Well I had to make a trip to the secret spot to see if I could locate some nice drusy quartz before I left for Kentucky a couple of weeks ago, so I drove over one evening and walked up to the clay bank where Docia always finds some nice stuff eroding from the red clay dirt. I wasn`t disappointed when I saw some nice stuff laying around up there…

I carried a bag and my trusty rake/hoe digging tool with me and began to see some sparkly drusey quartz plates sticking out of the clay dirt so I began scratching around and out popped a few druse plates with soda straws on them…

…within about ten minutes I had one bag completely stuffed with soda straw druse quartz plates and got up to stretch my legs and go grab another bag or two.  I grabbed my camera on the way back as well.

As I got back up to the spot, the sun disappeared behind some clouds and I looked up to see this nice fluffy cloud backlit…couldn`t resist so I snapped it…I like sunbeams as well as sunsets…

Pretty soon I was working on filling the second bag when my rake end snapped off my trusty tool, so I walked one filled bag back to the truck and grabbed my handrake instead…and saw this pretty butterfly on the way back…

Well I filled four bags within about 90 minutes full of druse plates, and then decided with what daylight I had left, to drive over to one of the erosion control roads and see if I could find any nice poker chip pieces…I sure was glad I made the choice to do that…I was driving along and watching the pile on the side of the road and low and behold, I spotted this one on top….

calling my name and asking to go home with me…

and so it did get to go home with me…on the way home, with the sun shining into our eyes, I looked over at Missy…she was kind of glowing….

…apparently she went swimming in a clay mud hole while there…lol….

…and here is a nice sunbeam we saw on the way home.

On the way home, they were talking on Y98 Radio about a huge thunderstorm parked over the city of St Louis and just dumping alot of rainfall on the entire area…when I hit I-44, I spotted it from the Bourbon area, about 75 miles to the west of St Louis…

and another one nearby…

Went Rockhounding with the Tulsa Club on Saturday, May 22nd in south central Missouri, they came up here to see what our druse quartz looks like and so Docia and I met with them in the morning near Viburnum and then took them out in the woods. There were about twenty five that made the trip up from Tulsa the night before and they were eager to find some pretty pieces. We spent the morning combing thru the undergrowth of poison ivy and heavy leaves to find some beautiful stuff for them to take home. It was a little hot and muggy, but we made it thru the morning hours and found several nice plates of druse.

I found a nice plate that measured about twenty inches long and fifteen inches wide, covered in tan colored bubbles of druse, sticking out of a clay ditch bank and with some help from Paulino, who is Italian and living in Tulsa, I was able to free it up and carry it to my truck at the top of the hill. Since bringing it home and cleaning it up, my neighbor across the street has decided it will make a good bowl for his waterfall and so he is going to work on it this weekend and drill a hole in the top wall of it and let the water flow up into it and down the waterfall path.  He has a very pretty waterfall in his front yard, and has a few of my rocks from my travels and digs, in and around the pool.

So we spent the morning drusy quartz hunting and then proceeded over to the secret spot after that and spent a few hours out in the hot sun…didn`t take long to find a lot of pretties there and fill their bags and buckets. I found a few smaller pieces and took a look at the embedded poker chip crystals again, even gave it a few whacks with the hammer and newer chisels, but wasn`t able to liberate a thing.

In that heat, it didn`t take long to stop working so hard, believe me.I took a pic of Virgil sitting on the tailgate of his Tundra truck, and Paulino to the right… the truck bed pretty fairly full of rocks and minerals and druse, and a fairly good load of Mozarkite from the Lincoln area. They stopped there on the way down Friday.

After a few hours, everyone decided they had enough material and headed home. Virgil and Paulino took off and I decided to check out one more area before heading home. I no sooner stepped out of my truck at the other spot and was greeted by a beautiful medium sized chunk of druse and poker chip crystals. I quickly grabbed one of my canvas bags and rock hammer and started walking down the rock strewn path, suddenly energized once again with a full charge on my batteries.

