I dropped off Onyx with my Mom and drove down to Park Hills for the show on Sunday, June 10th, getting there a little after 9 am, and after parking near the old Mill of the Federal Mine, I walked over to visit with Johnny B of Mt Ida, who is always parked on the second row near the gate…you can easily spot him, he has the big white van, and purple curtains and banners blowing in the breeze around his tables and van. John has been a good friend for years, and he always has some nice quartz crystals and clusters in all sizes for sale…I have visited with him at his residence when he is home and he is usually cooking quartz when I get there, but always has some great stuff there as well, in whatever size you are looking for. We had a good talk, he always brings me up to date on things happening in the Mt Ida area and while I didn`t buy anything from him this time around, he did have some nifty irredescent dragons with him that were just beautiful…

…I knew I would likely stop by his place when I am down there in November and see what he has for sale then. Last year he had some green dragon quartz that was really pretty and made me a good deal on those as well as some sandstone roses from Oklahoma. I wandered thru the rest of the second row and soon came up on my buddy Ken Vaisivil at his geode booth…I always love to shop and see what unique geodes Ken has…he always has some of the prettiest irridescent calcite geodes too, and he had a few with a sunflower blue color this time…blue being one of my favorite colors, I could not resist buying a set of them from him….here they are and you can see the blue sparkles in each half….

…simply gorgeous…Ken never fails to impress…he will be at Geodefest as a vendor again this year if you would like to see what he has for sale…last year he had one with what looks like a poker chip calcite crystal inside one half, so naturally I purchased it. He always has some great pink dogtooth crystals inside some as well….this time he had a pair with some pink calcites inside that were somewhat pagoda shaped, so I purchased this pair too,….

…and some pyrites sprinkled on top of some smokey quartz inside this half….

…I didn`t purchase all of the above images, but just wanted to show you what some of his unique geodes look like…the only other thing I was specifically looking for were some of the Madagascar Agates…which one dealer had there, he had purchased them from another dealer on the first morning there and didn`t want to sell them, but let me take a photo of them…

I`m an agate fan and hope to find some one of these days for my collection…they can be purchased on Ebay but you have to wait for three months for them to arrive from China…I am not a big fan of Ebay for reasons like that.