Some of My Geode Finds at Geodefest and Keokuk 2016

Posted on October 12, 2016 by jwj

Finally had some free time to get some of the geodes I found at Geodefest a few weeks ago, at Keokuk, cleaned up…used Super Iron Out, also now known as Iron Out, to clean the gunk off some of the ones that were discarded by others and left to rot I suppose..I was quite pleasantly suprised at many of them, how gorgeous they were once cleaned up, even found that one of them was a citrine colored snowball half. I`m also posting below, some of the beauties that my good friend John Oostenryk brought and traded with me, some gorgeous brown irridescent calcites that shimmer in purple, pink and green colors and some gorgeous brown barite clusters from a few of the Iowa quarries that are no longer accessible by rockhounds…thanks again John….

82-set-of-halves-found-on-creek-bank

83-double-plate-found-at-clay-mtn

84-clay-mtn-half-chipped-out

85-half-found-at-rr-creek

86-another-half-found-rr-creek

87-citrine-snowball-found-rr-creek

88-back-of-double-plate-clay-mtn

89-poker-chip-in-geodes-purch-from-ken-vaisvil

…this set of geodes above and below, I purchased at Geodefest this year from Ken Vaisvil…he is a dealer I always see at the Park Hills Show and he always has some gorgeous geodes big and small there…this one appeared to have a poker chip calcite crystal in it, and it was the only set he had like this…since I am known as the Poker Chip King in some places…I decided I had to have this one for my collection….

90-poker-chip-in-one-geode-half

…and here are the goodies John brought me to trade with me for the goodies that I brought him…

91-box-of-irredescent-calcites-jon-gave-me-iowa-quarries

92-irredescent-calcite-from-iowa

93-irredescent-calcites-from-iowa-quarry

94-brown-irrescent-calcite-from-iowa-quarry

95-flat-of-goodies-from-jon

96-flat-of-goodies-from-jon 97-brown-barite-cluster-from-iowa-quarry 98-brown-barite-cluster

Thanks again John, was great to finally meet you, rockhound with you, and trade goodies with ya as well…look forward to seeing you again in a few weeks. 🙂

Joplin Mineral Show, Field Trip, & Geodefest 2016 All in Same Weekend

Posted on October 6, 2016 by jwj

On Friday, Sept 23rd, Josh Click joined me for a full weekend of mineral shows and rockhunting field trips at two different locations at opposite corners of the state of Missouri. The third weekend in September is utilized by both the Tri State Mineral Show in Joplin and the Geodefest Show and Digs at Keokuk, Iowa and Hamilton, Illinois, so we were going to take in both shows and sets of digs, splitting the weekend up and traveling from the southwest corner of the state to the northeast corner of the state in a matter of hours.

So about 10 am Friday morning, Josh and I headed west on I-44 to Joplin, to take in the Mineral Show there for the first half of the weekend at Schifferdecker Park, with plans to join some members of the Kansas City Mineral Club in a joint field trip with Friends of Mineralogy as well on Saturday morning at some tailing piles that were still hanging around the area. I say hanging around because in the past few years, the EPA has been active in remediating many of the left over tailing piles from many old lead mines, scattered all over kingdom come in the tri state area, which is where Joplin is located, smack dab in the middle of that lead mining district. Many of the mines folded back in the 1960`s and the rest were pretty much done ten years later, yet the tailing piles remained for many years, wasting away, some creating a blight of the area even after the EPA created the Superfund plans to clean up the blighted areas and remove the piles to restore the lands. Here recently, those plans have started to see movement finally in terms of action from the EPA and only a few of the tailing piles remain, many of them located on private land, sometimes those lands entail many owners and co-owners, permission to look thru the piles a daunting challenge to any rockhound or group of rockhounds that would like to comb thru them in search of buried treasure. We visited with some friends Friday afternoon on the way down there and then I took him and one of our friends to Grand Falls on the west side of town to show him one of the prettiest waterfalls in Missouri and the Midwest.