Within five minutes I had the bag half full and had located a basketball sized piece with nice druse and nice poker chip crystals all over it and decided to walk it back up to the truck. I heard the sound of a pickup truck and looked up to see Virgil and Paulino returning…seems they decided they hadn`t quite filled Virgil`s truck up all the way yet and came back to see what I was finding.

They stuck around for another hour and we located several nice druse and poker chip combo pieces as well as a few nice druse chunks. Paulino found one at the bottom of the hill, liked it so well he hoisted it up and carried it up the hill to Virgil`s truck. It had big bubbles of pretty brown colored druse all over the top of it. Unfortunately, I didn`t take any photos of the pieces we found.

I cleaned up some of the plates, big and small, from my trip down last weekend and took some pix of them…

this is a large grouping of big and small druse plates that came from the pockets last weekend, some are yellow color and some are gray with some soda straw formations.

and close up…

and more of the nicer ones found……

Hope you enjoyed them as much as I do. 🙂

Well I went back last Saturday, to take another look around and make sure there was still some material to look for…have some friends coming up next week and wanted to make sure it would be a worthwhile trip for them. Docia couldn`t join me, she wanted to get her rocks ready for the Kentucky Rock and Mineral Show which will be held the first weekend of June this summer…we are both going down to see if we can sell some of our rocks this year. The weekend after that is the Park Hills Show and we will be there as well with our druse quartz.

Missy and I took off Saturday mid morning and arrived around 11 am. As we were driving down the hill, I was taking it fairly easy and looking for any sparkles along the sides of the road and all of a sudden, about thirty yards ahead of me, the biggest gobbler I have ever laid eyes on, darted out across the road in front of me like his tail feathers were on fire. I had my camera in the floorboard but there was n time to grab it and focus, he was moving on from right to left, and when I got down to the crossing  spot, I paused to see if I could spot him again, but he was gone. I had forgotten it was the first day of turkey season too.

We drove on down without spotting anything else, and Missy took off to explore one way and I the other. It didn`t look like anything had significantly changed from my last visit, pile wise…so I walked up and made a exploratory look at the pockets and found a few pieces left over from our last trip there with Scott and Bill, that had been washed off from recent rains and cleaned up a bit. I collected those sparkly pieces, and one was big enough to carry to the truck, and on the way back, I found a few more that appeared to have just slid down the slope from above. So I stopped and made some cursory swipes with my hand rake to see if I could find another pocket. I didn`t find any but there seemed to be indications that it might bear checking out the next time.

I walked over to the pocket where I had found the bubbly druse plates and as I knelt down to take a closer look at a few pieces I had left behind, I spotted a few poker chips poking up out of the rocks and dirt about three feet away. I crawled over and brushed the loose ones away and found a few embedded in the dirt. I started clearing back the big gray rocks that surrounded the poker chips and digging down.

The bare looking spot to the right of the big gray rock, is where I spotted the loose poker chip crystals laying around on top…

and embedded in the dirt under the rocks….

I started digging carefully here and didn`t have to go very far down to start finding loose crystals laying all over the place, but imagine my surprise, pleasant surprise I should say, when I started finding large plates of druse with small soda straws on them as well…not very far down and most were upside down when I first discovered them. As soon as I found the first one, I took a closer look and figured out that they were all over the place right there….

So I dug down a little deeper and found some even nicer plates of druse, some bubbly sparkly stuff with tiny soda straws…

The pocket appeared to be going to my left and behind me somewhat so I followed it and started clearing ahead…I was finding some small plates of druse mostly, wasn`t seeing any crystals to speak of, and pretty soon, the pocket dried up…

..and ended right here….

I had been digging for about an hour scrunched down and my knees were starting to hurt, so I decided to get up and walk around a bit, get some water, and do some surface searching to take a small break, before coming back and looking the other direction.

