I decided I was going to drive down to the Park Hills Show on Sunday morning…I wanted to see if I could find some of those new agates out on the market, found in the country of Madagascar and some more of the chalcopyrite-bladed barite-sphalerite ball pieces found in the Washington County Quarry. Since I knew that would be at least half a day wandering around looking at everything and visiting with my dealer friend Johnny B from Mt Ida, who is always there, I decided to drive back to the Secret Spot Quarry on Saturday June 9th and see what else I could find there. We were up before the crack of dawn thanks to my new job, which requires me to get up at 4 am these days to get ready to go to work…and about fifteen miles down the road,  I looked back and saw the beautiful sunrise….

…and fifteen minutes later, the sunrise only deepened and got better….

…and then ten minutes later, we saw a beautiful rainbow…I was thinking, man what are we going to see next ??!!

…there were a few scattered thunderstorms on the radar before leaving the house, but going by the way they were moving on radar, it appeared they would miss the quarry, so I wasn`t too worried about getting wet this morning…soon after arriving about 7 am, it was clear that some were going by just east of us…

and another storm passing by east of us about an hour later….

…and a few hours later, I heard some thunder and figured maybe we might get grazed by this one…

and as it was, it came right over the top of us and I decided to head on over to my buddy Dave`s house…he notified me that he had purchased an old collection of Viburnum Trend minerals so I decided to go see what he had…as we pulled into his drive, I looked east and saw another storm brewing…

…this storm apparently hit the Park Hills area and paid everyone at the show there a visit, high winds, hail, and hard rain for about 90 minutes, from what I heard the next day when I was there visiting with everyone. Dave had quite a few nice crystals and minerals in the collection he purchased from a retired miner, nice ones that had been collected at least 75 years ago…

I was gonna crop this one off at the bottom of the image, then noticed Lola down there and decided to leave it…she is David`s guard dog for his Mom and a very pretty German Shepherd too. Those are some unique lead cube clusters above on the table, some with chalcopyrites attached. Closeup of the big one in the next two images….

…and some gorgeous never seen before pyrites with some deep reds, oranges, and gold colors in them, from the Casteel Mine, which rarely produces really pretty specimens…

…and there were some stunning calcites in this collection as well…golden honey yellows and orange yellows as well as several smokeys from Brushy Creek Mine….