Missy and I headed down to the secret spot again yesterday and decided to try the lower level this time to see if we could locate some more pockets. I was armed with the mattox this time and it proved to be a better choice than the heavy rake against the bigger rocks especially. It made things much easier but we still had little luck finding any pockets up on the ridge, so after a few hours of raking and digging, I decided to take a break.

We had a great day for digging and collecting, it turned cooler this week, highs only in the low eighties and as I looked up I saw a deep blue sky with beautiful fluffy clouds, a deep blue that one could see clearly, no haze in between you and the sky. It was one of those dazzling blue skies today. There was also a nice cool breeze flowing all day long, a day just made for collecting rocks and crystals.

After drinking another bottle of water, I decided to walk around and stretch my legs and surface collect a bit…I walked over to the pocket that Docia and Debra had located a few weeks ago and began sifting through the spoils pile nearby and located a couple of twins and small combos that I was astonished that we had left behind. After wrapping them up and placing them in a secure location in my truck, I returned and made a circle farther out and around the pocket. Soon after, I began noticing poker chip single crystals laying in the gravel. I wondered if those were from the original pocket and just made their way that far back or if they were indications of another entrance to that pocket, so I began moving the dirt and rock away from the surface…

 

..I hit this white calcite dust, as I call it, looks like shavings  actually, and its a good indication that you are close to a pocket of chips. At this point I was thinking it might be a back entrance to the other pocket…

 

..as I was only a few feet away, so I started digging down with the hand rake and using the pick end of my rock hammer to see what I could find…and in a few minutes, I started locating some singles and some small plates of beautiful druse…straws, waves and bubbles of druse…

 

..so I kept digging down and it started looking even more promising…I was trying to contain my growing excitement until I knew for sure there was really something there…

 

..and then I got down to this level with the rock hammer pick and saw this plate sticking out and hanging upside down…so I put the rock hammer away, took off my gloves, and gently pulled the plate out and turned it over to find this…

 

..and that little gizmo to the left of it in the pocket photo above was the next thing I pulled out….

 

..and as you can see, they were covered in a heavy red clay dusting…everything that came out of there was covered in it…a real messy coating of it…the next thing out of the pocket was this twin laying in the thick mix of clay…

 

…well the pocket soon started going to the left and down, so I followed it, pulling several loose singles and a few twins out of it…

 

…and I was up to my elbow reaching back into the pocket before it came to an end…at least as far as I could tell since I couldnt reach any further. I started working on the mouth of the pocket next, and was able to liberate this big cluster pretty quickly…

 

…and was able to chip one other one out, and surprised it came out in one piece without breaking apart on me…with a nice little poker chip attached to it…

 

I`ll get these guys cleaned up and take a few more photos of them and what came out of the pocket, too, in the next few days.