A friend of mine named Carrie, is a member of the Kansas City Mineral Club, she told me of a friend of hers named Bruce, who was heading up a group to go to some of the old tailing piles to look for galena, sphalerite, and calcite on Saturday morning, said they would be meeting at the Tri State Mineral Museum in the park, where the Mineral Show is also held at, and going out from there. She contacted Bruce and secured permission for me to join them on their hunt that morning. Bruce had contacted all of the owners of this tract of land where the piles were located and obtained permission to hunt there that day.

Josh and I arrived at the museum…..

15-tri-state-mineral-museum

….by 8:45 am Saturday morning and met up with Bruce and a few of the members who were already there. I gave Bruce a couple of flats of poker chip calcite crystals and let him know the members there that day could have as many of them as they wanted. One of the members who showed up, was Larry who owns the Rock Shop in Rolla…I have hunted with him on some of the MAGS sponsored trips as well. Larry is a geologist and works in the oil fields of central Illinois quite a bit.

By 9 am about twenty rockhounds had showed up and Bruce gave us a run down on what to find and what we could expect to find over there and then we headed out, following him to the northwest side of town. Bruce stopped briefly to let a deputy sheriff who lives nearby, know what we were doing and who we were. We then proceeded to the first tailing pile on the property, right across the driveway from the deputy`s home and we spread out trying to find some pretty stuff to take home. Bruce had been to this location before and said that galena cubes had been found there in some places…there was also some massive calcite chunks spread out all over the place as well. A few people did find some sphalerite and some galena there, but nothing real spectacular, so after about an hour, we drove on down the drive….

…..into a larger area where huge tailing piles and even a very large pile of rocks awaited us…Josh and I hiked over to the huge pile of rocks with Larry and a few others, including some new rockhounds to the group, while Bruce and some members of the KC Club drove on down into the valley to check the piles down there for goodies.

…our group checked out an old tailing pile in front of where we parked on the other side of the brush line from the parking area, first….

…and then on over to the huge pile of rocks, when no one found anything but crushed gravel on the pile…the huge pile of small boulders was under the canopy of forest and next to some old concrete foundations of what appeared to be an old mill with a water race possibly next to it. The new younger rockhounds, including a few gals and a guy, began climbing up on this huge pile, every bit of 60 to 70 feet high, small boulders stacked up on top of each other, similar to pyramid type structure…the base was several yards around it…and it appeared someone had cut some trees down in an attempt to create a road around the huge pile, possibly preparing for remediation very soon. Josh climbed up on this huge pile with the newby rockhounds and pretty soon I heard him call out that he had found some nice chunks of calcite up there…most of the rocks and small boulders appeared to me to be leaverites. I checked the time, because he and I had to leave by 12:30 to get back to the hotel in time to clean up, then go to the mineral show for a bit, and then head home…where I would repack the truck for the trip to Keokuk, Iowa and we would get a few hours of sleep and then hit the highway headed north by 3:30 am Sunday morning. We had a little time left, so I left him with the folks on the huge pile and I walked down to see what Bruce and the others were finding before we headed out. Bruce and his crew were up on a tailing pile in the valley and were finding some nice galena cubes and sphalerite down there as well…

…here is Bruce showing me some galena cubes they found on top of some boulders at the base of this pile in the valley…they were finding even more boulders with them as well….

11b

11c

…I let him know that Josh and I were headed out and that we enjoyed hunting with them, we wished them great success on the remainder of their hunt that day and hoped to visit with them again sometime. Josh and I headed back to the hotel to get cleaned up, change into fresher clothing, and then after checking out of the Candlewood Suites, which I might add, was a very nice hotel to stay at…we drove over to the take in about 90 min of the Tri State Show. I parked under the shade of a huge hedgeapple tree there…

14-hedgeapples-tri-state-museum-tree

Mike Shumate had asked me to say hi to a couple of dealers for him, so I looked them up while there and passed on his salutations to Marv and Jimmy…I remembered buying some Brazilian Quartz and Southern Illinois fluorite from Jimmy several years ago when I first visited the Joplin Show. I purchased a pyrite sphere from a dealer there that was a Marine veteran and visited with him for a few minutes, he had some very nice stuff for sale at his table…he pointed out Marv to me as well, who was just across the way from him. After visiting with Marv a bit, we walked over to see my buddy Virgil Richards who had a booth there as well, manned at the time by my Tulsa rockhounding buddy Doug Cunningham, and his wife, while Virgil was doing his normal routine at shows, working the room and gabbing with other dealers. Doug gave me some cracoite from Australia and a Fulgarite from California that Virgil had set out to give me when I arrived there…he also had some very old minerals from the Tri State District that he had picked up in an old collection. I visited with Doug and Virgil for a bit and then we headed for the front door…stopping briefly to look inside the neat Tri State Museum there….

