and Blue Dogtooth Crystal Weekend

Posted on May 7, 2014 by jwj

Earlier in the week, my chances of going rockhunting even one day during the first weekend in May, were looking pretty dismal for me…as I had scheduled a portrait shoot on Saturday the 3rd, in the middle of the day and that meant I was going to have to stick around all morning…and I was going to an event on Sunday early afternoon to commemorate the lives of two firefighter friends that had achieved milestones in their lives, celebrating fifty years of service to the Sullivan Fire Department and District. Both men are good friends of our family and after attending the same event for my Dad the year before, and knowing it required a couple of hours time, I wasn`t sure I was going to have any time afterward to go hunting that day either.

By midweek tho, my schedule cleared up so that I could not only drive down to MFQ on Saturday morning early, but I was able to squeeze in a few hours of hunting on Sunday after the event as well. I made a call to my buddy Jim on Friday evening and he told me that the new blast pile was nearly gone and he was seeing some streaks of black as well, so Missy and I got up early Saturday morning and were on the road by 7 am. under mostly cloudy skies, with a hint of clearing skies by mid morning.

We soon rolled into the quarry and found a much smaller pile of rocks and evidence that the huge hydraulic jack had been used recently on some of the larger boulders with a line of the busted boulders skirting the edge of the reduced pile from one side to the other.

I pulled just past the back of the reduced pile and parked, and after switching to my boots, grabbed a bag, my gloves, and my mini mattox and decided to do a surface hunt first around the edge of reduced boulders on the east side of the pile. I found a few smaller pieces right off the bat and then made a closer inspection of the walls of the pile. I found a few small pockets of dark gray colored poker chips and some calcite druse as well. I walked down the wall to the east and found a few small pockets of druse as well as one nice poker chip cluster, a small one….

…..enough to fill one bag with some interesting looking shaped druse pieces. I returned that bag to the truck bed and then grabbed another one and headed around the skirt of rocks to the west side….

….and immediately started seeing some nice cobbed down chunks of calcite druse all over the place, sparkling and glittering in the strong sunlight. I sat my bag and mattox down and began selecting some of the nicer chunks and carrying them over to the parking area and creating a grouping of them to pick up later before I left. They would make some great yard rocks. I was up in the middle of them making more selections, when my buddy Jim drove up in his pickup with his wife and daughter. They were on their way to town for some festivities…I told him I had been hearing sirens and parade preparation sounds in the past hour and he said the parade would likely start soon downtown. Soon after they took off, I did hear the start of the parade and then later on, live music and what sounded like a drag race or tractor pull as well. They definitely had some beautiful weather for a celebration.

Soon Missy was back from her explorations and parked under the back of my truck in the shade…I put a bowl of cool water out for her and headed back to the pile to see if I could cobb some crystals out of a large boulder. I took my four pound hammer and chisels with me and soon came up on the huge boulder laying on its side on one side of the pile. I liked the looks of the crystals embedded in one end of the boulder, dark grey and black colored. I was able to free a couple of nice crystals from the boulder and was working on some others when a bumble bee starting flying around close by and even buzzing right by me a few times. I decided to give him some room and took a short water bottle break about thirty feet away to see if he was trying to get into a wall hole nearby…however, he didn`t settle down, even followed me over to my break area and buzzed by me some more. I walked back to the truck and retrieved my spray bottle of bee and wasp killer, however by the time I got back over there, he had apparently found a hole and ducked inside. I was glad, cause I was neither interested in killing it nor in being stung trying.

I tried to free a few more crystals and clusters, but was unable to do so, and decided to move to the back side of the pile and see if I could climb up to the top of the pile to see what more could be found. I got around to the back side and determined this was going to be no easy feat in getting up to the top of the reduced pile, as the dirt and rock material was extremely loose under my feet and for every step I took up the pile, I was either sliding back down or losing two steps down. I left the bag at the bottom…a mistake I later almost regretted…and used the mini mattox to carve out steps so I could get to the top, going up switchback fashion even. Eventually I made it to the top, after having to stop and knock down some of the top rocks to make things easier, dragging myself up and over the top edge finally. Once up there, I checked the walls for new pockets, finding a few pockets here and there. I decided to check out the huge boulder that had supplied me with many black dogtooth crystals the last trip down there, and to my surprise, started finding small clusters of crystals all around the bottom of the boulder once again. I even found some laying in the loose dirt at the base of the boulder as well as a few large ones that were nice too, and after digging down thru some of the loose material, I was able to recover some very pretty twin dogtooths…here they are cleaned up….

