As Docia drove home from searching for bladed barite and druse, I drove to the secret spot where Missy and I took advantage of the four hours of remaining light and found yet another pocket to look through for goodies. I say another pocket, yet it was one of those ever expanding pockets, expanding from one to five pockets in the same immediate digging area…we arrived around 3 pm with beautiful cloudy skies….

 

…and I decided to do a short walk around and just see if I could spot anything laying around that would indicate a pocket nearby…I walked over to the pile and spotted a pleasant surprise…a brown dogtooth calcite crystal with some poker chip formation deteriorated away from it, exposing the top of the crystal….

 

…and just laying in the loose gravel and dirt near where I had found a pocket several weeks prior….I walked over to the area where we had dug out the trench pocket the week before, seems it has been covered up big time now by a line of big rocks connecting the pile to the boulder line over by the west wall….

…oh well, still a lot of area to search for pockets remaining there…so I sat about to find one, walking over to the area where they removed the rock for this new wall and finding evidence of a pocket real fast…and sat about digging it out….

…figuring if they could dig there, so could I…and finding a few plates of druse and poker chips right away…which is usually a very good sign of a good pocket nearby….this one started trenching almost immediately on me…another good sign of things to come….

…then I started finding plates of druse upside down in the dirt and then after pulling several out, this little bluff pocket opened up….

 

…so I began clearing off around it and under it to find out how large it would expand to….…and it soon became apparent that another pocket was going to open up on the right side of the expansion….…I kept digging and expanding back toward where I was sitting, and the next thing I knew, a hole opened up right at my feet. I had been sitting on top of one all along and didnt even realize it….

I got up to stretch my legs at this point, having been sitting, kinda, for the past hour…my feet were cramping up…guess I didnt have enough banannas in my concrete the night before…and when I got up to stretch, I noticed what a beautiful day it was in the skies once again….

…and Missy stretched out next to my pockets….

 

….and now I`m about to hammer out the roof of the pocket here…

 

…and decided to clear off the pocket roof so I wasn`t hammering dirt and rock as well as the top layer of that pocket roof….when I started brushing it back, another hole appeared and I figured I had found a back entrance to the pocket…...but no, it turned out to be yet another pocket…

 

..and within seconds, pulled out a couple of nice druse plates from this new pocket that opened up, while cleaning out the front of it….

 

….and then I hammered out the roof of that middle pocket as well and pulled a few chips from it, too. I then started back to the hole near where I was sitting before my break and started cleaning out around it and a few seconds later, yet another hole opened up….…for a brief minute of working this new hole, I got a bit excited…as I was moving rocks and dirt around, some of the rocks fell into the hole and went into water, and it was a loud ” kerplunk ” indicating a deep hole of water…so I cleaned the hole opening some more…only to discover a drill hole and water about thirty inches down…so I filled the water hole up with more loose rocks and filled it completely up….and started working on the pocket a few inches away on the other side of that area where the first hole had opened up….

 

…and this pocket was truly something to get excited about…as you look at it up close you`ll see why I say and think that….

 

…and took a minute to step back and look at the progress made so far…

 

…and then started working that south pocket, pulling crystals and plates out….

 

…man, this thing was chock full of crystals…just the way I like to see and find them….

 

…and once I had it halfway cleaned out, I looked back inside and you could see this big poker chip attached to a druse plate hanging upside down from the roof of the pocket….…I got my chisel and four pound hammer from the truck, and drove that chisel into the roof of the pocket about eight inches back from the opening and the poker chip plate and another plate, split off from each other and dropped down into a couple of bags I had stuffed into the opening of the pocket…just in case that happened…….shortly after that…I gave out…I had four bags full of chips and two bags full of combos and I figured I had enough….I filled in the holes and wrapped up my goodies, and Missy and I took off….we stopped for this pretty scene tho….

 

…sure was a pretty scene…this is one of the prettiest spring seasons we have ever had….sure was a pretty day