My apologies for the delay on this trip story…I usually have the story in here within two weeks of my return from Arkansas, but in December, I began helping the landowner of Haunted Ridge Druse Farm near Potosi, kickstart the opening of his farm to rockhounds from all over the state of Missouri at first, Mineral Clubs and then after the first of the new years, we made the farm available to rockhounds across the country…the initial hangup being the liability waiver…at first it was created for clubs only and he had his attorney draw one up for individual rockhounds instead. I am now working with a second landowner and getting him set up with groups and clubs as well at a more relaxed pace.

At any rate, we had a pretty good time quartz crystal collecting once again in the Hot Springs and Mount Ida areas, with a couple of snags thrown in that kept us on our toes and changed our schedule just a wee bit. Slade made it down for the fun this time around again as did Chris Bryant and his son, and David Bruce. I took most of the photos with my phone this time around, mainly because our weather was  a bit wet at times when we were out digging for crystals.

The first snag for Onyx and I was the inability to stay at my friend`s condo on Lake Hamilton this time around. Due to the Covid Sham early last year, the Condo owners could not find anyone to stay at their rentals, so they rented them instead, to people looking for a condo to stay at for months at a time instead. Cant blame them, but sure did inconvenience a lot of us tourists and makes one wonder if they will get back to allowing tourists to stay there or not. I booked a small suite at La Quinta Inn and Suites for a week instead this year and they put us up on the 3rd floor and right over the front door with a nice view of the car lot next door and the sunrise each morning. I had bigger windows than any other room or suite in the hotel…think they were about ten foot high and six feet wide !!  Slade had stayed there on his previous trip a few years ago and liked it so well he stayed there again this time, too.

Onyx and I got on the way down there fairly early in the morning, intending to stop off at Justin`s with a load of flats and some larger druse plates, that he was in need of for his online store. He always has some nice and neat stuff, so I purchased a nice calcite from Mexico from him…pretty neat looking material….

When I reached out to Tony about his Southfork Mine over the late summer months, I discovered that he had sold the mine to Dane, his good friend from San Diego that had moved to Arkansas, tired of the California politics, the year before, and then Dane helped Tony out the year before, when Tony threw his back out and couldnt come meet us at the gate to let us in. So I called Dane and set it up to go to his mine on Friday morning and dig all day, and he met us at the gate that morning. Dane`s wife drove down in her jeep and Chris` son liked the jeep so well, he rode on up to the mine in her jeep…

We had some new folks join us this trip from the Tulsa area, Darla and Bill Rogers, both new to rockhunting, but they got their initial start at one of the easiest mines to dig in and find stuff in. They both got a good workout in and had a blast finding nice crystals. Tony had done some digging on the left side of the pit of the lower mine and hit some nice quartz, and we were able to do some more hand digging to find even more.

Slade and David Hodge went up to the higher wall area of the lower pit mine, where John and others had had good success with large crystal points in years past…

Patty, Colby, and Gabriella worked the short wall the left side of the newer pit on the left side, at least they started out there and we were all looking for some signs of a crystal pocket…when we all spotted something, we simply dug in and worked to pull crystals out…Patty spotted some crystals in a small pocket up high on the rock and had to twist and contort herself so as to get her arm into the pocket to pull crystals out…she is a real trooper tho, she worked that pocket pretty much all day to harvest quite a haul in crystals…

Darla and Bill Rogers are working pockets on the far left side above…

That is Dane above on the right side…talking to me as I am photographing Patty up on the rock working the pocket…

..and that is Colby and Gabriella on the left side of the rocks as Patty is climbing and stretching to pull more crystals out of that narrow pocket…I prob wouldn`t have been able to move well the next day, had I contorted myself as she did that day.