It appeared someone had chipped off a few of the remaining clusters and crystals I had left behind and I`m glad that whoever was there, left behind a lot of pretty crystals for me to find and take home. One that was in the shallow area of dirt, was a spectacular twin black dogtooth crystal, in the shape of a V, each one about two inches in length. After chipping off several nice clusters from the huge boulder a few weeks ago, I was delighted to find a few more perfectly shaped small ones this trip too….

I dug down around three sides of the boulder and found enough small crystals to fill two bags full…however since I had left my bag below and didn`t want to slide down and grab the bag, and then make the arduous climb back up with the bag in tow, I decided to take my long sleeve shirt off and wrap up the crystals in it and then carry the whole thing back down the pile. I also grabbed two or three nice large chunks with lots of black dogtooths on them, and then slid down the loose talus pile on my butt…this was much easier. After wrapping them all up separately on the tailgate in my wrapping cloths, I decided I had enough goodies for the day and headed home. By this time, I had four bags completely full of wrapped goodies.

However, after getting them all wrapped up and bagged, I decided to drive over to the cove area and check that wall as well. By this time it was pretty hot outside so I turned on the ac and left Missy in the ac while I worked the wall. I started at the east end and worked my way back west and pretty soon was finding crystals, poker chips and dogtooth crystals, laying in the loose matrix at the base of the wall. I followed a trail of poker chips up the small ramped pile and pretty soon, discovered a pocket buried in the loose matrix that had apparently fallen from above and became buried. I pulled enough crystals out of it to fill half a bag and by this time, I was approaching exhaustion fast, and still had a four hour drive home. I`ll get some of these crystals photographed and loaded up here soon.

Soon, Missy and I were headed home, stopping off briefly for a short hike to a refreshing spring fed creek, that we waded around in for a short time….to cool her off mainly….

….we headed back to the truck and ac, and drove home. Missy was as tired as I was, carrying ten pounds of fur in the heat…I thought I was going to have to carry her to the truck…luckily she gets her hair cut on Wednesday.

Sunday morning, I decided Missy and I would drive down to a neat spot where I have always been able to find some neat druse pieces….my Mom had asked me for some holie rocks that she could plant ground cover in for her rock and flower gardens. I had seen some holie rocks there that I thought would be perfect, and as it worked out, we had a few hours of daylight left after the event on Sunday afternoon. It was as hot Sunday as it had been the day before, and I was prepared to leave Missy in the truck if need be with the ac on full blast. We arrived about 4 pm and I was able to locate about half a dozen nice large druse chunks with some holes in them, tho the holes were not nearly as big as I thought they were going to be. I also found some really pretty soda straw plates nearby as well, some of the straws were about two to three inches in length and very sparkly in the sunlight.

After loading the holie rocks and druse plates up, I drove over to the secret spot to check it out and decided to putter around a bit and see if I could locate any new pockets there. The shade had stretched out about thirty feet from the west wall by that time in the day, so I drove over and parked in the edge of it, enough to cover the cab in case Missy would need to get in the truck in the ac again.

As it turned out, there was a great breeze blowing from the northwest and came right across the shaded area very nicely. I scratched around a few times until I found a nice area that had great potential…I was ten feet under the huge pocket I found back in the spring time last year, the pocket that had apparently vibrated open after a blast seventy feet away from it…the pocket that was three feet in diameter…the pocket that was chock full of dogtooth crystals, some of them were a big as beach balls….and about ten feet below it, I found a very nice pocket. Missy by this time, had made a few forays to the edge of the parking area and then wandered back and laid down about fifty feet from me on a ledge in the shaded area.

I walked back to the truck and grabbed my camera to document the pocket after I had decided that it was indeed going to open up into some poker chip crystals…

….the first one I pulled out was about four inches high and had a beautiful blue tint to it with a black dogtooth center…

….and once the pocket really opened up, I started pulling several nice large single crystals out as well as a few clusters, some with some beautiful druse attached to them….