16-interior-mineral-museum

We stopped off in Lebanon to fill the gas tank and had supper at Bandannas BBQ as well, before heading on home. We arrived home about 7 pm, I quickly repacked the truck for the Iowa trip, and we headed to bed soon after…3 am would arrive soon enough….and did, believe me…but luckily after six hours I was good to go, once again, and didnt even have to drag Josh out of his bed either. I checked with Chuck, as soon as we got to Hwy 109 and started north..he was two hours north of us on Hwy 61…said he wasnt able to sleep so he got an earlier start on the road, than we did…we made one pit stop for gas at Bowling Green, then as we approached the turn off to Keokuk, I stopped for this sunrise photo…told Josh to look for a water spot on the right side of the road…he spotted this small pond and it worked great for a good reflection of the gorgeous sunrise that morning…

..and then soon enough, we were turning on to Hwy 61 to continue northeast now to Keokuk, as the four lane continued as Hwy 27 up into Iowa. We stopped a few min later on this bridge over the Fox River when the sunrise deepened….I shot a few photos of it and had to wait a few minutes while a dump truck crossed the bridge from behind me, the weight of his truck caused the bridge to sway pretty good…

09-rr-bridge-alexandria

…we arrived in Keokuk just a few minutes later, and drove across the Mississippi River by the Lock and Dam, into Hamilton, Illinois and then north a little ways to the Chaney Creek Access Parking Lot, where Geodefest 2016 was being held. Arriving about 7:20 am, we quickly spotted Chuck`s truck and parked. Very few folks were stirring yet this early, we had arrived early so we could get registered and pay our fees for the last dig of the weekend, however we soon found out that registration would not open til 8 am on the last day, so we had some time to kill, so we went looking for my buddy John Oostenryk, who I had been talking to online for about six months, introduced to him by my KC friend Carrie…John is a museum curator at his local college in Rock Falls, Illinois and also a huge mineral collector too. John and I agreed to bring each other some goodies..to trade with later today and then he would take us collecting the next day as well. He told me that he would be operating a 600 lb geode cracker under a blue and red canopy, which we found easily enough, but discovered that John had not yet arrived and was due any moment. We decided to wander around the booths set up already and see what we could find…I quickly spotted Ken Vaisvil at his booth about two down from John`s booth and we walked down there to see what he had for sale…I always see Ken at the Park Hills show and he always has some nice geodes of all sizes for sale. Within minutes, I spotted one with some citrine colored quartz inside it and a medium sized gray colored poker chip calcite crystal inside as well…I purchased it from him and everyone was impressed with it…it was the first one I had ever seen with a poker chip crystal inside.

As we were wrapping that up, someone at Johns booth pointed to a silver van that had just arrived and said that was John arriving. After introducing him to Chuck and Josh, we were soon talking about prior emails, Carrie and her son Bentley, Bruce, the Joplin show, and past trips I have taken to collect minerals, as well as some upcoming trips too. John also told us we should forget the location for Rods, due to the fact that not very many good geodes were being found there this year as opposed to years past, and he recommended another location, so we went over to the registration booth and signed up for that location instead…which is located on Railroad Creek just outside of Hamilton. Rockhoundblogspot Bill and Debbie showed up soon after and we made plans to go rockhunting later in the day after the initial dig with the Geodefest folks. A little after 9 am, we followed our guide, which happened to be John`s friend Diane and headed south out of town to a nice farm. We parked next to the creek in a huge creek valley area….

….and started unloading buckets and tools, getting my boots on, grabbed gloves and gave Josh a mini mattox to use, then listened to the guide on directions regarding the creek and a ditch nearby that was full of geodes as well. Rockhound Bill had advised us to go upstream to the railroad bridge, so we started that direction after another guide showed us the path leading there….for some reason, he told us we had a mile walk up the creek to the bridge, but as it turned out, it was more like a quarter of a mile…not sure how they were so far off on distance like that much….

