Well I am slightly behind again, but it has been a very long couple of weeks, but it`s looking like we will be busy soon at work, so it is prob best I get this caught up before that happens, or there is no telling how long it will be then. I received a call from my buddy a few weeks ago, and so I have made two trips down there, and let me tell you, both trips produced quite a few filled bags full of dogtooth crystals. On the way down there, I stopped off briefly at Alley Spring Mill and photographed the Mill with fall foliage in the background, and there was a fine mist of fog rising up off the spring waters as well. It was beautiful in the early morning light…

We then drove on, and as I approached the entrance,  I came around a curve and upon three deer in the middle of the road, a doe and two young ones with her…and they just came to a stop in the middle of the road as Missy and I slowed to a stop and prayed no one came over the hill from the other direction…they were absolutely beautiful framed in the light of the rising sun…I wish now I had been holding my camera in my hands as I came upon them…however I was so transfixed by the beauty of the entire situation, I`m still not sure I would have been able to follow through and photograph them even then….I do know that we must have sat there for at least twenty seconds before they vamoosed on into the brush on the other side of the roadway. We arrived at the quarry an hour later and found we had the place to ourselves. 

We were there 90 minutes before several vehicles pulled in and parked not too far from the pile. I decided to go get a water bottle and take a break…as I did, Missy was over near a group of folks checking everyone out. I walked over and introduced myself and they told me they were with the Spring River Gem and Mineral Club out of Cherokee Village, Arkansas. I talked with a few of them as several of the others grabbed their tools and buckets and headed for the pile. I pointed out an area of the pile where I had found several chunks of calcite druse the week before, and many of them headed to that area to look for more. I stayed and continued to talk to Jean and Bud Green, and John Holder, and we discussed rockhunting in general there at the quarry and what could be found there. They had been there before, a few years before, and things had changed a bit since then.

After my break, I walked back up to the wall where I was digging into some druse pockets, and some of the plates I was pulling out had poker chips attached…..

I soon had two bags full of them, this pocket was quite extensive and deep. I then walked on down the wall, and soon found a few more druse pockets and even a couple of pockets with dogtooths all over the place. A couple of guys pulled up a few minutes later from the West Plains area, and after walking around the pile looking around, started chipping off some frosted crystals they found in some vugs on boulders. I stopped and talked to them for a bit as well. After about an hour of working on the vugs and liberating the crystals from the vugs, they got in their car and moved on down the wall to the coved wall to see if they could find anything else worthwhile. I was working on the wall on the west side of the pile and began finding a few pockets of dogtooth crystals here and there as I moved up the hill toward the top of the pile. It was no time at all, before I had to return to the truck and get another bag, so this time, I stuffed even more wrapping cloths into the new bag…as it was, I didn`t stuff enough, cause the  next pocket contained even more dogtooths than the previous two pockets combined…this time they were brown frosted dogtooth crystals with a black exterior poker chip formation.

BTW, I learned something new from the Spring River Group….it seems they call the poker chip calcite crystals something completely different….Christmas Trees are what they refer to the poker chips…I told Jean Harris, that in the southwest area of the US, they call them nailheads. I told her what some of the poker chips and dogtooths look like that we have found there in the past, and what colors we have found them in as well….she had no idea they were in that many colors. By this time, they had all moved over to the original west wall of the quarry and were searching there for more pretty stuff…I`m guessing they found quite a  bit of stuff there cause they were def over there for some time before leaving about mid afternoon. By that time I had climbed up to the top of the pile….

and discovered two more pockets of black and brown dogtooth crystals and filled two more bags before leaving. Needless to say, I was quite happy and quite tired, but I would venture to say that Missy was likely a bit more wore out than I was…she stretched out in the backseat and was promptly asleep and snoring as I drove home.  The Jacks Fork River sure was pretty when I crossed over….

if you have any questions or wanna say hi, give me a shout at jwjphoto7@gmail.com