CAGMAGS Returns to Missouri

Posted on May 29, 2018 by jwj

I received a call from Arkansas David, who had attended the field trip to Missouri with the MAGS Club end of March…David called me a couple of weeks later and asked if his club, CAGMAGS, which stands for Central Arkansas Gem and Mineral…could come up and go rockhunting with me to the Druse Location and MFQ again…I let him know what weekends I was off from my new job and he decided on April 21st and 22nd…and since MAGS…the Memphis Club that I am a member of…had invited his club to go with them, he decided to invite them to go with his club…and they did, as I received notice from MAGS of same by email a few days later. The members of CAGMAGS decided to stay at the same area motel that MAGS had before, as well, so Onyx and I met them there Saturday morning about 8 am and led them to the Druse location. David and John headed off to the right of where we parked, looking for druse and more pyrite and marcasite….we again had cloudy skies to start and the members this time, wanted to leave and drive on to the quarry a little sooner than when MAGS was here….

…while others spread out on the other side of the road and farther back on the same side as where we parked…again we had peeks of sunshine that helped spot the druse a little faster and this time, a few more of us wandered down to the bottom of the hill to look for yard rocks of druse and poker chip combos….

…and after about an hour of looking for druse, we loaded up and drove on over to the SS Quarry….

…where it appeared on the hillside behind the walls, that Spring was making its presence known…like the MAGS trip, this morning was a bit cooler and most of us were bundled up…once the sun finally came out, it warmed up quickly for us. I pointed out the potential areas for goodies and everyone spread out to look for them…

…and once I saw that everyone seemed to be finding stuff, I started looking for some pockets on my own…soon joined by John and a few others eventually…I usually have pretty good luck finding some and within 20 minutes I was working on one that kept going and going…deeper and deeper…producing some roof plates initially and then some nice single calcite crystals too….

…and some nice druse/poker chip combos as well, like this one…

…once John saw what my pocket was producing, he was hooked and sat down a few feet from me and started digging into an older pocket that soon produced crystals for him as well, once he tied into a couple of pockets that opened up for him…

After a couple of hours working pockets at the quarry, and several finding some nice druse plates as well, we traveled down to see my friend who sells Viburnum Trend minerals…we visited with him for a good hour and then the crew asked me if I knew of a good BBQ joint around…I told them about Missouri Hick BBQ and said they have a satellite restaurant in Steelville as well…so we saddled up and drove an hour to Steelville for some good bbq. Only after walking inside, did we discover that it was no longer Missouri Hick BBQ…instead was a burger joint…the crew decided they really didn`t want to drive any further for food, so we stayed and tried it out…wasn`t bad for a burger joint. After a good hour of talk and food, Onyx and I headed for home and the crew returned to their hotel, and we decided to meet at MFQ the next morning.

Shortly after Onyx and I arrived at MFQ, we were soon joined by the rest of the crew in the parking area. A few days before, I had received word from a good friend nearby that some recent activity occurred and so we were some of the first rockhounds to visit since then…it turned out to be great hunting for all of us….

..we donned our hard hats, steel toed boots, gloves, safety glasses, and headed up the new pile to check things out…David and I started seeing some nice crystals right away, from the very base of the pile all the way to the top and some big boulders with nice vugs as well…soon John was in the mix with us and after pointing out some nice stuff to him, he began finding it on his own too, we were finding crystals that were nestles chcolate brown colored, black colored, and some nice green/brown mixes, some even had some irridescence to them…we climbed higher to the wall and started spotting pockets all over the place…pretty soon we were cleaning out several nice pockets…we found out later that John located some nice dogtooth pockets on his own, producing some nice crystals, singles, doubles, twins, and clusters…

…I have to say, John was quite happy with his finds…as he should have been…as you can see below…he had some real beauties come out of a couple of nice pockets and he shared them with everyone there…