15-rr-bridge-at-rennards-rr-creek

…we crossed the creek back and forth in a few spots and went up thru the brush in a few spots to avoid deeps spots and slippery rocks, making record time…finding another couple up there ahead of us searching on up the stream….

16-rr-creek-at-rennards

…and they may have been looking for certain types or certain sizes of geodes, yet they were laying literally everywhere in the creekbed…we were told there was a discard pile up by the bridge as well, but we never saw one…could have been already gone thru by the time we arrived on the third day, too. This location is known for snowball geodes and most of the geodes we were seeing were from baseball to grapefruit sizes. I was finding several that were already cracked open, halves if you will, that appeared to have some interesting centers inside them, some that were shaped like snowballs too. Within five minutes, I had my bucket half full….Josh and Chuck spread out in the creek bed and began hunting as soon as we got there….

17-josh-chuck-in-rr-creek

18-rr-creek

Pretty soon, all three of us had some nice geodes in our buckets and we decided to turn back and search more diligently going downstream…there was another railroad bridge upstream, but we were not sure how far it was up there and we only had about 90 minutes before we had to be back to the parking lot, per the male guide. Chuck was the first to head back in that direction and by the time I got back to the bridge, he was already fifty feet down below the bridge and on the other side of the creek…he let me know that it was shallow if I hugged the left side of the creek and then crossed over a set of rocks that stretched all the way across the creek to where he was located…the first thing I noticed when I came out from under the bridge was this beautifully curved tree stretching out across the water and creating a beautiful reflection in the water….

We were back at the trucks within the hour and found we had at least another hour left to hunt if we wanted to…apparently the big male guide didn`t know nearly as much as he claimed he did…after a water break and loading up the geodes we had collected upstream, Chuck took an extended break while Josh and I wandered over to a branch that went up into the woods off the main stream. I had talked to a guy in the parking area who said that if we walked up that streambed, dry for the most part, there was a bend and high bank up there that was just geode city he said…I wandered over to the bank and found these two geode halves just sitting there….

and then I didn`t go far before finding these two halves…sitting there waving at me…

…and was stunned both times because all of them had pretty crystals inside…okay, I reasoned, they didn`t have snowballs inside but they were PRETTY !!! I was bewildered as to why someone would leave pretty geodes behind….so in my bucket they went….I called out to Josh to see how he was doing and he said the guy was right, there were geodes in the bank that could be dug out and laying all over the place upstream in the creek bend. Here is a shot of the streambed at my feet….

…and the forest floor where I found several more just laying around…

After loading up another half bucket, we loaded the truck bed one more time and then paid our bucket fees to Diane before heading back to the parking lot at Chaney Creek Access. Some dealers were starting to pack up to head home, so we did some more shopping…then discovered that John had suffered a traumatic injury while we were out that morning…he was cracking open a large geode for someone with his hydraulic geode cracker, when a large rock splinter came off the geode and penetrated the towel he had the geode wrapped in…likely speared thru that, and then penetrated the heavily padded welders gloves he was wearing and lodged inside his ring finger. He told me that they were able to remove the splinter, and he applied a copious amount of neosporin to the wound, and then wrapped it well. i told him he had done well in that respect and it appeared he had controlled the bleeding as well. Others were pushing him to go to the area hospital and get stitches, but he was hesitant to do so, asking my opinion of it, I guess due to my experience as a firefighter. I let him know that in my experience, I never had stitches for wounds like that, and I had had plenty of them…that I had merely done what he had done..applied neosporin heavily and then wrapped up the wound….neosporin is some great stuff and works wonders on healing up such types of injuries. I asked him if there were any medics on scene, and he said there were some in a trailer a little ways down in the parking lot, but they had both gone into town for some supplies, he said he would have them look at it on their return. They returned about an hour later and gave John the same prognosis I had….he was relieved because he really didn`t want to have to go get stitches.