…I could see several on the edge and just inside the loose mix of matrix at the bottom of the pocket…I really get excited when I see those, cause I start wondering what all is inside and how deep is the pocket going to wind up being…the thrill of the hunt I guess….

What was really strange, was that after I had pulled out several blue tinted crsytals with black dogtooth centers, I also found a small pocket off to the side, with a few small orange dogtooth crystals inside it. I have never found the two colors that close together in different pockets, usually they are at least ten feet apart. I`m always thrilled when I find the blue tinted crystals tho, since they seem to be a rare color to find. Here are some of the initial crystals from the blue pocket….

The pocket kept expanding to the left, so naturally I kept digging in that direction and it continued to open up along the way….

The top section of matrix around the roof plates was very thin and loose, so everytime I started digging in that area, things started falling down and had to be cleared out gently….

…and pretty soon I was pulling some beautiful roof plates out too….

…then I set the camera down in front of the pocket and here is what was inside…

..and then the pocket started going deeper, when it went as far to the left as possible…

here are some more of the crystals and roofplates from the pocket….

I filled two bags completely full and then Missy and I took off and headed home. Sure made for a nice weekend.

Here are some of my goodies found at the secret spot Sunday….

James

jwjphoto7@gmail.com

Dandy Black Dogtooth Crystal Day

Posted on April 15, 2014 by jwj

I received a phone call from my buddy Jim regarding recent activity at MFQ about mid week, and since I had already arranged to take Saturday off to go rockhunting, it made perfect sense to drive down there Saturday morning and see what could be found. After a relatively calm night at work Friday night, I drove home and changed from my uniform into comfortable jeans, picked up Missy, and headed out. Jim was right, it was a short wall that came down…the smallest and shortest wall there yet.

The last time I had seen activity in this area, you could walk from the parking lot up the slope of the pile and come out on top of the upper bench, but one look at this pile, and I knew that wasn`t gonna happen, it didn`t even go halfway up. It was evident they had already removed some material in the past few days and were working on some boulders, reducing them down with the hydraulic hammer. Missy and I drove around to the back side of the new pile and began looking around back there first….

…walking around the front of the pile along the edges and then walked up the pile next to the back wall….

…well I didn`t find much, other than a few shallow pockets, so I drove back around to the other side and decided to check out the pile where they had been taking some material out….and soon discovered a huge boulder with some pockets at the base of it chock full of light green colored poker chips….

I decided to wait til later to see if could liberate them and walked up into the center of the pile and made my way toward the back wall, looking from side to side to see if I could spot any crystals. I found a couple of calcite druse pieces until I got close to the back of the pile…then I started seeing small black poker chips with black center dogtooths laying all over the pile…I finally looked up and around for the source and spotted a HUGE boulder, half the size of my truck, with many pockets of huge black poker chip crystals with the black dogtooth centers, many of the dogtooths exposed even….

..including this pocket that was located at the bottom of this huge boulder, containing several black dogtooth crystals, many that appeared to be four or five inches in diameter and about six inches long….

…and this one next to it, with a bit of damage, most likely from the blast or the fall afterwards….

…and this next one was underneath and to the side of both of the other pockets, a single large dogtooth crystal in this vug….

…well needless to say, I was stunned and happy at the same time…and after picking up a few more loose crystals in the pile below, many of which were unblemished and just plain beautiful, I walked back down to my truck to retrieve another bag of wrapping cloths, a bottle of water, and my hammer and chisels. After drinking half a bottle of water, I walked back up and started filling one bag with all the loose crystals around the base of this boulder that I could locate, some were even down below in a few drop holes, and I pulled them out and wrapped them up and bagged them as well. Within moments, I had one bag filled and was working on the other and still hadn`t even touched the boulder vugs. It was about this time that my buddy Jim drove down to visit a bit. He was enjoying the weather on his day off and waiting for his wife to get home from work.