I wanted to take a look at the two large chunks I have had my eye on for a few weeks, and see just how heavy they really are…yes I`m still considering trying to bring them back for a spot in my flower garden…while over there looking them over and rolling them, I found a few smaller chunks that were pretty too…one covered in a yellow druse…..and on the other side of the pile from it, was a chunk of yellow chips on druse…

You know it, I liked them both and picked them up and carried them to the truck, gave me a good excuse to get another bottle of water, too…then I came back and was nosing around the other side of the pile again, and besides finding a wasp nest between a few rocks and very quickly smashing it along with the one wasp that came out, I also spotted this pretty lurking between the rocks…

this one and a few others, smaller, and so I carried these to the truck and decided to hit the pocket again and see what more I could find. I was already pretty happy with the druse plates, but wanted to see what else might be there…so I walked back over and started clearing off square one again.

So I started digging down a little bit and if you notice in this pic above, right down from the left bottom corner of the white canvas bag, there is a little ridge of rock there, or shelf, and that was where this pocket actually started, I started finding loose crystals and plates in this area right way…

From this pic to the next, you can see the progress I quickly started to make and things started taking shape very quickly…

and then the pocket started taking shape even more and I had to clear more debris away as it expanded…

In the area to the left of the bag, I started finding alot of loose crystals again, some that had that honey brown color to them and some little twins and triples too…and some druse crystal plates with poker chips attached to them…and then I saw some large embedded clusters, embedded into the rock below…I was dumbfounded…

well you can see one cluster here on the bottom side of the photo, then there is an area of loose crystals above it and then another large cluster above to the loose pocket that you cannot see yet….but wait til you can…wow….no let me rephrase that…WOW….that`s better…and you should see what I found in the loose pocket of crystals between the two clusters…

Once I dug this out, I discovered this shelf behind it and so I concentrated on exposing more of it and moving around to the left for awhile, finding more shelves and loose crystals and plates of druse and poker chips attached….

and out of this shelf I was able to remove these two huge plates of druse and poker chips that were hanging upside down…

and here is a closeup of the one on the right side….

and a pic of the loose crystals found in front of and under the shelf as well…

and then I concentrated on the floor of the pocket in front for a few minutes…exposing the other cluster finally….

…and here are the clusters up closer….

and then I moved to the left side to see what more could be found…there were more plates hanging upside down to the left of the clusters and right hand shelf…

and I kept clearing to the left side and came across this large chunk hanging upside down…

and this thing was awesome…I wasn`t sure what I had at first, it could have been just another gray rock…

and then I turned it over and was amazed…

at the end of the pocket, I turned my attention back to the embedded clusters, but I wasn`t able to free them…so I had to settle for pics only…

I was pretty tired after all of this, and packed up and headed home soon after…here is one of the druse and poker chip attachment plates up close as well.

This was one pocket that I was very satisfied with after working it for about five hours.

..friends this time from Wisconsin, where I understand there is still some frozen ground up there and hard to rockhound til it warms up completely, kind of like Minnesota where you cant see the ground til late spring due to the cold and snow up there. I like snow, but not that much and not that long. 🙂

Docia emailed me a couple of weeks ago and told me a couple of guys were coming down last weekend to get some druse and she was going to take them to the secret spot as well, and asked if I wanted to go…well I did, but this was my weekend to work in dispatch, so I didn`t think I would be able to go…however, after washing up some of my plates I found in another pocket behind the five pocket spot, and seeing the beautiful yellow brown druse all over those plates, I decided maybe I could drive down for just a few hours and still get back in time Saturday afternoon, to get some rest before work that night.

I drank half a bottle of black tea and drove down Saturday morning and arrived just ahead of Docia and Floyd, with Scott and Phil right behind them in a passenger car. The guys transferred their buckets and tools over to Docia and Floyd`s suv and we drove on down to look things over…it looked pretty much the way I left it last weekend and after pointing things out, we all set to work.

I walked over and began digging in the yellow brown druse pocket and found a few more nice bubbly plates to take home…then I decided to walk around and do a surface search for goodies…I found a few, like this big chunk with yellow druse and poker chips all over the face….

