Sure is a beautiful day today….Thursday, September 12th, that is….weather forecasters have been telling us all week that today we would break the hot spell and cooler weather would return…..while I had my doubts, I knew last night that something was coming our way cause my sinuses were out of whack again…had to take half a zirtec and some alleve for my toothache and arm pain….the zirtec worked and cleared up my breathing, the alleve alleviated the pain, and combined, they both put me to sleep early last night, giving me a good ten hours of rest.

Woke up this morning to a nice cool refreshing breeze from the north, and while it has dissipated somewhat this afternoon, it sure is a lot cooler than it was yesterday…we haven`t even hit the projected high of 86 today, so far it`s only 82 out there and we still have the occasional cool breeze. Rain is forecast for this evening and I`m looking forward to that as well…and they are telling us now that we wont hit the mid eighties again til late next week. I think our cool down has finally arrived.  Missy and I went down to MFQ again the last couple of weekends and brought back some great stuff again. I`ll combine both hunts in this story, along with photos. 

The first trip down was on Labor Day itself…I had taken off the day before from work to rest up, and we rose early Monday morning to drive there and arrive at dawn…because it was due to be a bit warm that day. We took the easy route down and as I was making a highway change, the sun was just starting to rise in a big yellow fireball in the red predawn skies….

 

We arrived about an hour later and it was fairly cool, so I wasted no time in making a surface search of the area…the knob was still intact for the most part, but it looked like the machinery had been up on it dragging some of the bigger rocks at the base, back away from it, which is good because they could be a real hazard to walk over and around,specially with your hands full of beautiful crystals…..

 

…after a surface search, which turned up a few nice chocolate brown twins and triples that someone had obviously left behind for whatever reason, I started cleaning out the pockets in clear view. After clearing some of the loose stuff in plain view, I began digging back into the pockets and pretty soon, I had my hands full and my pocket apron full as well. I always wear a carpenters apron when I go rockhunting, it has two large pockets in the front of it, so I call it my pocket apron. After filling it up, I took a break and wrapped up the better ones and then continued digging. I was concentrating on these pockets to the right of my bags….

 

…which took about an hour to clear out…then I concentrated on the pockets to the left of my bags…

 

…and after cleaning them out, I stood back and looked at the knob once again, and spotted what looked like a few more pocket possibilities on the right side, and explored them….

 

…and as it turned out, there were alot more pockets there than I originally thought, so I cleaned them out as well, finding some very nice goodies in them. Not only that, but the pockets I was finding here, were much deeper than pockets previously found there….

 

…after digging for a few hours there, the heat was beginning to catch up, so I put Missy back in the truck with the ac on, changed into dryer clothes and then packed up. I had five bags full of beautiful wrapped crystals, a few dogtooths in them, and was quite happy with my finds. I then drove over to the new blast area to check it out….

 

…they had worked it back to almost the wall by this time…

 

 

Not even a week later, I was off for the weekend, and missed a chance to go rockhunting on Saturday, which would have been a little cooler, so Missy and I got up early on Sunday morning and took off for MFQ once again. There was a chance of scattered showers and after checking the radar, it appeared that there was a line of showers moving to the south from the north and hovering around Columbia as we headed out the door, so I figured we would have five hours of clear skies before rain would move in. We took the smooth and clear sailing route again, stopping off for a sausage and egg biscuit and  fuel, before driving on….after arriving we found that the knob had been worked over with the machinery, and the entire right side was basically gone….

 

…quite a change, but as it turned out, for the better because there were quite a few pockets exposed and just waiting for the right collector to come along and harvest the bounty inside them….…and harvest we did…there must have been twenty pockets alone in the face of the newly worked over knob wall, many of them just staring me in the face when I walked up to take a closer look at it…so I went back to the truck and retrieved five bags and started pulling cluster after cluster out of the pockets, wrapping them up and placing them in the bags. Within about thirty minutes, I had one bag full and was working on the next one…but I`m getting ahead of myself. I had made a short walk around the trailing end of the knob pile before starting on the pockets, and then climbed up to the top of the pile above the knob. I found several pockets along the wall up there and pulled some nice crystal clusters out of those pockets too….

 

…enough to fill one bag…and while up there, a local guy drove up and set up an archery target on one of the gravel piles below me and sighted in his crossbow. I carried this bag back to the truck and grabbed another couple of bags and then climbed up to the face wall of the knob to start exploring the new pockets there…

 

…after pulling out what I could find, I dropped a few boulders down out of the way and found even more pockets behind them….in the photo above, you can see where I have done just that…

 

…and after pulling a couple of nice twins, joined at the hips, out of the large hole that resulted in this maneuver, I started pulling some uniquely shaped black poker chips out as well….

 

…at any rate, I quickly started filling one bag after another because at times, these things were rolling down the hill out of this large pocket, like chips from a slot machine…

 

 

…I was trying to find the source of the black poker chips and clusters, but was unable to pinpoint where exactly they were coming from. Within the hour, though, I had filled two bags with wrapped poker chip beauties and then I decided to trigger a slide or two to get some heavy boulders hanging above me, down and out of the way….

 

…and within a few minutes, I was able to safely trigger the slide and get the large boulder down and out of my way…

 

…and bringing down quite a few more above and to the side as well….

 

…and after filling two more bags full of goodies, I decided to take a break and get some food and water down, then go check for more goodies elsewhere…I wanted to scout out a couple of other locations while there as well…noon was fast approaching and the cloudy skies were beginning to clear off…the rain never did materialize…. and I knew as soon as the clouds cleared, the humidity and heat would return. After a short break, Missy and I drove over to the new blast wall area to check it out some more too.

I climbed back up to the top of the pile to check the area I had found a crystal or two the weekend before, and only found a short shelf of crystals, so I climbed back down and walked along the wall looking for pockets. I rounded a small corner in the wall and came upon a likely looking spot and pretty soon, I had exposed about ten pockets. I could feel the heat coming on strong, so I began to pull crystals out of the pockets and wrap them and place them in bags as fast as I could…Missy had decided to stay in the air conditioned cab and within a few minutes, I couldn`t blame her a bit….

 

…in one section of this area, I found ten pockets, small and shallow, but lined with some of the most gorgeous druse I have ever seen and some very nice poker chips as well….

 

…I cleaned them out as well as I could, requiring the use of my hammer and chisel, which only served to completely wear me out with the heat really building up by this time. I changed clothes and decided to head for home, stopping briefly to snap this photo of the wall I had just worked….