Saturday I loaded up the truck and headed down to the secret spot Saturday last week, to meet up with Docia and a friend of hers. I wanted to get some more druse plates from the clay embankment and Docia`s friend was looking for anything pretty, so like Docia said, this would be a perfect spot for finding pretty stuff. Her friend was running late so I arrived about twenty minutes ahead of them. I no sooner pulled up and walked over to the edge to see if anything had changed when something big took off flying from the ledge about fifty feet from me…

 

 

 

…turned out to be a large buzzard…I was a little disappointed, as Docia has been seeing eagles and I was hoping it would be an eagle….but as it turned out, after shooting about twenty photos of it, they turned out well as you can see….

 

 

 

…and was quite pretty with his plumage in flight as he glided back and forth checking me out….

 

 

 

…and flew around quite gracefully….

 

 

 

…after he finally gained some elevation right over the druse area, he was shortly joined by four other buzzards and they flew up the hill to look for something to do I guess….I parked above the druse area and walked down into the pit to see what I could find…

 

 

…and started seeing druse plates all over the place…within feet of the truck…

 

…and some very pretty plates at that….

 

 

…I looked around and finally found the source of some beautiful smokey colored quartz plates of druse with soda straw fingers in a clay embankment and started digging down….

 

…and pretty soon, plate after plate came out of the pocket….

 

 

…but most of the plates were dirt covered and yet one could still make out smokey colored straws and fingers on the plates…

 

..and bubbles like these….

 

..including large bubbles….

 

…about this time, I heard Docia coming down the road and she and her friend soon joined me looking for druse plates. I started walking around the area I was digging in and found yet another spot where plates were just laying all around….…so as Docia and her friend were walking all over picking up plates, I filled two more bags full of plates and druse bubbles, including this nice large plates of bubbles covered in limonite that I found on top….

 

..and then I drove down to the lower area to see if I could find another pocket…I had it in mind to go over closer to the backside of the pile and look, but didn`t get far from where I parked when I looked down and saw poker chip crystals laying all over the place in the gravels…which is normally a good sign that there is a pocket nearby, so I sat down and started raking through the gravel with my mini mattox…

 

…and after about twenty minutes, I had found a small shallow trench, and after a few more minutes of scratching around, a hole opened up at one end of the trench….

 

..I raked back the other way just to clear the area back and make sure this wasnt the only entrance to a potential pocket…sometimes a hole on one end is accompanied by another entrance…and soon enough I had my answer…...I started finding signs about a foot away from the hole and soon enough I had exposed a small rock wall and under the wall, more crystals appeared….

 

 

…and after a little more careful digging, a pocket opened up at the bottom of this rock wall to the left….…I reached into the pocket and after pulling some ugly pieces of dolomite out, the next two were plates of pretty druse with tiny needles of druse on them and a few poker chips attached as well…

 

…about this time, Docia and her friend rejoined me down at the lower level and they walked over to the Tulsa pocket to see if they could pull anymore crystals out of it. I continued to work this pocket and it expanded in a circle counterclockwise to the side of the pocket I was sitting on…

 

….and pretty soon it became deeper as well with some pockets located inside behind a cluster of large poker chips attached to the top plate….

 

…I cleaned it out as well as I could and attempted to remove the top plate with the cluster of crystals on top, but the layer of rock on top was way too thick and heavy, and by this time in the day, I was too pooped to pop. Docia and her friend had left by this time with a load of druse and her friend was very happy.  I left soon after with a load of druse and two bags of poker chips and a few plates as well.