I`m pretty sure everyone there had a great time over both days and MFQ was a super hit with the recent activity prior to their arrival, making Sunday morning specially nice with more pockets of green and brown dogtooth calcite crystals to be found and collected. They left for home about noon, a five hour drive ahead of them, while Onyx and I decided to stick around another hour or so and check out the western side. I had no sooner climbed up on the ramp to the walls above when I came upon a huge chunk, consisting of a large single chocolate brown calcite crystal, encased in calcite druse and dolomite matrix, with several smaller poker chips surrounding the entire base of the large piece…measuring a good 24 inches high and about 15 inches wide. In order to get it down to the parking lot, I wrapped it up in my rain jacket and scooted it carefully over to the edge of the pile, then after placing it in front of me and wrapping my arms around it, I slid down the pile like a slide and then brought the truck over to it and loaded it up. I loaded up some smaller ones and then we headed for home, having our sandwiches on the way. 🙂

Protected: MAGS & CAGMAGS Visit Missouri end of March for Druse 2018

Posted on May 29, 2018 by jwj

Park Hills Gem and Mineral Show June 2017

Posted on June 21, 2017 by jwj

Everyone has been asking me if I went to the Park Hills Show….

….I did go on Sunday the 11th, and met Chuck Reed and his daughter Mackenzie and her friend Faith, as well as my Chef buddy Nathaniel Reid, there at 8 am, and walked the booths with them…my plans were to visit with my dealer friend Johnny B from Mt Ida, Ken Vaisvil from Arnold, and Virgil Richards from Tulsa. We also spotted a couple of vendors with some very beautiful gray druse coated with gorgeous chalcopyrites, sphalerite crystals, and snow white barite crystals attached to some of them…very pretty stuff…like this one now adorning my coffee table…

Onyx and I arrived about 7:30 am and after letting him out of the truck for a few minutes in the parking lot to stretch his legs, I photographed the old hoist house of the Federal Hill Mine at the old St Joe Mine in Park Hills….

….it always looks good from the vendor area too, little windy this morning tho….

…..then put him back in the truck in the air conditioning, locked him up and headed off to see my Arkansas dealer friend Johnny B…

….who is up there each year with some beautiful quartz crystals and other odds and ends…he had some neat stuff this year as well, some green quartz crystals from China that had been ” enhanced ” as he put it, sprayed with a green frosting that really made them stand out. While they caught my eye, I really liked the Desert Rosettes that he had on the table…six clusters of them…he made me a sweet deal and I bought all of them….

Shortly after that, my phone began blowing up…Chuck calling to confirm the exit off Hwy 67 to reach the park and show…and soon arrived while I was looking at the large goodies covering three tables at a local vendor`s booth…from a local quarry where miners had blasted and found two huge pockets full of gray druse quartz, coated…and I mean heavily coated…with blankets of chalcopyrite, dotted with large balls of sphalerite, and some had snow white bladed barite attached to them as well….

…Nathaniel showed up soon after and after he had a chance to check out the local goodies above, we headed over to see my buddy, Ken Vaisvil, who collects and sells Keokuk area geodes. The past few years I have been going to the Park Hills Show, I was always impressed with the amount and quality of geodes that Ken always has on display for sale at his booth….

….so I have always purchased a couple of them from him at this show each year. I saw him at Geodefest last year in Keokuk, and purchased a few more from him there…then earlier this year, I purchased a few flats of smaller ones from him for my shower remodel, that I hope to get moving on if my carpenter ever finds some free time to work me in to his busy schedule. Ken was sitting back enjoying the morning sun when we walked up on him and soon he had Chucks daughter and friend picking out some geodes to crack open….

…I posted a video of him operating the cracker and opening them up for the girls, on my Facebook page if anyone is interested in seeing it. Ken is a great guy to talk to and deal with, he truly loves collecting them as much as he loves to crack them open and sell them. He has always liked the dogtooth crystals that I have collected in the past so I took a couple of them to him that morning as well.

Ken started getting some customers, so we headed over to visit with Virgil, who was located behind Kens booth, along the back fence of the dealer area. Virgil had some nice stuff for sale at his booth, including azurite, malachite, snakeskin agates, chrisacolla, petrified wood, and he had a helper at the show, named Aaron, who was selling some huge sheets of selenite there too. While talking to Virgil, he pointed out a booth across the way and said we needed to go over and see what the guy had for sale, turns out he was a local miner that works at the quarry where the gorgeous druses coated with chalcopyrite, sphalerites, and bladed barites attached to them. So we walked over to see what he had…one was so big he had it on display in the back of his pickup, prob a five hundred pound piece, it was very pretty tho. He was offering build your own flats, so I took advantage of that and built one for myself and paid for it. Soon after that, Chuck and Nathaniel said they had to return to St Louis County, so we packed up and headed to our trucks in the parking lot…they took off headed north while Onyx and I headed south to MFQ to do some rock collecting.

