Labor Day Weekend 2010

So I had to work the weekend this year, and boy were we busy…most holiday weekends, with the exception of July 4th, we dont run a lot of extra calls, and normally Sundays are a very relaxed night, especially after 10 pm…but boy, this year was anything but relaxing for our crew….Friday night was steady all night long with all types of calls, then Saturday was kind of slow all night long, and Sunday night we got busy from the get go, which starts about 7 pm for us, and we had four robbery calls spread out all night long.

I came home and decided since Monday was a holiday and I was off, I was gonna get a few hours rest and then head to the secret spot, so I napped a few hours and then Missy and I loaded up the truck and headed south. On the way down we met several campers headed home from the weekend and even saw a few floaters on the Meramac River…either they were on vacation, retired, or didn`t have to be back til Tuesday evening, lol.

Got down there and decided I really didn`t want to do any digging on a few hours rest, so decided to check some other areas where the rocks had been spread around to and maybe find some nice large pieces of druse for my flowerbeds too. I checked a couple of areas on the way in and found a few small druse plates that were nice enough to take home, then drove on over to the other side on the smooth road in. I got to the turnoff on the other side and then decided, what the heck, I`ve never been to the far side, so lets just go over there and check it out and do a quick surface collect. Famous last words.

Drove slowly over and didnt see too much on my side to stop and check out, got to the other side and turned around at a rocky drop off, drove back up the hill about a quarter of the way and stopped. I let Missy out and left the truck running and the ac on, really figuring to be back in it relatively soon, it was a bit warm out after all and if nothing else, Missy might get hot before I did and she would def need the ac too. I looked over at a pile of rocks and spotted a large druse real quick from the sun shining down on it and decided it needed a more thorough inspection, so I got my gloves on, grabbed my rake and walked over to check it out more.

Folks forgive me, I didn`t grab my camera too, but here is a photo of it where it now sits in one of my flower beds….

…it now guards my lillies, and although its hard to tell here, it actually sits about fifteen inches high, measures about 30 inches long, and is about a foot wide…don`t ask me how I loaded it by myself, cause I cant actually remember but I can safely say I was the only one there and Missy didn`t help me at all. I just knew I liked it and wanted it in my flowerbed and got it into the truck just fine.

As I was walking back over to the pile to look some more, I spotted some nice pieces of druse and poker chips all over the place…so I grabbed a bag and started really looking closely at the ground and then climbed up on the pile and made a closer inspection…I spotted several pieces and chunks all over the place up on the pile, and only took one or two of them home with me. I know it sounds like I`m being picky, but anyone that knows me well, can tell you that I am not a very picky person when it comes to rock collecting, my criteria remains very simple, if its pretty and I like it, I`ll take it home…but in this case, Docia wasn`t here and I wanted her to see how much stuff was here cause I knew she would like it too….I will say that I filled three bags with druse and poker chips tho and didn`t really check the whole area there either. Plus I didn`t do any major digging either.

I was looking across this newer area and was walking over and checking out the sparkles I was seeing as well as the white places, which would normally indicate calcite and possible poker chips…I spotted one sparkly chunk and went over to look it over, I was seeing alot of bubbly druse which I like, and as I walked up on it…it was sitting up on a rock, I looked to my left and spotted a beautiful set of poker chips in a basketball sized chunk sitting down within the rocks.

Just to the left of the rake head is the bubbly druse chunk I spotted and to the left of the middle of the rake handle you can see the top of the yellow poker chips chunk…for whatever reason, my eyes and brain were focused on that bubbly druse first….but I have this rule that once I find something, once I arrive at its location or dig it out, I stop and look around the immediate area to see if there is something else there that is as nice or nicer…and that is what I was doing when I spotted the yellow poker chip chunk….

I`m sure Docia and Virgil and a few others who know me well, can prob get pretty close to knowing exactly what came out of my mouth about the time I spotted this prettie….course on the other hand, I could have easily been speechless too, but one thing is for sure, I was very excited when I spotted it….it was quite beautiful….so I carefully removed the rocks around it….

…now I`m going to shorten the story here and show you some of the smaller ones that I found there as well as one or two like this, druse with limonite balls all over them….with two plates of pink druse in between them….