Well I said a few weeks ago I had a phenomenal day of rock collecting at the secret spot, then last weekend was a phenomenal weekend and went back again today and will return tomorrow for more, but don`t think I can top what all I found today. Wow !!

Docia decided to go to the forest location first and I wanted to see if I could find some more bubbly druse that I found near the spot, so told her I would meet her at the forest after I checked out the other druse location. I drove up and parked and found a few pieces of druse, then drove over to the entrance road and started down it, noticing the fill rock on each side as I drove, so I decided to slow way down and peruse the fill rock for poker chips and wa laa !! Eureka !  Spotted this one as I was driving along, maybe thirty feet down the road….

and as I got out of the truck, I looked down and spotted this nice little pine cone in the roadway…

…pine cones are what we call the poker chips because they resemble little pine cones so much…

and there were actually two here, one bigger than the other, but both very nice, and yes I picked them up and took them home with me.

After loading those three into the truck, I decided to walk a little and see what else I could find, and just past my open truck door and to the left of it, I spotted another red poker chip chunk, this one just sitting upright like a billboard, and calling out to me…

so I walked up to get a closer look and liked what I saw…it was a bit heavier, but it fit nicely into the bed of my truck.

So I walked both sides of the road at that point and not finding anything else, drove on down the road til I spotted this one….

Well I drove on down to another fifty foot section of fill rock and decided to stretch my legs a bit and didn`t see this one from the truck, actually spotted it at the end of the stretch and on my way back, but here is the view from the truck and then close up…

So now by this time, I have about twenty nice poker chip clusters and attachments in the truck and a few pine cone singles…so I met up with Docia and we headed on down to the slope itself to see what more we could find. Course I should back up and show you this bubbly druse I found in the mud before I even got started down the road…

So we got on down there and found the machine removed and a small pile of material left behind, so we set about to explore and see what we could find, and actually found a lot of poker chip clusters sitting all over the place. Docia found a nice chunk half buried, she spotted the top of it sticking up from the rocks and boulders and dug it out…

and  here it is as she is digging it out….

Its sometimes hard to see what you have, since we don`t always have alot of clean water there to wash them off with, and don`t want to sacrifice our drinking water, so sometimes you just have to make a decision on whether you have a potential goodie or not. She figured she had a goodie and took this one home with her. I rarely turn them away myself.

We had a few guests with us today, out of state friends of Docia and she asked me to find a poker chip pocket for them to dig from, so eventually I found one and dug into it to see if there was anything to be found…by the time I found it tho, they had moved on to looking for druse quartz above me and checking out the bluff wall holes too…so I went ahead and dug it out myself to see what I could find…

..and here is what I found in the pocket…

It took me about twenty minutes of careful digging and raking to pull the larger poker chip cluster out fairly clean and undamaged..and even managed to liberate a few of the smaller singles to the right…

After that I drove over to the forest location and found a few nice druse pieces to take home, a lot of raspberry colored stuff, and then headed home. Docia and her guests took off before I did, they were a little bit tired from walking around the forest first.

Looks like we are gonna head back over there soon tho, as soon as the sun comes back out, much easier to find the sparkly stuff with sunshine illuminating things.

After hunting for druse all day Saturday the 6th with the MAGS Club members, Docia and I treated Ralph to a private location hunt on Sunday. Ralph wanted to find some dogtooth calcite crystals and more druse…. I looked for more poker chips with druse…. and Docia looked for more pink druse. This location provides so many different types of material to look for and makes for a great trip no matter what. We weren`t sure what exactly would be left to dig through, since there has been a machine operating there for the past few weeks on the slopes we have been sifting through for the past couple of years. I decided to drive up with no expectations and was somewhat surprised to see some material left. I told Ralph we might just have a nice day after all.

Ralph decided to work the bluff holes in search of dogtooth crystals and plates of druse, he is seen here to the right of the machine, hammering and chiseling….