I soon returned to the boulder and began to see what I could successfully chip out of the vugs. Luckily for me, everything was coming out just fine and pristine, and soon I had two more bags full of goodies…here are a few….

here is the cluster that I chipped out of the bottom of the HUGE boulder at the back side of the pile….

….and the last thing I did after cleaning all those black beauties out, was try to liberate some of the green poker chips in the boulder on the front side of the pile…but like most green poker chips, that tend to shatter much easier than other colors, I was only able to get these two out somewhat intact….

I did manage to find a few pockets on the back wall that were full of calcite druse, some with poker chips attached and liberated some of them as well, however I have no photos of them, maybe I can add some later. It sure was a Dandy Dogtooth Crystal Day.

James

jwjphoto7@gmail.com

Protected: Oklahoma Visitors

Posted on March 26, 2014 by jwj

Another Dogtooth Pocket Found

Posted on March 17, 2014 by jwj

Figured I had better write this before I get too far behind and forget the details of it, found a very pretty dogtooth pocket at the new secret spot a few weeks ago, bright orange dogtooths attached to some very pretty colored druse. Missy and I didnt arrive til noon and it was the start of daylight savings time, so I knew we had at least six hours of daylight in case we needed it and it was going to be a nice warm day as well, reaching nearly 75 degrees that day. Here is one of the nicer ones I found, just to whet your appetite….

…it`s not in very good focus, but is very appealing looking and you can see some of the colors I was enjoying as well. I actually found it by doing some raking around a few likely looking bumps at the base of the wall and soon spotted some calcite indicators at the bottom of a ledge, as well as water filling the hole I was digging, which I really didnt like, but sometimes you have to take the bad with the good…..

…as I dug into the pocket, I started seeing twins and triples of poker chips…very few singles except those attached to clusters attached to the base rock on the sides as the pocket expanded into a trench that was about fifteen inches wide and started expanding to my left and deepening down…..

…the water in the pocket was cold….very cold…spring fed type cold….and kept filling in every ten minutes with whatever amount I took out by bailing….pretty soon it was evident that I needed something bigger to bail with, the little water bowl for Missy that I had wasnt getting the job done, so I went back to my truck and pulled out the 3.5 gallon square bucket that I keep my tools in, and began bailing water much more efficiently after that. I was taking seven to ten gallons out of that pocket every fifteen minutes and digging out crystals in between bailing times….here you see crystals just waiting to be pulled out of the loose fill and muck as the pocket kept expanding to my left….

…and here is a group of crystals already found so far….

…some attached to some pretty plates of bubbly druse too….

…and after about four hours of continuously expanding to the left, pulling out twins and triples and small clusters, including some I was able to chisel from the sides of the trench pocket, I came to the end of the pocket….

…after clearing away more loose fill and muck above, it turned into a cavelike opening, capped with a dome of ten inch thick dolomite rock, the pocket contained even more cold water and was filled with about twenty dogtooth crystals and clusters….

most of them just hanging out loose in the water waiting to be found…the one at the beginning of this post is the first one I pulled out, and one of the larger ones as well, here is a closer up and sharper view of it and another of the other ones as well….

…after removing these and wrapping them up with three cloths as opposed to the normal one cloth, I sat back and rested a bit, then gathered up my bags of goodies, tools, and buckets, and Missy and I headed for the barn. Sure was a nice productive day.

MFQ in February

Posted on March 4, 2014 by jwj

Boy after the winter we have had this year, with the extremely cold temps and snow/ice, one would probably think a trip to My Favorite Quarry was impossible to pull off, but no one was more surprised than me to see about five days of beautiful warm weather and sunny skies, pop up into the calendar three weeks into the snowiest month of the year. Missy and I loaded up early Saturday morning, the 22nd and headed out to see what we could find. My buddy had called me a few days before to let me know that very little work was going on at the quarry, but they were slowly and surely removing the blast pile. I figured everywhere else the ground would remain frozen and with work going on there, we could prob find some looser material to work with. We arrived at the quarry about 8:30 am, and I pulled up on the east wall and saw what appeared to be some fractured areas in the wall that may have occurred as a result of freezing and thawing…I parked here to check them out…I soon had my bags parked next to a few pockets along the wall and began working them….