Arriving about 1:30 pm, we got out of the truck to find it a very warm day…somehow I figured that Onyx wouldnt last long in the heat, but he surprised me that afternoon, staying outside the cab in the shade, prob due to a very nice breeze that blew all afternoon across the quarry. There was a nice ramp leading to the walls above….

….so I hiked up there soon after and began finding pockets of black and dark green dogtooths almost immediately, and set to opening them up and pulling out the goodies…filling one bag very fast and returning for two more as well as a bottle of water. There was a dozer working on the coved area walls til about 3 pm…otherwise we never saw anyone else that day there. I worked about ten to fifteen pockets along the wall before wearing out and heading home about 4 pm. Made for a long but pretty and enjoyable day.

Dynamite Dogtooth Pockets

Posted on March 1, 2017 by jwj

It`s been a great winter so far, only about six weeks of normal cold weather and two weeks of very cold weather, and then in February, we started warming up like it does in May…we still have March to go thru, it may come in like a lamb as it did this morning and go out like a lion, but who knows…I just know that everyone really likes the weather we have now, we hit 76 degrees yesterday alone !! Last weekend, Nathaniel Reid and Chuck Reed joined me on a trip to MFQ to check out the quarry on another warm day, we had not been there since November last year, mainly because there had not been any activity down there. I received word from my good friend Jim a few days before the weekend that they had blasted the northwest corner of the quarry. In the past year since they began removing rock from the west side of the quarry, we never found anything more than the poker chip wanna bees on that side, but we had not been there in a while so we decided to go down and look things over…glad now that we did.

Onxy was in rare form that morning, rarin` to go do some rockhounding with me, cause he had not been with me on the St Louis County trip to look for Union Road Agates a few weeks before. Chuck and Nathaniel joined me on that trip as well, where we walked in a couple of creeks in the South County area and found quite a few of the geodes for the few hours we were there. There was a third location that we wanted to check out, but didn`t have time and instead went to a buddy`s home, where he sells geodes from the Keokuk area. I had purchased a few flats of geodes from Ken a few weeks earlier, to include in my bathroom remodeling project…have my tile guy place them into my shower walls with the barnwood tile. When I went there to pick them up, Chuck met me there and Ken showed us his private collection, this time we had Nathaniel along and he got to see it as well. We got up early on Sunday morning, Feb 19th to discover heavy fog outside…visibility was maybe quarter of a mile…thick enough Nathaniel got turned around on his way to my house to catch a ride with me to the quarry.

We got on the road about 7:30 and an hour later, the fog was starting to lift with sunlight burning it off. Thirty minutes later, the skies finally cleared off and remained that way til we were within two miles of the quarry, then the fog enveloped us once again all the way to the quarry. We arrived around 9:45 to find Chuck sitting on a rock up on top of the blast pile, cobbing down a boulder and wrapping up specimens to put into his bucket….

and some fog still hanging in the wind….

Nathaniel grabbed his tools and bucket and headed to the west side of the pile while Onyx and I started up the east side along the wall, toward Chuck….

About midway up to him, I spotted some green calcite at the base of the wall and stopped to check it out…there was some brown mixed in with it and pretty soon, I pulled a few dogtooth crystals out of the pocket, showing them to Chuck, and decided to park myself right there and explore some more….

…here is the pocket when I got about halfway down into it, after removing at least one bag of wrapped crystals and clusters….

…and some of my finds…I also passed a few of them off to Chuck as well….he came down and started looking closer at the wall below me at the same level my pocket was at….

In the meantime, Nathaniel started shouting to us that he had found some huge yard rocks and some nice smaller clusters over on the west side of the pile, some of them covered in what looked like aragonnite….here they are on my tailgate….

Soon after, Nathaniel and Chuck took a break and drove over to the other side of the quarry to check out the walls there, while I continued to dig out my pocket…an hour later and I had it cleaned out, all the way around the sides and down to the very bottom, which took awhile cause I just kept pulling clusters and doubles and triples out of the bottom of the pocket…for awhile I thought it was gonna be a bottomless pocket. Many of the crystals are dogtooths, a black or brown center inside a green or brown poker chip, and then I was able to remove a few of the top and side wall plates of clusters, as well.