I worked the upper slope on the other side of the machine up high, near the spot I worked last weekend and found a few crystals, but nothing major. I did wind up knocking a few big boulders down in the name of safety tho. On the way up the pile, I had found a few medium sized chunks of poker chips and carried them back to the truck, then while I was photographing Ralph working away on the bluff hole, I looked down in the rocks piled up at my feet near the parking lot and spotted several medium and large chunks of poker chips and druse quartz. This was the first one I spotted, dark gray druse and a ridge of poker chips along the top of it.

and here it is up close…

…believe me, when the sun is shining down, you can see the ridges on the chips sticking out and that is what normally catches my eye more than anything, that or the druse sparkling.

As I was pulling this one out of the rocks, I looked down to where I was tossing some of the other rocks to safely remove it, and discovered two smaller poker chip chunks as well. I decided then and there, I was gonna have to look over any area that I was going to toss rock discards, before I tossed them there. Never know where you will find pretties lurking.

About ten feet more to the right and I found two looking at me, and when I started digging into them, I discovered two more underneath, some with a little damage, but all in all, some very nice large poker chip chunks. Let me tell ya, I was one happy camper.  🙂

Here are a few of my finds today…

and one of the big surprises found today…this one you can see just a corner of it sticking out of the pile at my feet….

and the other side…..

I like the yellow poker chips more so, but they are all pretty to me, the yellow ones just really stand out. Found a large poker chip with a deep orange color to it, nestled on top of a chunk of gray druse quartz, too.

After getting them all home and cleaned up somewhat, the initial dust and clay stains washed off, I set up a makeshift table in the back yard to get them up off the grass and allow my grass to continue to grow since Spring appears to be here finally.

All in all, a nice day…Docia took off early afternoon and we left a few hours later. As we climbed the hill out of there, a nice set of sunbeams greeted us. Fitting end to a phenomenal weekend of hunting, digging, and collecting.

Last week Ralph Burley, one of my rockhound friends from Ohio, came down to collect some druse quartz with Docia and I, so I took a couple of days off from work to take him to some special places to find some great stuff. We started off at a friend`s farm near Bourbon, where we have found some nice blue druse in one clay pocket near a creek in the middle of a field……which is the closest place to me, that I have found druse.

Here it is right out of the clay pocket…..

and the next photo shows it cleaned up quite a bit, but shot on a cloudy day…

…and here are two more pieces of blue druse pulled from the same clay pocket….these went home with Ralph the next day…..

this is some of the prettiest stuff I have ever found, color wise, and the color really comes out better in a shaded light rather than bright sunlight, for some odd reason. The clay stain even gives it a nice contrast too. Personally I dont care if I get all the clay stains off or not, due to that very reason. I know some people only like them cleaned up and shiny and to each their own.

The next day we met up with Docia and the Memphis MAGS Club at the National Forest, where Docia and I have often found some really pretty pieces, big and small, eroding from the dirt and clay banks. We decided this would make a great location for the club and since we are both members of MAGS, we invited them up to find some great material. And boy did everyone find some nice stuff, plus we had great weather as well. Ralph found a nice honey hole with some of the prettiest brown and yellow bubbly druse quartz I have ever seen, two in the ground that were quite large and several smaller pieces on the ground within thirty feet of the buried ones. Here is the first one he found, Missy is guarding it til he returns with his pry bar….

 and here it is up closer….

Well after about ten minutes, Ralph came to the conclusion that this thing was really deep in the dirt and possibly oblong shaped, so he gave up on it and moved over to the other one he found, which was even more beautiful and bubbly, about fifteen feet away.

He spotted this one after the other one, had them both dug out just a little when he called me over to take a look. This after only being here an hour maybe, and scattered all around both of these two beauties, laying on top of the ground and in the leaves, were at least twenty smaller druse quartz pieces with lots of bubbly brown and yellow druse crystals. Absolutely beautiful stuff. Here is a closeup of the second big one buried in the dirt.

Ralph was starting to wear out trying to dig down and pry this puppy out, so one of the MAGS members, Alan, came over and lent him a couple of hands and hammered the pry bar down more and then pried it out for him. Thanks Alan!

what a chunk of brown bubbly druse this thing was…and heavy..wow was it ever heavy, made your back hurt just to look at it…let alone think about lifting that puppy…..

