I had planned to get down to the secret spot around 11 am on Saturday, but my fire department pager sounded off shortly after 9 am and my plans were suddenly thrown into chaos. We were paged out for a house fire and soon reports of heavy fire and smoke were coming in on the radio as I made my way to the scene with my camera.  I intended to only stay a short time, take a few photos and then leave to go rockhunting, but once on the scene, I found myself helping fire crews by pulling hose and only after shooting about two hundred photos, did I leave and head south….this is how it looked on arrival…

 

…it turned out to be a mobile home trailer, a large steel shed behind the trailer, and a twenty feet long by six feet high pile of tires behind the shed, all on fire and well involved on our arrival…

 

…needless to say, our firefighters had their hands full on arrival, and more help was summoned to the scene once it was determined we had a large working fire. I decided not to leave until additional help was on scene.

I ran back home, and grabbed my tools and changed shirts, didn`t want to smell like a house fire all day, and then Missy and I headed south. On the way, I said a little prayer and asked for help in finding some nice crystals…we arrived a little after noon and I began looking around for pockets soon after.

 

I started digging where you see my blue bag below…in an area where we have found several pockets before, but this time I didn`t find any….

 

..I started around this bluff looking area…Docia and I had looked this very spot over a few times before and thought it looked promising…I did find a few crystals so I widened out the area….

 

…and then thought maybe there was a pocket under the rock faces….since I was pulling a few crystals and small druse plates out in front of the rock face….however there was no pocket behind the opening, just more rock…so I moved back toward the pile where there were a few depression looking areas and checked them out….

 

…where I found some calcite seams of massive and chunky calcite, but no crystals were found anytime soon….so I picked up and moved to yet another location, closer to the last pockets I found when Julie and Dave were here……I was at first encouraged when I found some plates of druse on top, yet after digging down and around for twenty minutes, I still had nothing to show for it and no sign of crystals…its possible I was on top of a pocket but just couldn`t locate an opening for it.

 

After taking a longer break, I decided to walk around and check out the walls a little bit more and then come back and check for another pocket, so I grabbed another blue bag with more cloths to wrap any wall pocket crystals up with, and headed in the direction of the wall…ten feet from the front of my truck I noticed a ridge of red dirt that seemed to connect to the rock face that I had originally started digging at on arrival…I decided to stop and dig a little ways down and just see if I could find something here…

 

I was really tired and approaching exhaustion quickly…thinking it was going to be a dry run today for calcite crystals but enough time in the day left to go up above to find some druse plates.

Within seconds of digging down, the bottom dropped out and a large hole appeared below…

 

looking like a large pocket opening…but having seen a few earlier, I was a little hesitant this time to believe this was going to be a pocket….I cleared off the area around it and then I knew I had something to work with….

 

…and I was totally amazed that this pocket was only a few feet in front of my truck and in a direct line with the first pocket attempt.

 

I reached in and first pulled out several handfuls of gravel and clay dirt and ugly dolomite chunks, the opening was a little tight….I stopped and drank a big bottle of water and then started expanding the hole so I could reach in easier to pull more stuff out…

 

….boy was I tired after digging the past few hours and finding nothing at all….I had about two hours left and wanted to make the most of it.I reached back in and cleared out more junk and then here is what I saw…my first confirmation of a working pocket…

 

…boy was I excited…I began clearing away more rock around, after looking down in the hole and seeing that it expanded to my right…luckily for me this surrounding rock was easy to move away…it was just heavy is all…

 

 …and another opening appeared…so even more crystals and plates were pulled from the second opening as well…and the pile of crystals began to grow…..

 

 ..and since I had confirmation that the pocket was expanding to the right, I cleared off more area of heavy rock to the right again…and I cleared out this second opening more and found even more crystals underneath the clutter….

 

 

 

 …including this nice big twin that I pulled out shortly after clearing the clutter away….

 

 …and even better looking close up….

 

…and a few nice plates with poker chips attached to them were next to come out of the pocket….

 

…and here is a view of the crystals and plates inside the second pocket opening….

 

The next nice combo I pulled out was this beautiful crystal on pretty gray druse with some coloring to it…

 

The pocket took two more expansions before I finally ran out of steam and decided to stop….

 

I was going to have to clear more rock away first and I was just exhausted by then…I started wrapping up my nicer plates and crystals and bagged the rest….I did capture a nice sunset on the way home though…..

 

 

 

and….

 

…cant wait til the next time I can get down there and explore some more.