By this time, I had three bags completely full of wrapped crystals as well as three large clusters that I had no room for in the bags, so had to make two trips down to the truck, where I took a short water break, got Onyx some more water in his bowl, and then took another bag with me, back up to look along the wall for more pockets. When I got to the top of the pile, I located more pockets and soon after, Chuck and Nathaniel returned from their exploration break. Nathaniel joined me up on the top wall where I had located four pockets close together. I worked one pocket and let him have the others, as I was beginning to tire already….before heading out, Chuck grabbed my camera in the truck and snapped a couple of Nathaniel and I working the wall too….

I filled one bag halfway up with wrapped crystals and then walked down the west side of the pile to take a look at the two huge yard rocks he found over there…he said they were too heavy for him and Chuck to lift and then carry to my truck. As soon as I got to the floor of the quarry, I spotted them sitting there…

I got my four pound hammer and chisel and cobbed down the plate on top of the first boulder, getting one large plate and a smaller plate intact. I remember someone telling me that calcite was only a hardness of four…sure didn`t feel like a four to me, more like a seven…seemed like it took a lot longer to hammer those two plates off than it should have…I was wore out by the time I carried them to the truck. The second boulder had a lot of damage to the crystal tops, many sheared off, so I didn`t even try to cobb it down. Nathaniel decided not to try either. Chuck left a few minutes prior headed home, so Nathaniel and I wrapped up our crystals, loaded up my truck, and headed to my dealer buddy`s house to see what he had in Viburnum Trend minerals. We hadn`t been to his place in a few months and he had let me know that he had some new stuff, buying a few collections in the past few weeks. We arrived there about an hour later and found that he did indeed, have some beautiful new stuff, and after about 30 minutes, we both had a flat full of some nice new crystals…the first two of mine were smokey calcite clusters from an old collection, the clusters from the forbidden crystal cavern at Brushy Creek Mine, likely removed from there over twenty years ago…..

here is the second smokey calcite cluster….

…plus when he purchased this collection, it came with a nice barite piece from an Iowa quarry that was super sweet looking, so I got all three for one price….

..and some chalco pieces on druse, one with a green crystal on the end of the plate….

…sure ended a very nice day of collecting, that`s for sure !!

Protected: MFQ and Park Hills Show 2016

Posted on October 15, 2016 by jwj

Justin Comes to Visit

Posted on September 28, 2016 by jwj

Back in July, my good friend Justin emailed me to see if he could come visit with me and asked if I would take him rockhunting here in Missouri. I met Justin a few years ago on one of my annual trips to the Hot Springs area of Arkansas…one of my quartz crystal excursions in the fall time, and we quickly hit it off and became good friends. I met him in the parking lot that evening shortly after I arrived at the condo I stayed at on Lake Hamilton. I brought him some flats of Missouri crystals and minerals and told him back then to come visit with me and I would take him rockhunting up here…so he was finally taking me up on the offer. Justin is a neat guy, very mature acting for his young age…he works in what some of us would consider a stressful job…hospice care…a very vital and caring field these days and one that is much appreciated as well by many….so I highly respect him even more for choosing such a field to work in. He drove up a few weeks ago on a Friday and arrived early evening…he checked out my collection inside the house that evening since it got dark soon after his arrival, and then the next day checked out my rock gardens during the daylight. I have heard many refer to my interior collection, like ” walking thru a museum ” but Justin thought the outside gardens were like a museum as well, although they could prob use some weeding and its been way too hot for that this summer.

We decided to drive down to MFQ the next morning, getting up and headed out by 7 am, stopping off at the donut shop so I could get one of my favorite donuts, the unfilled white icing long john with nuts sprinkled on top, and a chocolate milk. Soon after, Onyx, Justin, and I were heading for the quarry. They had done some blasting there a few weeks before and I told him that maybe they would have that pile cleaned up to where we could check the lower wall for dogtooth pockets, as we had found several in that wall there years prior. As we started down into the valley, we noticed some heavy fog and I told Justin that we might have some fog at the quarry as well, and sure enough we did have just a little bit of it when we arrived soon after, stopping off briefly to get some water for Onyx that I forgot to bring….here you see Justin halfway up the pile finding some nice calcites…

01-arrival

…he had his boots on when we arrived, so he took off and started walking and searching for crystals before grabbing a bag or anything to put them in….he was too excited to even grab his gloves or tools…as you can see, he made do with his shirt tail when he started finding them up there…..like a kid in a candy store believe me…..