….Ralph decided to take a break and walked up to his van to grab his hammer and chisels. I told him to grab a bottle of water while he was up there so he didnt overheat out there. While he was gone, I decided to look around and found a few more smaller pieces that he had located, even located a few of my own….

Ralph was able to cobb about fifty pounds off his beautiful bubbly druse chunk and was quite happy. We hunted and collected til about 2 pm and then went over to the Bixby Gas Station for lunch, light lunch for me cause I had a fire dept dinner that evening with prime rib, so I ate light.  Docia and Ralph chowed down on a huge taco salad that is homemade there…this place has great food and makes  a great rest stop, too. Has its own dining room inside too. They also have an ice cream bar, too.  All in all, a great day for visiting and collecting both.

I always wanted to say that….and now,  the rest of the story….always enjoyed listening to Paul Harvey on the radio when he was broadcasting, just great stories to listen to as you were driving down the roads…well this is the rest of the story from the past weekend at the locations…my Sunday morning shoot was postponed so Missy and I loaded up and headed for Eminence to meet up with Docia at Crider Quarry and see if we could find any new goodies there. It had been awhile since we were both there and we had heard they were still doing some blasting,  and there was a chance the Memphis Club would want to visit it as well, so we decided to scout it.

Pulled in about 11 am and found Docia had arrived just a few minutes ahead of me. I unleashed Missy to roam freely but kept her nearby as there were a few employees working a pile of rocks about a hundred feet from us.

We began surface collecting the immediate piles near where we parked until they finished their work and left. We then re-positioned our trucks and worked the piles closer to the quarry walls.

I was walking around the backside of one of the piles near the highway side walls and looked up on a whim, and spotted this beautiful translucent green round poker chip crystal sitting near the top of the pile, just calling out to me. I quickly climbed up the rocks and snatched it up and held it up to the light to confirm the translucent green aura coming from inside it, have never seen one that color before. Shown here dirty on the tailgate after I found it.

…and here it is all cleaned up…..

Docia found some nice poker chips as well, some green and brown ones, on a few of the piles closer to the walls of the quarry, and when I checked out the same piles, I found some really pretty brown calcite druse pieces, small but pretty….

We stayed for about 90 minutes and then drove to our private location to look for more druse and poker chips there. Since I had been there the day before, I decided to check out the higher areas of the new piles there, while Docia decided to look for more druse in the red clay areas. I was climbing around the new pile behind the machine when I spotted a few loose poker chips, they resemble pine cones when laying around loose like that, and so I climbed up the pile to retrieve the two spotted on top of the rocks and dirt. I spotted some calcite crystals and decided to dig a little deeper into the pile slope and lo and behold, within a few minutes of careful digging, more poker chips started appearing before my eyes. I had to be very careful digging here, cause there were a few basketball sized rocks above me that were threatening to roll down up on me at any time. Docia took a photo of me working on the pocket in relation to the pile….

and here I am up closer working the pocket…

Right below my right hand is the pocket I am digging into, wish I would have had my camera right there with me, but there were rocks coming down the whole time and didnt want to take a chance on one hitting the camera.  My escape route was to the left where the bags were sitting and the big rocks are sitting as well. Luckily I didn`t need it.

and here is is close up, you can see how many pine cones there were in there, the yellow ones on the far left side up side down were part of a piece that I had to pry out of the pocket…

and as you can see, a couple of pine cones chipped off in the process, but there was no other way to get it out. I can hear my Tulsa rockhound friend Virgil now….I swear Virgil, I did my best here…once I got this one out, I saw two more hanging up side down, poker chips attached to gray colored druse, so I had to chip the matrix holding them in place and free them one at a time…

Right after I pulled these three out, a very large pine cone came loose and rolled down, shown in the next photo with a very small pure while poker chip that was attached to a tiny piece of druse found in the pocket as well.

About this time Docia came down the hill with two bags completely full of druse and excitedly talking about a very large pink druse chunk she had to go back for…I kept pulling small pine cones out of the pocket til I had two bags full and my two vest pockets crammed full. I very carefully climbed down that slope with three big pieces of druse and poker chip combos and two bags full of pine cones, in two trips, not one. I was one tired puppy when I finally got back to the truck. Here are a few more of my finds….