…however, it was soooo bigggg, and heavy, I decided there was prob no way it was going home with me, even tho I could imagine it sitting in one of my front flower beds rather nicely.

About fifteen feet away, I found a little smaller heavy chunk with the entire face made up of two to five inch poker chips with one corner of the face made up of a cluster of chips…

…again, a little too heavy for me to handle by myself and quite a ways from the truck with several rocks to walk over to get there with it….safely….

In the meantime, Docia found some nice yellow poker chips real close to my yellow brown druse plate pocket…and called Scott and Phil over to look at it…Scott decided to check it out and see what he could find and Phil decided to go find some boulders to bust some pockets for his goodies…these guys came well armed to do some heavy extrication, but really didn`t go at it too hard. 🙂

Scott got into the pocket and expanded it and started finding some nice stuff right off the bat, some nice plates and single crystals both…

Here is one of the goodies he pulled out, druse and poker chip attached combination…

After he and Phil pulled some nice plates out, they decided to move around and see what else could be located, so I moved over and took a look in to see what was left….

I liked what I saw inside, so I started removing some of the top layer and sides, and was pleasantly surprised to find alot of those pieces I chipped out, had druse all over the under side of them…so I pulled quite a few pieces of nice druse out right off the bat, little pieces but very pretty…and then I was able to get some nice poker chip crystals and clusters out, mainly small…and this is what the pocket looked like about an hour later...

Well I worked it for about two hours, went a little longer than I intended to, but I think it was well worth it in what I brought home…and here is the left side of the pocket, a layer of druse mixed with poker chips, which I hope to revisit soon….

Well I almost forgot to post the second part of my weekend trip, had to get caught up on yard work yesterday and today before the rain comes in tomorrow, grass was already ten inches high.

Sunday morning I headed back, this time armed with a four pound hammer and chisels, ready to liberate the poker chips and druse plates from the dolomite limestone encasing them.  I arrived mid morning and it was already hot, so I decided I was going to have to pace myself and so I started chipping away at the limestone above and surrounding the first pocket. I found it was so tough, that I was going to have to take it section by section, but holie cow, this stuff was tough as can be. After about an hour and making little progress, I decided I could have brought a jackhammer and prob wouldn`t have done much better.

I decided to move down to the fourth and fifth pocket and see what I could do down there, the stone around the first pocket was so tough the hammer just seemed to bounce off the chisel like it was a rubber mallet instead.  Well I didn`t fare much better at the other pockets, I tried them all and after pounding on that bedrock for about four hours, I decided I had done enough damage, mainly to me, certainly not much to the hard rock. I was sweat soaked, wore out, and prob lost about five pounds. Here is what the pockets looked like after I wore out….

I decided to walk around and up on the remainder of the pile that I didn`t even check out on Saturday while there, and boy was I glad that I did that. Within just a few minutes of walking up on the slope, I started finding some very beautiful poker chip and druse attachments and a few twins and triples and singles. Within about an hour, I had filled four bags full of goodies, which included two or three large pieces and several small size pieces as well. By the time I got back to the truck with the four bags, folks, I was wore out and ready to head home. Missy was wore out just from the sun and heat alone, I was able to coax her to the shaded areas behind me and luckily she decided to lay down in those areas most of the time I was there, but she was ready to head home as well.

I was able to photograph many of the cleaned up goodies yesterday and will leave you with those pics to see what I was able to bring home. Another good weekend trip, even though I was wore out from the workout with the hammer and chisels. Now I know how Mike Streeter felt down in Kentucky a few weeks ago.

Here are the two micro sized dogtooth crystals found in pocket two, pulled them out looking just like they do here…and next are the honey brown poker chips cleaned up that led me to the pockets…

and then there were the plates of druse with poker chips attached…

this last one fit in the palm of my hand but was gorgeous and came out of one of the pockets…this next one I found up in the rock pile and it has three sides…

and this next one was one I almost stepped on in the rocks and glad I didn`t….

and some limestone balls of druse that I found in the rocks too…

and here are some of the smaller plates of druse that came out of the pockets with small poker chips attached, some of the plates have limonite balls mixed in with the druse quartz too…

and some just attached to matrix….

and a two color poker chip attached to druse…

one of the twins melded together that I found walking around…

and I was very happy when I found this conglomerate of poker chips in a cluster…

and another twin….

and the end to a very nice day of collecting.