02-justin-searches 03-blast-pile-still-there 04-looking-west

…and as you can see from the photos above, the blast pile was hugely still there, little had been worked to remove it…stretching back to the west much as it was the last time I was there. Soon I had my boots on and grabbed my gloves, tools and a bag and headed up into the base of the pile…and soon I was finding alot of dogtooth crystals, or what I would refer to as wanna be dogtooth crystals, five to ten inches long and a beautiful nestle chocolate brown color to them…many were upside down in what appeared as pockets blasted down from the wall intact and held in place by dirt and rock around them. It appeared they had been uncovered by the machinery recently, because they sure were not to be found or seen when I was there last…Justin was hollering every few minutes about finding something here and there, showing me some of his finds…..

06-shazam-they-r-everywhere

…..and finally made his way back to the bottom with his shirt full of crystals…

05-filling-up-his-shirt

…one thing was for sure, we sure had a beautiful day to collect there….gorgeous sky and nice weather, and it was warm just without the humidity if I recall correctly…but we did eventually warm up….

07-looking-east

…I pointed out the coved wall and told Justin that when MAGS was there in April, the quarry personnel had cleaned off the upper ledges and hundreds of dogtooth crystals landed down below on the floor and in the smaller piles near the coved wall….so he migrated over there to see what he could find…

08-coved-area 09-shirtless-now

…and actually did pretty good this time as well, eventually having to use his hat this time since he shed his now dirty shirt for the heat….I had forgotten to tell him about the short cleft wall we had pulled down with prybars when the Tyler Club was there with me, mainly to make it safer, but we also found pockets behind it and Justin was able to find several under the rocks in that area, many that made him happy. 🙂

Here are some of my finds that morning just doing some surface collecting mainly….

That cluster up above was one that I just found sitting in the pile and picked up…has a little damage to it but very nice spray looks like…I don`t have it cleaned up yet or would post a photo of it, but will eventually….

…I also found a few small orange dogtooth crystals too, here and there….

Justin had so much good luck on the right side of the coved wall, that he went back over there and looked some more, and found even more good stuff, this time using his hands and arms to hold them…

…then we moved back over to the big pile to look for more dogtooths…by the time we finished I had four bags full of them and I know Justin had more than I did, he was ecstatic over them too. 🙂 Pretty soon he was back up near the top of the pile looking for more….

…by this time, it was approaching 1 pm and we wanted to go to Rocky Falls and cool down a bit, then go see my buddy Dave so I could show Justin the pretty minerals and crystals that come out of the Viburnum Trend Doe Run owned mines, so we did a little high grading….or I should say Justin did….

37-a-bit-sunburned-now

…and then we headed over to Rocky Falls for a bit of a cool down…found a church group there…we hiked up to the top for the bigger view….

..and then we drove over to see my friend Dave, where Justin learned even more about lead minerals from the Viburnum Trend in Missouri. all in all a great day.

The next day we drove down to the druse spot…..we didn`t get an early start, slept in a bit as we were wore out from the day before. I had told Justin all about this location, assured him he would have no problem finding some nice stuff to take home, depending on what colors he liked in druse quartz…I think he was a bit skeptical of me…but within about five minutes of arriving, all that skepticism went right out the window. Onyx and I were up on the hill above him and we could hear him talking about it…sometimes to me…sometimes to Onyx…and sometimes I think, to himself…I even captured it on video…

…just click on download file and let it load up, then click on it and it will open and play full screen for you. Took Justin a while, but he finally made it about halfway up the hill to where Onyx and I were hunting….

…he was like a kid in a candy store and fun to watch…I don`t believe I have ever seen one person so enthusiastic about finding druse quartz, at this location especially !! I also don`t believe I have ever seen anyone load up as much druse quartz to take home with him from this location…he was starting to worry about having enough room in his car for it all by the time we got done. In the meantime, I was finding some nice stuff up the hill and to the south a little ways from him…

…next thing you know, Justin is halfway up the hill toward us, as Onyx and I are starting to move to the south to search the erosion ditches on the hillside…

…and then I found a smokey druse pocket….

