I no sooner returned from the second weekend in Kentucky with more fluorite after a successful sixth spring season, than Docia and I decided to return to the barite area and see if we could find some more pretty bladed barite. Since its a very open area and we could go through the week, we opted to meet down there again on Thursday…meaning this report is about two weeks old, thats how far behind I am. We both studied the maps a bit and decided to checkout that middle road and see if it would lead us to the red clearing that is on the map, that we had been looking at for weeks now. On our last trip down there, we had searched the roads on either side of the middle road, without finding this spot, so the middle road was our objective this trip. We had to do a little cleanup along the way down this road, since its so brushy down there, so it took a little longer to get down the road than we figured. Plus we had to cross that gully again in four wheel drive…

 

…with that barite ledge on the other side….I had Docia wait til I crossed it so I could photograph her coming across it….and as I crossed it, she photographed me….

 

 

…I was no sooner there than here came Docia across it….

 

 

 

…and she came across just fine….

 

….we parked here and walked down the middle road a little ways to see how brushy and rocky it might be. After a little bit of trimming, I went back and got my truck and started down the road…

 

…it looks good here…but believe me, it was a bit brushier in the next photo which is around the turn….

 

…and after another hour of walking and trimming, we finally came to the clearing we kept seeing on the map…an area of old tiff mines…

 

…we searched the entire old mining area and only found a few spots with some quartz and druse…this hillside being one of the main areas. We found that a little odd, since we were right up the hill above an area that we find it quite often and heavily….

 

…so we searched and dug a little here and pulled a few nice quartz druse pieces out…here is the area I was digging into….

 

After an hour here and not coming up with much, we decided to return to Docia`s blazer and then drive over to the bladed barite hill we found two weeks before and see if we could locate more barite around that side of the hill as well as surrounding areas. We had some friends coming up from Oklahoma that weekend that we were sure would love the bladed barite as much as we like it too. We found enough to fill two bags each and I found a couple of nice sized ones for my mom`s flower beds too. We also left quite a bit for our friends to find, too. Here are some of the pieces I found….

 

We crossed back over the gully and went north…..

 

 

 

We decided to check out a couple of other areas around there and see if we could locate more pretties, but after an hour of driving and looking, we came up empty handed, and decided to head over to the secret spot and see if we could find some nice druse there…thats the next story since its a different animal…