Docia emailed me two days after she discovered the Birthday Pocket and asked when I could go back and join her to expand it even more, think that pocket really got her going. 🙂

I decided I could go again on the 30th and we decided to meet down there early morning once again, to avoid the heat and humidity, which was getting old really quick. By arriving at 6 am, though, we could get about four good hours digging time in before the heat and humidity would run you off. We arrived to find a nice cloudy sunrise and more material removed…..

…so while waiting for a little more light, we walked around the new area and found absolutely nothing. Docia grabbed her tools and headed for the pocket, I grabbed the heavy sledge and met her there. Here is the pocket as we left it the other day…

Using my heavy sledge hammer, I gave the roof of the pocket a few good whacks and then she was able to chip some material off the top with her three pound hammer and chisel…I repeated the heavy whacks a few times and then set off to see if I could find another pocket or two. I moved up the wall about twenty feet away and soon enough, I had found a promising spot….

..with this druse combo coming up and out pretty quickly from the handrake scratching…

..I came up against these walls pretty quickly and plates and crystals started popping up all over the place soon after…

I looked over to see how Docia was doing and could see she was making progress on her pocket opening…almost had her shoulders inside it now…

In the meantime, my pocket started moving to the right and as I was clearing off loose gravel and dirt to the right, I began praying that the pocket didn`t try to go under either of the two huge rocks to the right, as both were probably five hundred pounders and I knew we wouldn`t stand a chance of moving either one…..

…luckily for me, another prayer answered, cause the pocket stopped just short of the big rocks and I was able to pull out more plates and crystals from the pocket walls…

I kept scratching around and the next thing that popped out was this beautiful poker chip twin….

…and pretty soon the search led to this ledge and small hole in the corner….

I looked over to check on Docia after getting up to stretch my legs and rest my knees, and saw her still expanding and filling up at least one bag so far….

Returning to my ledge pocket, the hole in the corner of the ledge led to a few pieces of druse and then it turned into a dead end fast. I loaded up half a bag of crystals from this pocket and moved further to the right, on the other side of those big rocks, and started scratching around with the hand rake once again. It didn`t take long to find yet another lucrative pocket area….

..and pretty soon, signs of calcite were popping up all over…

….and then plates and crystals started popping up as well….

…like the plate above and this crystal shown close up below…

By this time, I`m wondering if I have hit yet another small pocket like the one before…when I come across this pretty palm sized plate of druse with hematite balls on it….

..and I`m thinking I really like the color in it and the hematite balls are a plus as well. I didn`t see alot of pretty druse like this in the last pocket so this is looking better every minute…then I turn over this little number next….

..a nice little combo with the same pretty druse and hematite balls and two pretty yellow orange colored poker chips on it…

…and now I`m excited…like what I`m seeing and showed it to Docia and she liked it too….then I realize there is a ledge on both sides and I begin to dread that maybe this will be another shortlived pocket again…

..the next thing I pull out, from an area between the two ledges and somewhat in the middle, is this little dogtooth crystal perched on a small plate of pretty druse…

…and a small hole opens up under it….

..I stood up to take a break, and get some water, and here are the crystals so far collected in relation to the ledges and pocket….

With a bottle of water down, I decided to check out this new hole that opened up under that pretty little poker chip perched on the plate, and after deciding I couldn`t get my hand down into it, and determining that the hole was fairly deep, I decided to chisel out some maneuvering room….

..and then put the lens down into the hole and shot this photo of what was inside…

I reached down into the hole and pulled what I could reach from it…

….and the stack kept growing…I took a close look around the hole and decided it was solid calcite ringing around it, so I chipped through it and widened it out some more…

..and pulled these nice chips and plates from the hole….

…and within a few minutes, pulled all of these crystals and plates out of the hole….

..and this little dogtooth crystal guy….

..and then every time I reached in, I was going down with my arm and then reaching back practically underneath me, feeling for the edges of the hole and it felt like the pocket was about eighteen inches deep and a couple of feet back…that was the extent of how far I could reach back if I laid down on my stomach and reached in there…having cleaned out the center of the pocket with single chips and plates, the edges of the pocket within reach were producing nice plate and chip combos like these….

 

and….

…figuring I had pulled as much material as I could reach with my hand, I decided to put the camera down into the hole and see what else might be down in it…this is the first flash illuminated photo inside the pocket….

…and the second one appears to be a cluster of poker chip crystals covered with wet clay…well soon after this, it started warming up fast and we decided to pack it in and we were both pretty happy with our finds from our pockets. The following photos show some of mine cleaned up….