After a solid week of 09-11 activities, I decided to get away from it all and drove down to the secret spot for some R and R, otherwise known as Rest and Relaxation, aka Stress RELIEF, and see if I could find another nice pocket.  I really liked those poker chips found in the limonite pocket, and while I would love to find another pocket of them, by this time, I decided I would be happy with finding anything pretty.

As Missy and I drove down to the lower area, we discovered a new road in the field on approach and decided to check it out…and discovered that it led to a place near the lower spot where some new dig activity has taken place recently…digging into a hillside of clay where we have found some nice druse plates in the past few years…so we stopped to check it out. I grabbed my rake and a bag and set off walking around to see if this new area of disturbance would produce anything…

Within a few minutes of walking around, I located a pocket of smokey quartz colored druse plates and sat down and dug for about 90 minutes and filled two bags with druse plates, big and small…I didnt take my camera with me, so can only show you some plates, like this one….

and this one….

and this one…

and then I dug out this big boulder covered on two sides with smokey druse….

..so after that, I decided to drive on down to the secret spot and see if I could find a pocket or two before I wore out…parked and took my tools out and walked around a bit, then decided to see if I could find anything else at the last pocket I worked at, in the floor near the mudhole…when I had last been there, it seemed to me there was more there. I started scraping around on all sides and pretty soon, I discovered another ledge and a few crystals popping out…

…you will prob notice the aerosol can there…it was for the pesky bees that kept hanging around and a horsefly that wanted to bite a lot…yes, I eventually tagged them and no I didnt bury them properly.

I started digging in the ledge above and crystals started popping up right and left…as well as a few small druse plates….

…I had the feeling they were going to continue to produce, so I took a break from digging and moved the big rocks surrounding the area, back about ten feet and raked the smaller boulders back as well…then with the digging tool, I discovered a small depression on the other side of the ledge….

..that turned into a nice pocket of its own…producing these initial goodies….

and closer up of the nice one on the left above…

and you can see in this next photo, this pocket had been under these big rocks before I pulled them back….

and this next photo shows a pretty druse plate that came out next….

and more druse plates and crystals after that….

..and this photo shows even more crystals inside the pocket…

and one of my extractions lead to yet another pocket within the pocket….

 

and even more nice crystals pulled out…

 

the following photos show some of the druse I found today….

and one showing the druse and chips found…..

 

My next trip was to Kentucky to join with some rockhound friends from Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and South Carolina to collect more fluorite, Kentucky Agate, and some Kentucky Geodes…