And now you know the REST OF THE STORY…..

One week out from the MAGS Club Druse trip up here that Docia and were going to lead and host and I had a free day come up…so Missy and I loaded up and headed to the secret spot to see what was new…the week before when we stopped by on our scouting trip, we found more material moved around and today, even more stuff moved out and new material laying around.

We got out to stretch our legs and Missy immediately took off in search of new mudholes and I grabbed a few bags and my rockhammer and started up the slope to see what could be located.

Well within just a few moments, I started finding some nice stuff laying all over the place, including one nice combo right in front of the machine….

here is a group photo of several I found up there on the slope….

..and the other half of my floor covered by them….

…lets just say I filled about eight canvas bags full of them…as I was making my way back up there on one trip, I found this nice one which appears to have a vug mouth on it….

…another side of it…

..and the mouth vug on it….

..and a nice little palm sized combo that I found laying up there in front of the machine…

..and I even found a few bubbly druse plates laying around…seemed like everytime I turned around, something was calling out to me. 🙂

…stay tuned for the rest of the story….

I drove down to the National Forest areas of southwestern Washington County and southeastern Crawford County near the town of Viburnum, to do some scouting for the upcoming MAGS Club trip, to make sure good friends of mine from the Memphis area club would be able to find some nice specimens of druse quartz. Docia and I had been bragging about this area to them and I sure didnt want us to fall on our faces after they took the time and made the long drive up here. This is a great time, other than the cold weather, to go out and look for druse in the forest because you dont have to put up with poison ivy or brush and briars, or critters, or pests like chiggers and ticks, or other scarey things that shall go unmentioned. 🙂

Needless to say, due to this good area, I found a TON of nice stuff all over the area that I searched, and there is a big area there…I probably only scratched the surface of the area there and found a few nice enough ones to bring home with me…

Well that gives you an idea of some of the nicer stuff I found in the forest area I was scouting today. A good friend of mine is coming down that weekend to go hunting with Docia and I…Ralph is from Ohio and I have hunted with him for beautiful purple fluorite in Marion, Kentucky, too…Ralph loves druse quartz as well. I`m looking forward to his visit.

While down there, I decided to drive a little further and check out the secret spot for poker chips and druse, and found some really nice combo pieces in some piles that had been spread out all over the place….

and…

and also found this nice druse plate there…

Well we returned this morning for another attempt to find the ever elusive poker chip calcite crystals and today minimal efforts were rewarded ten times over with several goodies found in the first twenty minutes alone !

I arrived to find that the road had been graded even wider and smoothed out as well. The machine was sitting a bit closer this time,  it appears they have worked the lower end of the slope this week.

The machine operator, bless his pea picking heart, had exposed the lower end of the slope and uncovered several nice size pieces of poker chip calcite crystals crowning drusy quartz and matrix pieces, some of them were basketball sized pieces too.  Docia and Floyd arrived shortly after I did,  and we were joined by Ed and Sandy around noon.

I found this one pictured on my tailgate after about five minutes of searching the exposed piles, and mainly by surface collecting. Now dont get me wrong, we did alot of raking thru the smaller piles, especially after we spotted a small crystal laying around or a crystal poking up out of the rocks, and believe me, after a few hours of that and walking back and forth to the truck with bags loaded down with goodies, and carrying the bigger ones to the truck, you get worn out fast.

Everyone always asks me, what do you look for so you know where to dig. Well in this case, we are looking for either nice druse or poker chip calcite crystals poking up or just sitting on top, which several were today, but the following few pics will show you how I found one nice one today, what I saw initially, and what popped up as I was digging it out and out of the dirt and rock afterwards.

Look above the hand rake and to the right slightly and you`ll see some crystal sticking out of the rock field. This is the big picture, so you can see what we are trying to look for.

The next photo shows a little closer up view of the crystal sticking out of the rocks and dirt. This one is showing alot more than how much we usually see.

Now I start digging it out carefully, using the hand rake around it to bring it out without chipping the crystal, hopefully, or knocking any loose rocks down on it which could further damage or chip it, and up pops another smaller loose crystal, this happens alot if you are in a pocket  and can provide motivation to continue digging here to find others, which I did.

