I had the weekend off last week and nothing going on…had a chance to go to southern Arkansas, near Mt Ida…one of my favorite second cousins got married in the Gulf in July and was hosting her reception for family and friends who couldnt make it down for the nuptials…if she had held it in September or October when cooler, I prob would have attended, but Arkansas is normally very hot in August, and on my weekend off, I would have been pushed for time, so I opted to stay home and rockhunt instead.  I wish Cassie and her new beau the very best, hopefully they will be at the family reunion in November and I can visit with them then.

Missy and I loaded up the truck early Saturday morning and headed to the secret spot. I figured I would check on that blue hole pocket from a couple of weeks ago and see if I could find another opening to it, see if I could find a few more  crystals in it. However, soon after arriving, that all went out the window. I decided to look around up on the pile first, it looked like it might have been recently disturbed, so I did a fairly brief walk around and while I didnt find any freshly disturbed pockets, I did find a nice big chunk of druse quartz and was able to walk it down off the pile and down to the floor. I loaded it up last before heading home.

I walked back to the truck and grabbed another bag and headed to an older pocket that appeared to have a pocket exposed…thought I would check it out and see if there was indeed a pocket there or a dead end….on the way to it, I scratched around in another one, shown below on the left side….

…the only thing I found in this pocket that was new to me was a perfectly round hole as I dug down into it….

…which turned out to be a drill hole, nothing more….so I ambled on over to the original pocket I wanted to explore more, and dug it out…

…and here is the ledge with what appears to be a pocket underneath it…what originally caught my attention…..

…I reached in and pulled out a few loose poker chip crystals and figured what the heck…lets chip it out and see where it goes, if anywhere….

…I started chipping out this corner, as it opened up a small pocket when I started hammering and so I started here and cleaned it out first, only pulling one or two small crystals out. I then broke open the roof and pulled out a few roof plates and this pocket opened up underneath….

…so I decided to explore further and see what I could find. I pulled a few loose crystals out and it appeared that there might be another pocket on behind this one….but I concentrated on pulling the loose ones in this clay matrix out first….

…and so I decided to peel back the top of the pocket as far as I could and see where it led…

…and found yet another pocket behind it….as I had thought.

So I decided to clean this pocket out and then peel back yet another roof layer….this time not one pocket hole opened up, but two and then shortly after, three holes were before me…

…things were starting to get interesting now…I cleaned around and peeled back yet another layer to make things easier to get to the pocket holes…here you can see inside one of the holes and see the crystals waiting inside for me…..

…hiding under druse plates that were very solid feeling to my chisel and hammer….so I concentrated instead on peeling back more of the roof layer….no easy task in itself believe me…as you can see the protective rock layer is getting thicker and thicker above the pockets….by now I was swinging my four pound hammer with both hands and giving it everything I had to break them apart….

…and now, as you can see in the photo above, another hole has opened up and this one appears to be deeper than the others…

I reached into this one and pulled out a few loose crystals and a few small plates of pretty druse with some bubbles and soda straws on them….and a few nice combo plates of druse and chips as well…you can see the initial finds from this pocket alone in the next few photos….some with hematite balls on them….

 

 

 

I widened the opening to this deep pocket entrance and took a few moments to move the growing pile of plates and crystals farther to the right and then moved some bigger ugly rocks further back…..

…and here is a close up of the growing pile above….

…..I then took a break, grabbed a bottle of water and a brownie that my mom had made…she makes the best brownies I have ever ate….bar none…she made me a big bowl of them a couple of weeks ago for my birthday and then made some more recently.

I came back and looked into the larger entrance to the deeper pocket and saw several crystals inside it….

…I removed what I could and then peeled back the roof plates once again….

…and about four fairly large roof plates came out of this, but one or two with damage, as this next photo shows…they dont always come out nice and pristine….

…and after looking down into the pocket, I could see there were yet more roof plates in the pocket that would prevent me from getting to even more crystals, so once again I pounded the thick protective rock plates out of the way…boy was I getting a workout today….

…however now you can also see that there were crystals lying in the bottom of this pocket all over the place…some were attached to the bottom and some were loose…you can also see yet another thick roof plate inside the pocket on the right side that would have to be removed….

…and here are more photos showing roof plates and crystals removed from the pockets so far….

 

 

 

..I ran into the back of the pocket soon after so I moved a few feet away and scratched down only to find some shallow pockets with some holie druse, but no crystals….

…after spending about twenty minutes scratching and digging to find this out, I took another water and brownie break, and then walked up to the blue hole pocket to check it out. I didnt find any new openings around the existing pocket I had found a few weeks prior, so I moved over about ten feet and scratched around and still didnt find anything new. I stood up and stretched and looked up and saw some crystals loose in clay dirt, on a short sloped pile that I had studied before and never checked into any further. This time I climbed up and started digging around and pretty soon a nice loose poker chip crystal tumbled down into my hands…I started digging more and pretty soon I had about eight crystals sitting off to the side. I walked back to my truck, pulled it up closer and grabbed two more bags and some wrapping material for just in case my hunch turned true…

…I dug down some more and little did I know what was about to come….I triggered a controlled slide of a line of rocks above….

…and as soon as the dust cleared and I was able to clear the loose debris and rocks in front…….lo and behold, right in front of me, were two nice football sized chunks of solid poker chip crystals in a pocket that literally just opened up and fell down with the controlled slide of rocks….

…and behind them was a MASSIVE chunk of poker chips….and I mean MASSIVE !!!!

this thing is probably three feet high and solid…and yes its still there…gonna have to do yet another controlled slide to get to it…I pulled so many crystals out above and around and below it though….enough to fill three bags…yes I had to go back to the truck and get another bag and more wrapping cloths…I had triples and twins and clusters and combos just all over the place around this massive chunk….I was quite happy and pretty soon it was evident that it was not only getting warmer but I was wearing down…so I stopped digging and started wrapping. After about twenty minutes of wrapping tho, I looked up and saw yet another pocket of crystals imbedded in the dirt….

…so I gathered more energy from that and removed as many of them as I could and wrapped up even more….here is the last photo of the crystals from these two pockets before I took off for home about mid afternoon….

...as you can see, a very nice selection of crystals and even some druse plates of bubbly gray druse, that were in with the crystals…all in all another good day`s haul….stay tuned for the MFQ story tho….