I feel like I am so far behind on my stories that I cant remember them, and certainly the details of them, gonna have to do a better job of keeping up on the stories here.

After missing out on Geode Fest last year, due to being too busy, I decided to take a few days off and make the trip there this year. Ryan Shaffer was going as well and spent the weekend digging with me at Josh and Jennifer`s Railroad Creek Farm. I stayed at the Super 8 Motel again and not sure I will next time around, as they invented some new charges this time, fees that were not explained at the time of booking, either. That type of business does not set well with me, there are definitely other hotels up there to stay at. Ryan booked his hotel late and wound up staying in Fort Madison, 15 minute drive to the north. I think the only other problem we had was finding a place to eat at on Saturday evening, Keokuk High School was having their prom that night and the restaurants were booked pretty solid, think we wound up eating  at PIzza Hut.

I remember getting up there to Keokuk to the venue about 2 pm Thursday, and saw that Charity and Jamie had their booth tent set up, so I visited with them a bit and then walked over to where Ken Vaisivil was set up with his geode booth…I purchased a few from him and admired several, this was one that I admired, he was selling it out of his personal collection….

…a frosted calcite attached to the front of this basketball sized geode half…I didn`t buy this one but he had a good price on it, and it was gone by the next morning. I have purchased several similar geodes from him in the past few years, some with poker chip shaped calcites inside the geodes. He also had this neat pair for sale, only fifty dollars for the pair, with a big yellow barite crystal inside…

 

I bought several smaller ones from him and we visited a bit, then I walked up and talked to Greg Coleman, who was setting up his tables for his Haunted Ridge booth…he was working the booth alone this year, and then after that I drove over to the Super 8 and got checked in, and made sure Onyx was comfy and settled in before I headed back. Ryan was at the venue by the time I got back and I introduced him to everyone I knew there…even Mike Messer and Dennis Kossow were there by that time. Mike is the President of the Fairfield, Iowa Club and some other clubs as well, and Dennis is a semi retired Stonemason in the Fairfield area, who stays quite busy in his retirement years, but also finds time to rockhound in certain select areas, like Hallelujah Junction for smokey quartz scepters and crystals. He always has some nice crystal specimens from out west that I like to add to my collection, this year it was an azurite specimen that was very gemmy. Also talked to Marv, who is either the President or Past President of the Cedar Rapids Club, he was setting up his booth next to Dennis and Mike, and has those beautiful Mexican Troya geodes that I like…. and I have met all of these guys thru my buddy, John Oostenryk, who as usual, was late getting to the venue, and I think it was either late that night or early the next morning, before he arrived.

I think Ryan and I stuck around there til about 4:30 pm and then headed down to the Italian Restaurant Angelini`s Ristorante on Main Street for dinner. Great atmosphere and food there, love their lasagne and spaghetti both.

After that, we returned to the venue to get registered for Geode Fest, so we didn`t have to do that the next morning. While waiting for registraton to open, I had Jamie show Ryan the huge geode he found at Cooper`s Fox River location last year….

There were no long lines at pre-registration, because most of the folks there early, were next door at the Orientation for Geode Fest, usually Kirk, the Director of Tourism welcomes everyone and then turns the microphone over to Marv, who tells everyone how the Keokuk Geodes formed and what the many variations of them there are in that area.

Afterward, Ryan headed to his hotel to check in, and I stopped by Dairy Queen to get a blizzard and a pup cup for Onyx, then back to the Super 8 for the evening. The next morning, Ryan and I got to the venue fairly early and he was able to briefly, and I mean briefly, meet John O, as we all call him…we might have talked to him for five minutes, maybe less, and that was the extent of our conversation with him all weekend…for whatever reason…and I am just going to leave it at that. We drove over to Josh and Jennifer`s farm…was told that Jennifer`s son Payton, would be there helping this weekend. We saw his truck, but didn`t see him til later in the day.

