On my first Saturday off, Missy and I got up early and drove down to the secret spot, trying to avoid the heat as much as possible. We have been locked into the longest dry and hot spell I can ever remember, so since it gets light about 5:30 am, we have been making every effort to start as early as possible. As we drew close to the area, we saw a beautiful sunrise coming up over the trees….

..it was nice and fairly cool this time of morning, but that wouldnt last long. As we drove up on the lower side, we came upon a few moo-moos in the roadway….

…I walked around the rock pile for a few minutes and then decided to check out this corner….. I felt led to check here first….

…I looked down and saw something that looked like a poker chip and so I began to dig down…finding water in the gravel mix fairly fast…..

so I took a fast break and returned to my truck and pulled out my bailing bowls and a bottle of water. I reached down into the mix and grabbed ahold of what I had seen a few minutes earlier, and turned over this plate, and it appeared to have a blue poker chip crystal on it….

 …now I started to get excited as it had been awhile since I had found a good pocket full of blue poker chips…like at least a year and a half or two years. I started digging down a bit more and pretty soon a small cavity opened up and water was everywhere. I was definitely going to be bailing water soon enough….

…and within a few minutes, I found even more calcite signs that a pocket was closeby….

…I reached down into the water and pulled out this blue poker chip twin that was absolutely beautiful……

and then started bailing water from the expanded hole…when I got done bailing, this is what I saw…and boy was I now excited….

…and up a little closer…..

…I continued to bail and dig and expand the hole, and after about ten minutes, I had discovered that there was a nice cluster of crystals in the middle of the hole….on the right side of the photo below….

 

…and here it is up close as well….

…and so with this for motivation, I continued to dig out more from the sides and found even more blue tinted crystals waiting for me…

…some were loose and easy to remove, while others were rooted to the bottom base plate of the pocket….but quite pretty to behold….

…I kept bailing and digging, and even found another small pocket about ten inches back toward the pile, but this pocket was short lived, I only pulled one or two crystals out and underneath them were a few plates of druse only….

…and here is the short stack of loose crystals I had pulled out so far…many of the crystals seen in the photos above were indeed rooted to the bottom of the pocket solidly….

…and here is the plate that I originally found and turned over to find the pocket, in much better light….

The pocket kept on expanding and ledges started showing up…I wasnt sure if these were going to signal the end of the pocket or more pockets would open up behind them, but I was getting tired and the heat was mounting….so I took a break and chipped out the clusters you saw in the photos above….and kept digging, til another hole opened up, as seen below in the lower right hand corner…

 

…as it was though, that didn`t lead anywhere and so I wrapped up my clusters and twins and took them back to the truck. I took a small water break and then decided to make use of the extra two hours I still had left and check out the pocket on the other side, that I had discovered a few weeks before, but hadn`t followed up on due to the excessive heat.

 ..the pocket over by the mud and waterhole….I had popped a single dogtooth crystal out of it when I last saw it, so I wanted to check it out and see if there was indeed a good pocket there. I took my trusty mini mattox and began digging around and eventually a trench started forming up…after about ten more minutes of digging it out, a few holes opened up underneath the trench….

 

..unfortunately, I didnt have my flashlight with me, so I couldnt tell how deep those holes were but they sounded deep when things fell down into them…

I was trying to expand the sides of the trench a few minutes later so I could reach down into those holes and see what was below…me thinking there might be a deep pocket underneath and full of crystals no less…and I had about thirty minutes before I had to leave and drive down to a rock and mineral dealer friend`s place to check out some lead mineral specimens for a friend of mine. So here I was trying to chisel out the sides of this trench and expand the opening…I was holding the chisel barehanded as I have done many times before, but this time got a little too close to the rock wall with my left hand and basically mashed my little finger into the wall…yes it hurt, it hurt alot, and I`ll just say I`m surprised that no one heard what I had to say when I yelled a few things very loudly….I walked over to my truck and grabbed a bandaid  from my glove compartment and wrapped it around my little finger, it was also bleeding profusely, as I had punctured the skin as well…and I just about passed out from the heat and pain both….as I laid there I wondered if this was the type of pain that Pete, a rockhunting buddy from Pennsylvania had felt when he broke his hand a few months ago in Kentucky….my whole hand was throbbing in pain….a few minutes later I  grabbed a bottle of water and held it to my forehead and prayed for strength and a re-charge of my batteries….I strongly believe in the power of prayer folks and it was answered within ten minutes….and I kept my end of the bargain…I packed up and left there and headed to my dealer friend`s house, deciding to return another day and work on that pocket some more then.

Here are a few of the clusters and twins that I was able to chip out of the pocket that day, now all cleaned up….