Well I found myself with some free time this past weekend and nothing to do…oh I guess if I had to, I could have gone out and bought a new lawnmower and mowed my grass or added some mulch to my flowerbeds, or done some tree trimming..but gee, I couldn`t think of anything better to do in a few hours then go to the secret spot and see if anything had changed and see if I could find some more poker chips and druse…I mean, really, is there anything better to do with one`s time than some rockhounding ???

So Missy and I loaded up the truck with water and tools and gloves and took off for parts south.

…a noticeable difference in size reduction for sure…but as it turned out, there was actually alot to still look around in and on when I drove up on it closer. I started walking around and soon had found a few smaller crystals and then walked up on a double and a triple within a couple of feet of each other….

and closer up…

and the one turned out to be a triple….

and after that, I walked up on this guy, trying to be coy and blending in, but the sunlight hit it just right and made it look like a bright neon sign…

And after filling a half a bag of singles like this, I was moving along out in front of the pile in the parking lot, when I looked up on the ledge and I know my mouth dropped open, cause a very big WOW came out of my mouth…there shining in bright sunlight about ten feet in front of me, just laying in the rocks within inches of each other, were four of the prettiest crystals in a beautiful honey brown color that we have never seen at this location before….I was stunned for at least a minute or two from the sheer beauty of them….

…a rare color to find at this place…..

..but some very beautiful colors…

and this one appeared to be a double or triple, three including this one were smaller and then there was a nice large single crystal with the same coloring as well as a medium sized one…

I couldn`t believe they were just laying there and not connected to something so I began looking around to see where they may have originated from…they were close to an area where Docia spotted one sticking up out of the rocks and gravel a few weeks ago and dug out…so I was thinking that was possible too…then near them, I spotted this set of crystals, with the one on the right appearing to be still partially embedded in the gravel and dirt…

and boy was it….I started digging down and pretty soon I discovered a nice pocket and it appeared to be chock full of poker chip crystals…

Well needless to say, I couldn`t believe what I was seeing nor finding, but definitely liked what I was seeing and finding. I was able to remove quite a few singles and one or two small plates of druse and poker chips attached, from this pocket, some real pretty stuff….

I started exploring to the left of the first pocket as soon as I was able to get out of it what I could easily remove. I discovered that there were more pockets to the left of the first pocket….

As I dug to the left and down through the top layer of dirt and rocks, I started finding small plates of druse with poker chips attached again. this is what I found at pocket two, which was about a foot to the left of the first pocket…

and the third pocket was even nicer, with a couple of bigger plates with poker chips attached, the honey brown poker chips that is….

the area on the far left is pocket three, and pocket two is where that little depression is out in front of the wall and between one and three…pocket three is where I pulled the following plates from…

When I spotted these guys and pulled them out, I stopped and went to get some wrapping material and two more bags…deciding I wasn`t going to take any chances with all of the beautiful pieces I was pulling out of the pockets…I also grabbed and drank a bottle of water in case I was hallucinating or dreaming of what I was finding…I just couldn`t believe my luck, and I stopped and took a minute to thank God for what I was finding and the beauty he had created as well….and then practically ran back to the spot as fast as I could for fear that it would be a great dream and I would wake up and have it disappear on me.

I returned with the wrapping material and extra bags, and started seeing single crystals laying around the new pockets all over the place. I filled one bag completely with single crystals from the two newer pockets alone. Once I had cleaned out this pocket, I decided to move farther along this shelf of rock to the left, and lo and behold, I found two more pockets of crystals and plates hanging upside down inside the pockets….