….I was working the smaller pockets when my buddy Jim showed up and stopped by to visit briefly, taking a break from working on his house. I had worked my way down from where I parked the truck and found several smaller pockets…could see the wall was fractured in several areas, although some of them were way up high too….

…my bags are about four feet up from the ground level, and footing up there was slip and slide, so those pockets higher than four feet were hard to reach, cause I was constantly sliding down in the loose gravel and dirt. I had filled my apron up with the smaller pocket goodies and then finally reached this area of the wall about thirty yards west of where I started and when I found this pocket, I knew I would need the bags, it was that nice looking up close….

…some of the first few pieces I pulled from this pocket, were these nice chunks of calcite druse…

A few minutes later, a white car entered the quarry and drove over to my truck and parked, and a guy got out and said he hoped I would be there when he arrived…came over and introduced himself as Kurt and told me that he had been reading my blog site on rockhunting for the past year. Turns out he is a teacher in Lebanon, Missouri and new to rockhunting…he had dropped his wife off at a seminar in Rolla that morning and then decided to drive down and see if he could find anything, and was hoping to find me there as well. We talked for a few minutes and then I showed him what I was finding that morning and he decided to go further east along the wall and see what he could find. About thirty minutes later I looked up and he was over in the area of the original wall, which is still a very good producing area to work….

….I continued to work the bigger pocket, which was positioned under some heavy rocks, that seemed very attached to the base rock, so one less thing to worry about…..

….I started cleaning out the pocket, pulling out several smaller pieces of druse, enough to fill a bag by itself, and then started coming across smaller poker chip crystals mixed in. Soon I was able to look down into the gaps and see some darker poker chip crystals lurking in the shadows so to speak….

…and so far, I had a pretty respectable pile of keepers….

…I kept digging in and cleaning and pretty soon the pocket started burrowing in and more crystals started showing up in the dirt at the bottom of the pocket….

…and pretty soon, it had expanded a bit more and I came upon this….

…plus the bottom of the pocket started producing some very pretty poker chips, some of them quite big, some triples blended together like this one…

…and here is the bottom of the pocket, where you can see yet another nice poker chip hiding in the dirt….what you cant see here yet, are the many other crystals that were hiding in cluster form, mainly because I haven`t yet dug them out and exposed them, but believe me, they were there, and I was able to chip them out a few minutes later….

…and here is the one that was hiding on the right in the last photo…..

Kurt left about 3 pm that afternoon, he had a little longer drive home than I did…Missy and I took off about an hour later, exhausted and very happy with my finds that day….sure was a nice day, as the temps got up to about 65 that day….

Another Dogtooth Pocket Weekend

Posted on January 27, 2014 by jwj

Well folks, as you can see, I am behind again…had a great dogtooth pocket weekend, I found a great pocket each day. Saturday it was just Missy and me and we arrived at the new secret spot about mid morning…we were expecting forty degrees, but the constant wind from the northwest made it feel more like 30 degrees. Once I got started digging in with my mini mattox, though, I warmed up fast and stayed right there all day, and once I started finding pockets and crystals, the weather soon left my mind. As soon as I pulled in and parked, I looked over at this mound of solid looking rock, and decided to start raking rocks down the side of it and see if I could locate an opening to a pocket, so I started to the right of if and worked my way to the center of that mound….

…and as luck would have it, I didnt find anything except a poker chip or two here and there, until I reached the center of that mound, then I found a spot on the mound where there were a couple of nice looking poker chips just sitting there under some big rocks….

….now, its not that hole in the center above as that is one of several that range across the bottom of that mound of rock…the pocket I located is above my mini mattox above it…here it is up closer….

…see if you can locate the poker chip…I didn`t see it right away, but boy when I did, it was fantastic….I went back to my truck and came back with a bag and some wrapping cloths…I didn`t have many cloths this trip, had loaned out some and haven`t had them returned to me yet. Luckily I did have a couple of rolls of blue shop towels with me, and wound up using both rolls of the towels. Here is that poker chip closer up in case you didn`t spot it above….

…and the first few that I managed to pull out including the one above….

…here the next one shows the pocket starting to form up….

…and here are some that I pulled out from under that huge ledge of rock above in the next few minutes….