Onyx and I found a nice pocket and settled in that morning to liberate quite a few nice crystals from it…

We worked the lower pit for awhile, and I took that bucket back to the truck, grabbed another one and then we walked up to the old mine at the top of the hill and after a bit, I found yet another pocket up there and liberated some more crystals and small clusters…

…this is the view at the top of the hill…

…the wind rustles through those pine trees and is music soothing to the ears let me tell ya…I could have stretched out on my tailgate and gone right off to a nice nap for sure…

Lots of  history at that old mine on top of the hill, too…and the tailings up there produce year after year, beautiful small and large clusters can be found just by digging down into the soft clay dirt up there.

Here are a few of Patty`s finds from that pockets…she sent me these photos in December…

We headed back to our hotels by 4 pm, worn out and happy..Dane let us know if we ran out of places to go, we could always come back another day.

The next morning we were looking forward to going to a new mine just northwest of Mt Ida…I had contacted the owner, Tommy Wingfield, about it, the charge there was $ 25 per adult, but he had assured me that he was finding really nice quartz crystals and clusters there and occasionally pockets of green chloride quartz had been found there too.

A guy that Justin knows well, had been there and he verified to Justin that what he had found was truly a pocket of green chloride quartz, so we were stoked and amped to go and see what we could find. Saturday morning was threatening rain showers about 9 am, so we got there early, paid our fees and walked up to the top of the hill on the west side of the parking area, which is at the foot of the hill from both the east hill mine and west hill mine. Tommy told us in the parking lot that he would start us on the west side hill and see how we did, and let us dig on the east side hill the next day, said there was a pit on the far side of the west side hill that we were welcome to dig in as well. When Slade, Justin, and David Hodge got up there, all they found was a trench cut, no pit, and after digging around in the trench and finding very little for their efforts, we all started wondering if we had been taken.

The ground up there was not clay dirt at all, alot of multi colored shale and massive quartz laying all over the place…the rock in the trench cut was more of a wet muck, very rocky and difficult to dig into and see what you were looking at…icky is the word that came to my mind. Patty and Colby had dug into some tailing piles and the rest of us wandered around looking to the ground for sparkles…I saw none…no one else was finding anything either…Chris and his son were finding nothing as well. Tommy kept walking around telling us there were crystals to be found all over that hillside…we were wondering where they were if they were up there…and after two hours of digging all over up there, the heavens opened up and a deluge of rain began falling…we all picked up our buckets and tools and ran down the hill to our vehicles…waiting it out inside them…when the rains stopped, we all gathered together in the parking lot and decided we had had enough of this place and wanted to go somewhere else.

I asked David Hodge to call Wegners and see if we could go up to the Phantom Mine…so he did and found out there was a small group going soon and we were welcome to join them, so we jumped in our vehicles and headed that way. Patty and Colby had been there on Thursday and let us know they had great luck and found some great stuff there. She told me later that Tommy saw us all drive off and was disappointed we didnt stick around and try harder to find some good crystals…we all wondered what he was smoking !!

We arrived at Wegners with time to spare, paid our fee for the Phantom Mine, discovered Mike, an old friend, was our driver to the mine once again, and all of a sudden we were all stoked once again to go find some good stuff. We were confined to the tailing piles only but we had a good time and did wind up finding some nice stuff.

Above is Chris Bryant on the left, talking to Justin in the middle, and Chris` son on the right…and Onyx camped out next to Justin….

You pay for five hours of digging time and take home whatever you want from there. Mike had turned over the piles the day before we were there and did a pretty good job of it. I filled two buckets but purchased a couple of small plates of better stuff when we returned to the gift barn. Mike also took me down into the basement to see a few hundred clusters that he and a few other miners had harvested from pit pockets the week or two before we arrived…talk about CANDYLAND !!

I texted Dane to let him know of our dismal situation and he graciously offered his mine to us for sunday, so we drove back over there again and had another great time exploring and collecting there. Despite a few setbacks and one definite learning experience about a joke of a mine and mine owner, we still had a good time digging and collecting beautiful quartz crystals.

One sidenote, Shane texted me around Christmas and said he and Tony hoped to be able to offer us another good mine to dig at in the fall of 2021, their new mine near Jessieville and he also hinted at possibly another place as well. Looking forward to it.