….at the same time, Justin made it to the top of the hill and then checked out a freshly dug out area, where he also found some nice smokey plates and a ton of other nice stuff including some bubbles that he was searching for. A couple of hours later and we were fairly exhausted…Justin had a few buckets full plus his backpack, and I had a couple of bags full of wrapped pieces. We drove up to the local store nearby, and took a snack and water break.

From there we drove to the SS Quarry to see if we could find some poker chips or dogtooth crystals…while we were searching for pockets, Onyx decided to go wading and swimming….

01-onxy-goes-wading 03b Justin got his hard hat on and took off up to check out the old pockets at the base of the west wall and started exploring…due to his size, he was able to squeeze into some of the smaller pockets and pull some crystals that remained, out of them….

…I looked down at my feet and was surprised to see golden rod growing in the floor of the quarry….see it in the fields all the time, never expected to see it growing out of the rocks….

By this time, I was quickly running out of energy, having spent most of it at the druse spot and using up much of the rest of it trying to find Justin a dogtooth pocket so he could take home some beauties….it`s great to receive minerals and crystals as gifts but everyone likes to find them on their own even more, the thrill of pulling them out of a pocket is just much more exhillarating. I wasn`t able to find anything substantial, so Justin decided to try the wall on the north side, which is more vuggy and has produced many of the huge pockets I have found in the past. He walked over and came in from the top, taking my advice on how to reach the bottom, watching for plates of druse quartz that are often found over there…he did….

…and after about an hour over there, he finally had a shirt full of crystals and was ready to leave as well….

I`m not sure, but I think I was more worn out than he was…but a good meal at Missouri Hick really helped us both out and restored us just a little bit and the hot tub finished it up later on. After sleeping in again on Monday morning, Justin took some time to pack his car from the front seat to the trunk and then set off for home at noon, arriving about eight hours later safe and sound. It was great seeing him and rockhunting with him once again. See ya again in November Justin !!

Green Poker Chip Pocket at MFQ

Posted on August 30, 2016 by jwj

Friday afternoon I received word from my buddy Jim, that more activity had occurred at MFQ that morning. Since I had to work that weekend, I let my buddy Chuck Reed know about it and he decided to drive down Sunday morning and see what he could find. I had driven down there the weekend before and discovered then, that more activity had occurred on the west wall of the quarry again, but they were drilling up on top of the wall between the cove and the west wall, and that wall had been full of dogtooth crystals pockets some years back. I let Chuck know this and wished him well. I called him Sunday evening on my way to work to see how he did, and he told me that he did pretty good, so I decided to take Onyx…despite the forecasted heat…and drive down Monday afternoon and see what I could find. After dealing with morons all Sunday night at work, I got a good five hour nap in Monday and then we headed down there. Here is what it looked like when we arrived…the cove is on the right side and to the left it tapers down to the ” West Side “, which you really cannot see in this photo below……

32 New Blast

I parked about midway down and rolled the windows down, got my boots on, my apron on, and took the next few photos with my camera….

01 Coved Wall 02 Blast Area Just West of Cove

…and the next photo shows the activity on the newly created ” west side ” of the quarry…

03 New Blast Area West of Cove

…after that I started hearing some rumblings of thunder just to the north of the quarry, and started studying the clouds above…to see which way it was moving…took awhile to figure it out cause they were moving extremely slow to the southwest…too bad, cause that blast pile was extremely dusty looking and I would have had no problem sitting in the truck waiting for a good washing off. I also started seeing some neat sunbeams…aka windows to Heaven…all over and above the quarry…I took them as a good sign…and maybe more than that….

07 Sunbeam City 10 Sunbeams to West

Beautiful Sunbeams on Arrival

…everyone that knows me, knows I LOVE sunbeams, sunsets, and sunrises…pretty much in that order, rainbows too, but they are much rarer to capture….and my Dad knew that I liked sunbeams too…and here I was at one of my favorite places to rockhunt at and within a few minutes, sunbeams started popping out all over the top of that quarry….