…the difference between this one and the last one, there are some druse plates in this one…and here you see the pocket going up under a small bluff of rocks….

…and here is a poker chip hiding up under the stone ledge in the pocket….

…or at least, what I thought was one poker chip in the pocket, turned out to be one of several, as I kept pulling rocks and slabs of ugly rock out of the way and revealed even more….

…with even more druse plates, as you can see in the next photo as the goodie pile continues to build….

…the next few that I pulled out of the pocket were ceiling plates, like this guy…he is a little out of focus and I`m not sure what the AF was concentrating on but obviously it wasn`t the nice combo cluster….

After pulling this nice one out, I looked inside and saw yet another one hanging upside down and decided to go after it as well, after stuffing the pocket opening with several cloths, and then attempting to chisel it out from the roof of the pocket, which was no easy feat as it was cramped and close quarters with a small opening to the pocket….

…here is the view inside the pocket that I had…..

I decided a little widening was in order, so I removed the loose stuff on the left with no problem and then tackled the big chunk of crystals on the right side of the mouth opening, which required a bit more work, chiseling it out from the far side where it was attached to the base of that mound of solid rock, but once out of the way, I had smooth sailing for removing everything else from that pocket….

….including this nice second combo cluster….

…it took me about an hour to clean out that pocket, it widened out at the back wall and I was able to remove some druse with chips there…there were some hollow sounding areas around the back of the pocket so I explored those, but they ended up being holie druse pockets, small and shallow. From here, I moved to the left and started raking and digging once again, and eventually came upon another spot that appeared to be promising….

…very promising indeed…..

…it was located at the top of that ridge of solid looking rock…I had started scraping and raking at the bottom and worked my way up, snagging a couple of poker chips with the rake end of the mattox and then just looked for an opening, this one above….I carefully cleared out the loose stuff around it and pulled some loose crystals out, eventually the mouth widened out quite a bit….

…and started opening to the right side….

…I was pulling alot of druse out initially, then some chips and druse, as well as a lot of loose crappy rock, gray dolomite shale type stuff….

…and when I got that cleared, I looked to the right and just inside the pocket, was what appeared to be a beautiful yellow-orange dogtooth crystal….

…so I began pulling all the rocks above and around it out of the way and then, removed the dogtooth and let me tell you, there were many more inside the pocket, took me a good hour just to clear them out of there…here are a few of them…..

small ones and big ones alike….

…I stopped and took about twenty minutes to wrap them up real good using my blue shop towels….you may not be able to tell here, but those rock walls are about two and a half feet deep along the right side of the pocket…

…and as you can see, there is now an opening going to the left, which I explored for a few minutes and pulled out a few more dogtooths from…..

It then dropped down toward a deeper pocket and that`s where I stopped digging for the day, exhausted after moving all that rock and pulling all those beautiful dogtooth crystals from. I decided to return the next day and see what else I could find, and contacted Ray to see if he would like to come down and work the dogtooth pocket where I stopped.

We started down Sunday morning about 9:30 am…I had told Ray the night before, that I was not leaving until at least 9 am, wanted to sleep in a bit and rest up some from Saturday`s digging…my hands were still sore even after taking two aleve and getting a good soak in the hot tub. I told him on the way down, that he could start on the pockets I had worked the day before, where I found the dogtooths, and see if he could find more, was fairly sure there were more pockets there from what I could see when I left, the downward angle on the left side and the opening under the rock on the right side. I would leave it up to him if he wanted to work it or not.

We arrived to find the temps starting to climb already, supposed to hit at least 53, and as it was, it reached the better part of 60, and felt great. After looking the pockets over, Ray decided to give it a shot and see what he could find, he had brought along an extra hammer and pry bar, called a Gorilla Bar, and he was able to move some of that heavy rock pretty easily with it.

…in the meantime, I decided to scratch around and see if I could find some more pockets to the left, so I started down that ridge once again, trying to loosen up my fingers and hands, still somewhat stiff and sore from the day before. Pretty soon, I heard Ray yell out that he had found a pretty dogtooth pocket…so I grabbed my camera to photograph what he had found….for starters, this nice jewel…..

…and the pocket it was located in was on the right side under the heavy rock walls….