Again, I removed what I could easily remove and then explored a bit to the left and not finding anything, decided to move to the right side of the first pocket and see what could be found…..

By now its getting late in the day and I decided to see if I could liberate a few of the interior plates and crystals that I was seeing inside some of the pockets. The stone that was encasing and surrounding the crystals and plates was very hard and wasn`t giving it easily at all and I decided that I was not well prepared to chip away with the small hammer that I had with me. I decided I needed a bigger hammer and a good chisel, like I have seen others use, guys like Mike Streeter and Virgil Richards use on big boulders and rock ledges to free up nice crystals from pockets. So I loaded up my goodies and decided to come back the next day and see if I could liberate a few more plates and crystals.

Stay tuned for the next day….

Docia emailed me Saturday evening and suggested another trip back to the quarry Sunday morning and told me she would be there by 10 am…I drove over not expecting to be able to top the finds from the day before, but again not having any expectations at all, which seems to bring me a lot of good luck lately.

I got there about ten til and no sign of Docia, so set about looking around where I left off the day before, checking out a few more pockets and then moved over to the east side to see if I could find any plates of druse where they usually drop off the bluff wall with the eroding clay dirt and managed to find a few nice soda straw plates. I went to  the truck and unloaded my bags and checked the clock, 11 am and no sign of Docia still, wondered if she forgot to set her clocks ahead and might be running late. I did a walk around search on the level above and found a few more big clusters, one that appeared to have been left behind from yesterday, and loaded them up as well. By this time I had the truck bed pretty full of large clusters and decided to move to the right side and check the smaller piles where I had great luck finding big clusters the week before when Ralph was down.

I had no more climbed up on a set of big boulders to look around when I rolled a small one back and discovered a nice set of green poker chips on a cluster of druse, and boy did that make my day…I have often wished to find some green colored poker chips after seeing a lot of calcite in that color allover in chunks and massive. I took that one and another one to the truck and then decided to take a look at a massive seam of calcite that seemed to be calling out to me.

I didn`t take any pics before this one of the pocket before I started digging in it and these are taken with my phone as I left my camera at home, if you can believe a photographer forgetting his camera. 🙂

I started digging into the base of this seam… this stuff was pure white and like slivers of snow tightly packed together, I was using a hand rake and raking thru it and all of a sudden small poker chip crystals starting falling out of the massive seam all over the place, so I thought, well I have some extra time, lets dig a little deeper and see what happens…and so I did, dug in deeper and started seeing more crystals popping out of the woodwork so to speak.

by this time, fifteen minutes passed by and I had half a canvas bag full of loose crystals alone and I am six inches deep into the pile of tightly packed rocks…so I sit back and take another look ad lo and behold, discover that by looking closer into the pocket I am digging into, it appears that it goes farther to the right and up at least another two feet higher and wider…..

in this photo, everywhere you see white is the massive calcite seam and where the crystals appear to be hiding…so I began scraping back the shale looking rock and making a ledge to sit on more comfortably, deciding I might be there a little while longer, and as I am digging in more, I start seeing clusters of poker chips above the original pocket and to my right where I am opening up more pocket. I removed a few small boulders to gain more access and wha laa. in front of me are at least four clusters and even bigger single crystals just falling down with smaller crystals….now another thirty minutes has passed and I have filled two canvas bags, Lowes bags, which are fairly large canvas bags, and removed four big clusters basketball sized from the pocket….

…these guys were just hanging there and so as carefully as possible, I removed them and set them off to the sides and then decided to take them to the truck and make some room for them all and leave some extra just in case I find a few more, which I did…..when I returned to the pocket with yet another canvas bag…removed four medium sized ones….

and these next two were real pretty too….

and about two dozen more smaller singles and little clusters…

and once I got them to the truck, I decided I was done and needed to head home, cause I was gonna be real tired soon. 🙂 took some pics and got out of there, and driving the last ten miles my tiredness caught up with me fast. However, I was one happy camper and very thankful for another great day of collecting.