Docia emailed me Saturday evening and suggested another trip back to the quarry Sunday morning and told me she would be there by 10 am…I drove over not expecting to be able to top the finds from the day before, but again not having any expectations at all, which seems to bring me a lot of good luck lately.

I got there about ten til and no sign of Docia, so set about looking around where I left off the day before, checking out a few more pockets and then moved over to the east side to see if I could find any plates of druse where they usually drop off the bluff wall with the eroding clay dirt and managed to find a few nice soda straw plates. I went to  the truck and unloaded my bags and checked the clock, 11 am and no sign of Docia still, wondered if she forgot to set her clocks ahead and might be running late. I did a walk around search on the level above and found a few more big clusters, one that appeared to have been left behind from yesterday, and loaded them up as well. By this time I had the truck bed pretty full of large clusters and decided to move to the right side and check the smaller piles where I had great luck finding big clusters the week before when Ralph was down.

I had no more climbed up on a set of big boulders to look around when I rolled a small one back and discovered a nice set of green poker chips on a cluster of druse, and boy did that make my day…I have often wished to find some green colored poker chips after seeing a lot of calcite in that color allover in chunks and massive. I took that one and another one to the truck and then decided to take a look at a massive seam of calcite that seemed to be calling out to me.

I didn`t take any pics before this one of the pocket before I started digging in it and these are taken with my phone as I left my camera at home, if you can believe a photographer forgetting his camera. 🙂

I started digging into the base of this seam… this stuff was pure white and like slivers of snow tightly packed together, I was using a hand rake and raking thru it and all of a sudden small poker chip crystals starting falling out of the massive seam all over the place, so I thought, well I have some extra time, lets dig a little deeper and see what happens…and so I did, dug in deeper and started seeing more crystals popping out of the woodwork so to speak.

by this time, fifteen minutes passed by and I had half a canvas bag full of loose crystals alone and I am six inches deep into the pile of tightly packed rocks…so I sit back and take another look ad lo and behold, discover that by looking closer into the pocket I am digging into, it appears that it goes farther to the right and up at least another two feet higher and wider…..

in this photo, everywhere you see white is the massive calcite seam and where the crystals appear to be hiding…so I began scraping back the shale looking rock and making a ledge to sit on more comfortably, deciding I might be there a little while longer, and as I am digging in more, I start seeing clusters of poker chips above the original pocket and to my right where I am opening up more pocket. I removed a few small boulders to gain more access and wha laa. in front of me are at least four clusters and even bigger single crystals just falling down with smaller crystals….now another thirty minutes has passed and I have filled two canvas bags, Lowes bags, which are fairly large canvas bags, and removed four big clusters basketball sized from the pocket….

…these guys were just hanging there and so as carefully as possible, I removed them and set them off to the sides and then decided to take them to the truck and make some room for them all and leave some extra just in case I find a few more, which I did…..when I returned to the pocket with yet another canvas bag…removed four medium sized ones….

and these next two were real pretty too….

and about two dozen more smaller singles and little clusters…

and once I got them to the truck, I decided I was done and needed to head home, cause I was gonna be real tired soon. 🙂 took some pics and got out of there, and driving the last ten miles my tiredness caught up with me fast. However, I was one happy camper and very thankful for another great day of collecting.