…I went back to scraping and digging, and about twenty feet to the left of him, I opened up a pocket in the loose gravels and dirt wall….

…it appeared to be one that had fallen down fairly intact from the blast wall behind and above, with alot of loose crappy rock in the front of it, some of which came away when I grabbed it with the rake end of the mattox as I was scraping and raking downward….

….but leaving some to pull away and reveal what was still inside the pocket…..

…it appeared to me that the main ceiling plate had fallen down face first into the muck at the bottom of the pocket, prob dislodged by the initial blast, so I first cleaned all the little stuff off the top of it and then tried to move it. There was also a nice cluster of poker chips still attached to the ceiling, right above it….

At first it wouldn`t budge, figured it might be frozen somewhat, so I walked back to the truck and got some water and then grabbed another bag, and when I got back, it seemed to have loosened up, was prob just frozen to the bottom of the pocket. When it finally did come out tho, it came out in pieces, five pieces to be exact. Here is a photo of some of the twins and singles that I removed from the pocket initially, as well as some druse plates….

…I had this pocket cleaned out within about 30 minutes and as I was wrapping up the goodies, I noticed Missy walking around on a big ice flow about thirty yards away….

By this time, Ray had walked up to the top of the hill looking for druse, chipping some plates and pieces of nice pretty white druse out of some boulders up there. I continued to the left for about another thirty feet, then walked back to some water holes, that we had dug out weeks before and looking down in one spot, discovered a dogtooth nestled in the gravels. I reached down and dug around a bit and started finding dogtooths all over the place, moved some rocks and found an entire pocket of dogtooths embedded in the gravel and under some rocks…

…and what appeared to be a hole in the ground, under a slab of rock, that might indicate a pocket below…by this time, late in the day, Ray was finishing up filling some flats with some druse plates he had chipped out of some more boulders, and decided to come down and see what I had found….

After filling another bag with my finds, I told him to take over if he wanted and see what he could find…as he was muscling out some of the rocks to see if there was another pocket below, he looked up and pointed out the sun setting on the trees on the far hill from us and my truck in the afterglow….

Ray was able to find one dogtooth that was nice and pretty, even after moving a few large rocks around…so we packed it in and headed home shortly after that….we did manage to find a beautiful sunset on the way home…cotton candy clouds amidst a sea of fire….

James

jwjphoto7@gmail.com

Protected: Mid October at MFQ

Posted on November 22, 2013 by jwj

Had a Virgil Richards Day at MFQ

Posted on October 10, 2013 by jwj

Missy and I drove down to MFQ Sunday morning, hoping to find some more pretty crystals. I had received word from a good friend down there, that there had been some blasting activity there earlier in the week, so we were on the road a little after six am. It was a bit chilly when we hit the road, high forties, and it was only forecast to reach a high of sixty two that day, with some gusty winds expected. I had hoped to get down there the previous morning but the rain forecast for that afternoon, came in a bit earlier than expected, so we waited instead. My right arm was still hurting, but it seems like I have been adjusting and getting used to the pain somewhat.

However, I saw my doctor yesterday and he said I have tendonitis and gave me a few options on how to treat it…trying option one now, which includes alleve twice a day with some minor exercises and using my tens unit twice a day. If that doesn`t help it, then he can inject cortisone in my arm and see if that takes care of it…and if that doesn`t do it, then surgery is an option as well….I`m hoping we don`t have to go that far. Original injury occurred over thirty years ago while I was in college and helping a state trooper buddy chip out his driveway of two inch deep ice so he could get his patrol car in and out just fine…I basically just overworked the muscle tissue of my arm that day and back then, the prescription was to rest it in a sling for ten days, easy enough back then since I didn`t have a job then. Even helped me get out of a few tests, lol.

Missy and I arrived around 10 am and it was still just a bit cool when we got out of the truck….didn`t phase Missy at all, cause she now has her winter coat back on and am sure it felt quite nice to her. I started out with a long sleeve shirt and made it thru the day with it on, actually, mainly because that gusty wind was quite a cool breeze all day long. She bounded out of the truck and took off to check things out and I didn`t see her again for about thirty minutes. I got my boots laced up and put a light core jacket on and decided to walk around and see what I could find on the surface first. The main obvious changes were that the cove pile had been completely removed on the west facing wall on the north end…..