Here is it completely dug out, little larger than a grapefruit and very nice when cleaned up later on. I continued to dig here and found two more crystals, a bit smaller but just as nice.

Ed walked around up on the rim and cleared the rim and overhang of the big boulders for us, so we didnt have that threat hanging over us of falling rocks and boulders. Some of them boulders were quite large and heavy. Thanks Ed !

After about four hours of searching, Docia and Floyd decided to retire early Sandy and Ed left about fifteen minutes after,  and I loaded up and left about thirty minutes later. I decided to take one more walk around and located three more nice pieces before loading up the truck and heading home.

All in all tho, a very good day of rockhounding, nice warmer weather and way ahead of the next snowstorm, too.

and here are some of the goodies I collected today….

That will give you a good idea of some of the goodies I found today….:)

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving today…Docia and I went rockhounding at a Missouri secret spot since my family wasnt getting together til this evening and her family had left earlier this week.  We go to this location whenever we can and havent had a bad day yet, and today was a super day, results wise. Started out a little on the cool side, around 38 degrees and the wind making it feel even cooler, and cloudy/overcast skies. I bundled up for it tho, so the only problem for me was the cold wind in your face.  Docia prayed for less wind and I prayed for sunlight and we both had our prayers answered in short time, nothing like the power of prayer.

We started surface hunting along the rocky slope  and both of us quickly zeroed in on areas that looked promising, and I began finding single poker chip calcite crystals, which look like little pine cones at times, and are usually just the beginning of a pocket search for something bigger. While I found a few palm sized clusters, I didnt locate anything bigger til later. Docia didnt have much luck up on the rocky slope so she took her bags and headed for the red clay banks and brought back two bags full of plates of druse quartz,  some with fingers and some with bubbles, back to her blazer. She then took a rest and ate her lunch.

I worked without a break, having had a couple of Caseys donuts on the way down, and kept finding some nice crystals and even worked a few larger rocks down the slope and out of the way for future searches. Better not to have hazards hanging over your head as you search for the goodies, I always say.  I climbed on up to the top and walked two canvas carry bags down to the truck, then came back up to look for some others. Docia wandered over to a low ridge of rock and began looking around there and then wandered down into the vast parking area. Within moments, she yelled ” Eureka and Jackpot ” up to me and I looked down and she held up a basketball sized chunk of druse and poker chip calcite crystals. I didnt get a good look at it til about twenty minutes later, and WOW, is all I could think of for at least five minutes….

and here is the other side of it…

…I continued to search near the top of the slope and found a few nice pieces of druse and on my way down to the truck with another bag of  goodies and a large chunk of druse, I discovered a large piece with crystals on it, sticking out from between a few rocks.

I walked back up to check it out, having left my digging tool next to it to locate it better, and discovered not one chunk of crystals, but three chunks of crystals, two large chunks and one small palm sized piece. I worked all three out of their hiding places and down to the truck, along with a few more pieces of beautiful druse. While at my truck, I took a closer look at Docia`s Find of the Year, as I called it. She was sacrificing  a couple of bottles of her drinking water over the chunk to reveal its true beauty, and that would be the understatement of the year, true beauty. It was actually more to the tune of GORGEOUS !! Yellow bubbly druse with beautiful big poker chip calcite crystals poised on each end of the druse and several large balls of limonite after pyrite covering the druse like big dots.  Take a look at my pics and prepare to drool as I did…

We walked over to the location in the parking lot where she removed it from, and she said only a small corner of the yellow druse was sticking up out of the compacted rock parking area, and she didnt notice the rest until she dug it completely out and then she was ECSTATIC about it. As anyone in their right mind should have been. 🙂  I observed several smaller pieces,  palm sized even, laying around the hole and asked her if she had lost her mind, why hadnt she taken those as well and her answer was,  when you have the top prize, second best isnt good enough. I told her it was fine with me and I took several of them home with me. They were just as pretty but on a smaller scale and after washing the calcite dust off of them, they look even finer.  Here are a few….

We left around 3 pm, heading for our homes, five hours of rock collecting under our belts and looking forward to Thanksgiving Dinner.