I drove home from work and picked up Missy and then headed MFQ, to meet up with Docia, Floyd, Mike, and Chrissy at the quarry there to rock hunt on my day off.  We arrived around 9:30 am and found everyone busily digging into the small bluff on the south side of the quarry.

…the appearance of this bluff had really changed from when I was there last in December with Ashley, when we found the neat pockets of dolomite druse covering poker chip crystals in matrix…so I had to look things over and decide where to start digging in. I opted to start down near the end and see if I could climb up to the last level I had been at.

…I started down on the right side end of the bluff and worked my way up to the midway point and dug in after finding some small crystals in matrix near the bottom, thinking maybe they had rolled down from a pocket up above. Chrissy found some crystals loose in the dirt over to the right below me and she settled in to dig where you see the umbrella in the photo above. There was a lot of loose dirt covering the bluff and pockets so I had to rake that off and then dig in when I found the pockets….

…there were pockets all over the place under that loose fill dirt and most were full of dolomite crystals in different colors….

We withstood the heat, temps got up to somewhere in the 90`s and it was very hot out there folks…cant remember how hot but we were digging hard and heavy, pulling out goodies galore for a few hours at least….I finally took a break around 11 am…Floyd and Docia took off somewhere in there to return home and put some baby back ribs on for Mike and Chrissy…I was invited too but had told my parents I would be home to eat with them later…Chrissy was finding alot of material over to my right and Mike was still prying around on pockets to my left….I decided to  go up to the upper bench and see what I could find up there…

I got up there and walked into the main collecting area, and was looking down to see what was there…and looked up and to my right for a second and spotted this KILLER piece….

…just sitting there on the ground below the bluff…man I could not believe my luck !!!  its a beautiful chocolate brown blending into green and honey yellow poker chip, and its actually like two large poker chips merged into one large one….I went over and picked it up and then started looking around and spotted several smaller poker chip crystals all over in the same colors….I looked up and spotted a pocket of them about ten feet up on the wall and about twenty feet higher, was a twin to this large one, still attached to the wall, and believe me, it was gonna stay there !!!

I also spotted this chunk of calcite that was weirdly shaped, reminded me of the many large chunks of weird shaped calcite that Virgil and his friend Floyd found when they were visiting last year from Tulsa…..

…and here are a few matrix pieces I found up there not far from the pocket in the wall of the chocolate colored poker chips….

and…

and here is a selection of the dolomite crystals that I found and cleaned up later….

…I filled four bags full of goodies up there, this time I didnt find any wall pockets full of poker chips, just more dolomite crystals and since I already had five bags full of them from down below, I didnt feel like collecting even more. I took the bags and two large poker chips back to the truck and rejoined Mike and Chrissy, who by that time, were wrapping up specimens they planned to take back home with them. I showed them the killer piece of chocolate colored poker chip I found up above and Mike showed me a nice cluster of poker chips he cobbed down from a boulder Chrissy had uncovered. I was feeling light headed and while leaning on the bed of my truck, I grabbed two bottles of water and drank them down, waited a few minutes and then headed for the ac in the truck, and headed home after bidding them further safe adventures and a safe trip home.