…and the blasting had occurred above our heads where the north end upper bench had previously been, now the wall up above was completely even with that north end upper bench wall…..

….after walking around and not finding much along the wall…it was also obvious that there were many pockets way up high from all the glittering I could see where the sun was hitting the wall high up, but I found no pockets down below at all. I decided to walk down the wall to the east and see what I could find, checking along the base where much of the ground material had been scooped up and removed as well, since my last visit. I soon came upon a section of the wall where there were some apparent crystal formations….

…so I stopped and started exploring…pretty soon I had found a few nice pockets that were chock full of beautiful crystals and druse combinations, and within minutes, I was pulling one cluster after another out of the pocket opening, each one covered with dogtooth crystals…I took a break and went to the truck to get a couple of bags full of wrapping cloths….these were way too beautiful and delicate looking to take any chances…I decided to wrap them double before setting them in the bag. After about twenty minutes, I had two bags completely full of double wrapped crystals and clusters, and after placing them into the backseat of my truck for better ride stability, I returned to the wall with another bag of cloths. I worked my way down the wall about ten feet and looked up and saw this….

…and closer up….

…I could see the end of a crystal sticking out slightly…after cleaning out the surrounding area carefully first, I reached inside and pulled out this large double poker chip with exposed dogtooth crystal tips….

…and further inside the initial pocket opening, you can see yet another pocket opening up deeper inside the wall from the first one…and let me tell you, about every cluster that I pulled out after that initial shock, consisted of alot of oohhhs and ahhhsss and holie cows too….within five minutes I had the third bag filled and was headed to the truck for yet another two bags….an hour later I had those two bags filled and the pockets were empty. I decided to drive over to the newer blast pile area and see what could be found there.

Missy had trotted off in that direction already, so I loaded up and drove on over to that pile next. I had seen a trackhoe up on the upper bench on the south end when we drove into the quarry and it appeared that the hoe was pulling material off the upper bench and pushing it over the edge and down below…..

….that material had formed a couple of small piles which could be climbed, so climb I did…..

…and when I reached the top, after cutting out stairs to climb up on, I found a couple of large openings at the top…you guessed it, more pockets…..

….opened up from the vibrations of the blasting on the wall two hundred feet to the north, and crystals laying all over the place up there in the opening space of each pocket, and underneath the loose crystals were clusters of crystals laying all over the place, many with very pretty bright yellow calcite druse nestled all around the crystals. I was pulling several crystals out that had orange centers, some had brown centers, and some had black centers, some had frosting all over them and looked like the brown dogtooth crystals that my buddy, Virgil, had found several years earlier one day there.

The two pockets on the left seen above, were the first two I located once I reached the top of the pile, and the ones to the right were additional pockets that I found by following the bread crumbs while up there, a line of crystals going from the first pockets to four more pockets…..plus two of the pockets went deep down and one went underneath a huge rock that was sitting up there on the right side, too. I had to make four trips to the truck to get more bags and wrapping cloths as I kept pulling crystals and clusters out of each pocket opening and kept running out of wrapping cloths, the initial pocket required at least an hour and two bags, to clean it out !! That brown trail you see on the right side of the rocky slope in the image below….

…is the trail I left, when I slid down the pile each time on my butt, like a big slide…carrying one filled bag in my left hand, and a large cluster in my right hand or on my lap…it was quite fun sliding down each time, but let me tell you it was a lot of work climbing back up each time, and cutting those steps out each step of the way….but well worth it too.

By 3:30 pm, I was wore out and decided to go up above to the upper bench to check it out…I figured it the track hoe was up there, maybe there was something worthwhile up there to be found.

I hadn`t been up there since Ian was down the first time, and once up there, I only found a few green clusters and that was all. Needless to say, I wasn`t up there long and soon enough Missy and I were headed home.

I stopped off near Raymondville, to visit a good friend, at his family`s dairy farm and finally got to see what chocolate milk cows look like. They have a large herd of Brown Swiss and Holsteins both.

James

jwjphoto7@gmail.com

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 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….