13 Sunbeams

14 Sunbeam City 15 Sunbeams Before Storm

…and I took that as a good sign of things to come and more…this happened yesterday and today is my Dad`s birthday. Onyx and I took a quick sashay around the front of the blast pile to see if we could find anything interesting, looked at the big boulders in the pile and checked for vugs…..didn`t see anything worthwhile, so I left my bag down near the bottom and climbed up along the wall starting on the west side to check the walls out for pockets….

17 Started On West Side

18 Moved Across to East Side

…and moved to the east side along the wall…finding very little of anything but the calcite that looks either rotten or ill formed, or looks like it belongs in a cave. I moved all the way across the east side and then came to a point sticking out….

…and as soon as I rounded that corner sticking out, I spotted about four pockets, but only one really caught my eye, due to the content of it that was plainly visible to my eye…

20 Pockets To Right of Broken Wall

If you can see my red handled mini mattox in the photo above, look to the left of that about ten feet to see the pocket I saw….if you still can`t see it, here it is below…

24 Pocket of Poker Chips in Red Druse

…filled with greenish brown poker chips nestled in red dolomite druse and several came out nice and intact, while some did look like they had some blast damage, which does happen from time to time. Shortly after cleaning it out, which took about 30 minutes to do, I looked back to check on Onyx in my truck below….

29 Truck in Cove

…and then pulled this huge center plate out of the pocket, revealing two smaller pockets behind it…which took only a few minutes to clean out each one of them, and then we headed for home, stopping off for ice cream at the Bourbon Family Center and then on home for a late supper. If you have any questions or just want to give me a shout, my email addy is jwjphoto7@gmail.com

Thanksgiving at MFQ

Posted on December 11, 2013 by jwj

I received a phone call a couple of weeks ago from a good friend who told me that there had been a blast at the quarry at MFQ a few days before Thanksgiving. I had to work Thanksgiving Eve and Thanksgiving night, but was off that weekend so I made plans to go the day after Thanksgiving. I emailed my friend Ray in St Louis and told him, and he decided to come along with me. I was able to get a good nap in and Ray met me at the house, we loaded up the truck, and headed out shortly after 8 am. After stopping for gas, we headed east and arrived about 11:30 am and osbserved the west corner of the cove wall had been blasted down…..

As we pulled up to the blast pile, we stopped and talked to one of the owners and his wife, for a few minutes, thanked them for allowing rockhounds to come there and rockhunt, and then we began searching to see what we could find after the blast. He told us that he had taken some of the pine cone looking crystals to his wife, occasionally, and they liked them too.

We immediately started finding some nice crystals in various colors, that had survived the blast and the fifty foot throw to the ground as well…

…within minutes, I had one bag full and returned to the truck for another, as Ray climbed up on the pile in search of boulders with vugs…he found several and was able to remove some nice clusters from them…

I kept walking around the perimeter of the pile and soon found this one just sitting there waiting to go home with me…

…this of course is the cleaned up version of it…and we found a few that had a red crust on them…still haven`t figured that part out yet….

…although I can tell you that it isnt soft like clay, is hard and rough just like it looks, nothing seems to wash it off at all. I managed to find quite a few dark grey colored crystals, even a nice set of twins like these….

…and quite a few chocolate colored crystals as well….

…and some bigger chunks covered in chocolate brown crystals, too….

…Ray found a big chunk of crystals coated with that red crust and gave to me…he didn`t like that red crust at all….I don`t like it, but found it interesting since we have never seen it there before….

We were there til about 3 pm and then headed home, with a truckbed full of crystals…we didn`t find many pockets but were able to liberate quite a few crystals from the vugs we found.

Return to MFQ December 2011…….

Posted on December 5, 2011 by jwj

Early yesterday morning, Missy and I left town at the crack of dawn and headed south to MFQ to meet up with a new rockhound friend, after corresponding the last couple of weeks on the McRocks Rockhounding Board.There was a gorgeous sunrise as we were getting on Interstate 44 and I pulled over on the ramp to photograph it…

I arrived at the quarry about 8:30 am and decided to drive on down to the lower area, despite telling him I would wait for him up by entrance, and parked where he would be able to spot my truck as he pulled in. I put my hiking boots on and grabbed a couple of bags and my rock hammer and walked over to the pile on the right, one Docia and I hadn`t checked last week when there. I found some dark colored green crystals on a few boulders while checking out that pile…and quite a few boulders with some calcite druse as well. I was up on top checking out a big boulder with dark colored poker chip crystals and druse when he arrived. After a few minutes of meet and greet chat, we started looking for some pretty stuff. I went back to my truck to get my camera to photograph those crystals and druse I had just found…