We gathered a bucket and tools and walked to the creek, and I showed Ryan the creek in the area of the bank where we pulled some geodes out two years ago that were believed to have purple irridescence and then walked down to the dirt bank on the point of the hillside and began digging in. We found a few geodes there, but not as many as two years before when Pete Hahn and I were digging there. Here is one that Ryan found, cannonball sized….

…and then he popped it open….

…he was pretty happy with that pair…liked the multiple chambers on the left side….

…after digging a few hours, I had to get up and stretch my legs…found this one not far behind us in the leaves on the ground…

…and Payton came walking up the trail soon after and stopped to talk…he had no clue we were down there, let him know we arrived earlier than the group and were good friends of Jennifer and Josh, had dug at that spot two years ago too and did well.

Before the afternoon group arrived, we moved to the bank where the purple irridescent geodes are located and began digging in…soon found them to be in a certain layer there…Payton showed us a couple of broken halves, that a guy dug there that morning, and they had purple inside them, so he joined us for a few minutes and dug into the bank where the guy told him he dug those from….

There was a good crowd there on Friday, both morning and afternoon groups were pretty good sized. Josh always rents a mini trackhoe for Geode Fest and does a lot of digging with it, digs into the creek banks to make it easier for rockhounds to find geodes to take home…he has done this 3 years in a row now and his site gains in popularity each year. Dan, one of John O`s buddies, he is a retired steelworker, and in my personal rockhounding group, he is usually John`s chauffeur as well on my trips…he was there this year to operate the mini trackhoe for Josh, during Geode Fest. 

Ryan and I headed back to the venue after digging for several hours Friday, and there was a guy lined up at Charity and Jamie`s booth to get a big geode popped open with one of their hydraulic soil pipe cutters. He had been to one of the Amish farms on the Fox River, and had this extra one, much smaller, that he had found with one foot when he stumbled into it…it was full of mud, sand, and silt, but when I looked down into the opening, it was lavendar colored crystals……

We had dinner at Angelini`s again, this time I had the spaghetti and it was just as good as the lagagna there, followed by another trip to Dairy Queen afterward.

The next morning we again grabbed some donuts for breakfast, and then drove over to Josh and Jennifer`s farm, but set up at the purple irridescence bank and began digging in. There were some folks that joined us when they arrived in the morning group and began digging upstream along the bank, then moved down closer to us. Ryan and I were pulling alot of geodes out of the bank where we had started the day before. Mike Maher called me to figure out where we were digging at today, he and his son Ryan…. both in my personal group of rockhound friends…. were on the way over in the first group as well, and had a young lady with them named Chandler, it was her first geode rockhounding trip, and her Mom was along too. She came pretty well prepared for it, wearing safety glasses and tall rubber boots, and gloves on…she was ready for anything and she had a great attitude, too.

The group that morning, again, included a huge number of rockhounds….

This was the area of creek right below us.

Mike, Ryan, and Chandler made their way over to where we were at by the big tree and I allowed Ryan M to take over my digging spot next to  Ryan S, digging into the bank…and did quite well there, accidentally broke the top half of this geode as he was digging it out of the bank,  which was gorgeous inside….

…and the pieces above are what was left of the top of it….I don`t think Chandler was given that one, but she cleaned up pretty nicely with several other nice geodes handed to her….

…and Mike stayed pretty busy finding fossils and geode halves in the creek bed for her….

Ryan found another multiple chambered geode in the bank there by the big tree….

Saturday evening, we had to settle for Pizza Hut for dinner as every restaurant, including our favorite one, were booked solid with Prom Goers. Hopefully next year, they give us some notice on that if it`s going to happen again.

Sunday morning, I didn`t do much digging, went back to Josh and Jennifer`s farm, but was pretty tired and sore from the previous two days of digging, so I took it easy, but we started out at the purple irridescent spot again. I wound up helping a young man named Jax, who was there with his grandmother and her friends, and he was trying to find some nice geodes to take home. I had some druse quartz and Washco Q material with me, and gave him some of those to take home with him too. His grandmother asked if she could take a photo of Jax and I….