I forgot to mention a little roadtrip that Docia and I took a few weeks ago on a weekday I was off with nothing better to do. Or anything to do, for that matter, lol.  We met up down at the roadcut we first started rockhunting together at, on Highway C in Washington County. Its a small roadcut and mainly a clay bank with a few small rock outcrops on a gentle curve with a wide shoulder to park on. Docia was already there when Missy and I arrived, and she showed me some beautiful quartz druse plates she was finding, some with barite on them,  and covered with a pretty iron oxide coating as well.

We walked up and down that first set of small cuts and found a few plates here and there, enough to fill a couple of bags, and then we migrated up to the second cut and started seeing a few more pieces of pretty druse with larger crystals on them. I found a pocket fairly quickly after digging down a little ways into the clay dirt and called Docia over to join me…pretty soon I had two bags filled and went to get another bag. I was pulling out some really nice bubbles and plates with bubbles on them….a few shown here all cleaned up by Mother Nature a few days later…

After that, we decided to drive up to Viburnum and check out a location we go to often and find some beautiful druse plates at…we hadn`t been there since last year and thought we would see if the rains in the past year had washed out any new material. We split up on arrival and within about twenty minutes, Docia hit paydirt in a washed out area and came to get me. We drove back up to the spot and walked down into the wash and started finding big bubbly druse plates right away. She had found a couple that I helped lug back up the hill for her and then I went back down and lugged a couple up the hill to my truck. Here are a few of the ones I brought home with me….

 

After lugging a few up the hill, we were both too tired to do much else except call it a day and drive home.

Last weekend, I decided to drive back down to the secret spot and check out a few areas down there that I hadn`t checked in a while. I emailed Docia only to find out that she and Floyd were going to be busy cutting wood for their new Hardy stove…apparently it uses a lot more wood than they had originally figured it would, so they weren`t going to be able to meet up and rock hunt. Missy and I loaded up and headed that way Saturday morning, arriving shortly after 10 am. It was a little crisp then, but the wind wasn`t too bad…and I stopped at a few spots on the drive in to check out a few areas where I thought maybe some of the blue hole crystals might have been dumped at. I didn`t find much and drove  on down to the lower spot and as I rounded the corner, found that a new area had been cleared off and ringed with boulders….

…and despite a bigger mudhole now, the entrance up to the clay druse pit was smoother looking as well…

I drove on up into the lower area and started looking around, decided to see if I could locate a pocket first and then while stretching my legs, I could always check out the pile or some wall pockets…

 

When I walked over to the pile, I noticed pretty fast that the pockets I had discovered the last time there, had already been covered back up…no big deal since I had cleaned them out pretty much and I didn`t intend to look there again, just wanted to use them as a reference point on finding another one. Oh well, no biggie, within moments I had discovered yet another area worth checking out…this time right in the corner and you see Missy walking toward it in the next photo….

 

and this one located around a few big boulders, one I was able to move out of my way and the other two I could roll out of my way when needed….

 

….I started to the left of that smaller square shaped rock, finding a narrow seam of calcite when I dug down next to a wall, but that didn`t pan out to be much so I moved to the other side of that rock and within minutes of digging down, I turned a nice druse chunk with poker chips over and decided to explore more….

 

…and within moments, I had found two large poker chip and druse combos…

 

…and the pocket started forming as a trench…

 

…and thankfully was cooperating by moving around that big boulder that I was only able to roll back about ten inches out of the way, to make things safer for me…as I dug down into it more, I hit a shallow pocket that looked like a spring welling up…….and the more I dug down into it, the deeper the water got and I could see it coming out from behind a few plates as well….

 

….so I got up and went to my truck and pulled out a water bowl for Missy and used it to bail out the hole, and after bailing water for a few minutes, I discovered there was a poker chip ledge under the water that circled around in a U shape, and within that open area, under the ledge, I found poker chip crystals in singles, twins, and triples, and several small soda straw druse plates with poker chip crystals attached….the only bad thing was that the water was extremely cold and I had to alternate my hands back and forth, pulling crystals out, no more than two minutes in that water at a time or my fingers became so numb I couldn`t feel a thing…but pretty soon I had a large pile of crystals from that one underwater pocket alone….

 

…and then I started removing the plates that were wedged in behind that spring, some of them just hanging upside down and large in size. I took as many out as I could safely remove…kept thinking that boulder might roll down on me if I kept digging out in that direction…

 

…so I removed as many plates and crystals as I could….

 

…and then lucky for me, the pocket shifted to the right and started moving to the right side….here you see the water pocket going back right under that huge boulder and the pocket of crystals seemingly going to the right…..

 

…and closer up….

 

…and even closer up, you can see a couple of big druse plates hanging at the entrance and a few crystals in the mix at the bottom…

 

..so I cleared out the crystals in the mix at the bottom and a little cave opened up….

 

and after about twenty minutes, I had yet another growing pile of crystals and plates stacking up behind me……and up close, even prettier looking….

 

…and the pocket continued to move to the right, opening up this area of bubbly druse plates…

 

…and after knocking down some of the top layers of rock, I opened up a little cavern full of poker chip crystals covered with a fine layer of clay mud….

 

 

…and plates packed in and around the crystals….

 

…and behind the initial crystals was a lot of tightly packed in crystals…...and after I removed the tightly packed in crystals, it opened up into another pocket of crystals as well….

 

…that was chock full of crystals too….I removed some more top rock and behold, yet another pocket opened up behind this one…

 

….by this time, five hours after my arrival, I was beginning to grow tired…this pocket was about four feet from the original starting point and I had changed sitting positions a few times by now, and had even laid down in the trench a few times to get into the crystal pockets…luckily for me, this turned out to be the last pocket I was able to get into….and again, filled with crystals top, bottom, and each side….

 

…I had to knock down some of the tops to get to the crystals and once I did that, leaving me with this opening, too tired to pound the hammer on the top plates any longer, I reached back and removed as many crystals as I could before calling it quits…..

 

…after a short break and cinching up my boot laces, I climbed around the pile again and found a few bubbly yellow druse plates, and then found a few wall pockets and worked them over fairly well, retrieving a few nice gray druse pieces with some beautiful poker chips perched on the druse as pretty as you please.

I then walked up to the clay druse area and found several nice smokey colored plates of soda straw druse and filled a bag before running out of steam and heading back to the truck. I was sooooo tired, it took a few rest stops just to walk back the last 200 feet to the truck. After wrapping up the nicer ones and securing them in the bed of my truck, and putting down towels for Missy in my truck seats. I finally had a chance to sit down in my nice comfy drivers side bucket seat and relax for s few minutes. I grabbed a couple of doans back pain pills before heading for home…and within twenty minutes my back was feeling much better. All in all, a very good day of collecting.