I chipped off a few of the crystals, but I can safely say now, that those were nothing compared to what I found about twenty minutes later. He found a small boulder with a nice crystal filled pocket on one end shortly after starting his search at the end of the pile…I walked down to the end and started checking out the bluff at the west end of the south facing wall. Within a few minutes, I had located some pockets along that wall and decided I was going to need more bags, so I returned to the truck to get a couple more. Pretty soon, he joined me up at the base of the wall and found a few pockets himself.…and here are the pockets I started out with….

..if you look close, you can see poker chips in the pocket in the upper right side and those are druse pockets down below to the left…here is a closer look at the poker chip pocket I started out working…

…within minutes, several of them were rolling right out of the pocket and into my hands…some dark green and some chocolate brown and black colored….

..and after cleaning out the bottom of the pocket floor, there were still plenty inside on the walls as well as some beautiful druse….

I was able to use my rock hammer to chip out the crystals on the left side, they came out in two large chunks with several crystals attached….

and then I started pulling some druse plates with crystals attached from the bottom of the pocket that were loose once the side plates were removed. Pretty soon only the crystals on the right wall remained….

…or so I thought at the time. I turned my attention to the druse pockets below….

and pulled out some very pretty druse plates from three pockets, most were a deep red color and there were some areas of chalcopyrite as well. Here is one I pulled out of the upper druse pocket….

…..after cleaning the three druse pockets out, I walked to the left and up to the end of the wall and within a few minutes found yet another pocket, this one full of larger pieces of yellow calcite druse like this one….

I left this pocket in his hands and decided to walk over to the east wall and see if I could find more pockets, only finding more druse laced pockets, and filled another bag with even more druse plates. I then decided to walk up to the upper bench and so I grabbed two more bags plus my hammers and chisel, in case I found that huge chunk of chocolate covered crystals up there still.

Once up there, I began checking for more pockets along the wall beginning at the south end this time and working my way west…I didn`t take my camera up there with me this time, but I am sure glad I went up there because I found and removed some very pretty lime green colored poker chip clusters from a few pockets up there, three of them were the size of a grapefruit….

As I made my way over to the west end near the ledge, I almost did a double take when I spotted a cluster of five to six poker chip crystals, all blended together with only their tips separated and the entire cluster appeared to be very thick and very heavy, embedded in a corner of rock….

this was one of those moments that I had to make a choice…you see there was this overhang of rock above them, about nine square feet of it, and only a four inch ledge holding it up…I decided not to chance it and left it alone…I did, however, find a wide crack around to the left side of the corner that enabled me to reach inside and pull out a few hand size clusters of poker chips that were loose and sitting behind this huge cluster, like this one….

..and then I reached back in and found this one as well, just a single crystal but with some beautiful multicolor to it…

It was about then that I heard him yell out from down below…said he had just pulled out some dogtooth crystals on a matrix piece with calcite druse and poker chips.

After that, I got to the task at hand, find the huge chocolate covered poker chip boulder I located last week up there….

…I was able to successfully remove those dark colored bubbles in the photo above and came away with some nice clusters of poker chips of a chocolate color….

..and believe me, with two full bags of clusters from up there, I was quite happy. I returned to the lower level and showed him what I had and told him about the cluster in the wall that I couldn`t remove…he decided to go up and see what he could find.

While he was gone, I checked the pockets again and found a few more smaller plates of druse…within forty minutes he returned with the poker chip cluster that I had left in the wall…he was able to remove a few pieces of rock below it without too much trouble and it rolled out and hit him in the knee….I lifted it up and it was pretty hefty, prob around fifty pounds…and quite pretty…

and the tips of them….

..and here is a photo of my crystals from the upper bench….

…he showed me some of the matrix pieces he found with the dogtooth crystals on them…

I`ll add some more photos tomorrow if I get the chance to photograph some my crystals that I cleaned up today.

I apologize for the delay, been fighting a cold and its been a fight for sure, today is my first day of real rest, but did manage to get the photos taken and edited up today. Here are some more of the crystals with calcite druse attached, that I found last week.