In the meantime, Chuck decided to lend his muscles to one of John`s hometown friends, Jamie, and they continued to crack open geodes for folks that brought them to John. This continued most of the afternoon until everything wound down and then we were able to load up and head over to Macomb to check out some areas for rock and mineral collecting. We had about 90 min left before the sun set…Rockhound Bill and Debbie went with us as well as a female friend of Johns named Abigail. I didn`t shoot any photos til the sun started setting there, here you see a pile in the middle that Bill and Debbie were checking out….

31-sunset-near-macomb

From here we bid John and Abigail goodbyes as they were heading back to Rock Falls from there and we headed back to Keokuk to our hotels to get cleaned up and then go find some place to eat at…problem is that Keokuk rolls its sidewalks up on Sunday nights. After checking in to the Super 8, where Chuck, Josh, and I were staying, we discovered that the place next door, the former Golden Corral, was now a bar and grill called Vs…so we decided to check it out instead of going to a fast food place. We called Bill and Debbie, who met us there instead…lo and behold they had great food there. I had the chicken fingers and fries, and let me tell you, they believe in feeing you there, plus it was not high priced either. We decided to sleep in a bit the next morning…Bill and Debbie were going to take us to a private location nearby…I woke up around 8 am and went down to clean up the truck and re-arrange the bed load too. Josh woke up about an hour later and we met Chuck over at V`s for a hearty breakfast, leaving us enough time to gas up and get Josh an extra pair of jeans at Walmart, then head to the meeting spot, which we amended to a different location soon after. Bill and Debbie soon showed up at that location and we followed them down to the creek location that they were taking us to…we quickly parked and headed down to the creek with them to see what we could find…

46-soap-creek-clay-mtn

…we walked upstream past this wall and to the railroad bridge over the creek, watching a passing BNSF Industrial Lead train pass by overhead…..

…..Josh and Chuck walked up above the bridge to see what they could find while Bill, Debbie, and I walked back down to the wall…I found a couple of softball sized geodes in the bank on the way to the high wall. Pretty soon Josh and Chuck returned and we all decided to work the wall and see what we could find…here you see Josh up above us checking out the higher part of the wall…

…and Bill checks the lower wall for geodes, while Chuck watches from the creek…

…here are some of the geodes we were looking for…in a line down low on the wall and another line of them up higher, out of our reach….

..some were whole and nearly out of the wall, so we had to get our hammers and chisels out to chip these out of the wall…as we did, the sun really began to warm up and this wall was going to be in the sun all day long…needless to say, we got a good workout in getting a few nice ones out of the wall..mm

..and here is Chuck patiently working a nice geode half out of the wall….

…we decided to wrap it up shortly after this…here are a couple of Chucks really nice one that he chipped out after a lot of patience and hard work….looks like a small snowball of quartz inside it….

..and a couple of my finds as well….

we decided to go north to another creek location or two, but after driving over there, we discovered that the 14 inches of rain received by central Iowa locations the day before, was making the Des Moines River rapidly rise to bank full in many places, which in turn was going to make it nearly impossible for us to collect in those areas…we finally found one creek where we were invited to search by local residents in the Bonaparte area…while we did find a few, none of us have cracked any open to figure out what is inside them…I will keep you posted on that tho. From here, Chuck and I decided to head home about 3 pm, so we loaded up and took off for our respective homes…stopping off in Hannibal at the Caseys Store, across from one of Hannibals Fire Stations….

…..to gas up and grab some eats…Chuck texted me about 7:15 pm to let me know he had made it home safe and sound, five minutes before Josh and I rolled into my driveway. We were soooo tired that we left the truck loaded til the next morning. After a good long soak in the hot tub, my bed never felt better and I was sound asleep soon after. We did manage to sleep in the next morning tho. 🙂

Justin Comes to Visit

Posted on September 28, 2016 by jwj

Back in July, my good friend Justin emailed me to see if he could come visit with me and asked if I would take him rockhunting here in Missouri. I met Justin a few years ago on one of my annual trips to the Hot Springs area of Arkansas…one of my quartz crystal excursions in the fall time, and we quickly hit it off and became good friends. I met him in the parking lot that evening shortly after I arrived at the condo I stayed at on Lake Hamilton. I brought him some flats of Missouri crystals and minerals and told him back then to come visit with me and I would take him rockhunting up here…so he was finally taking me up on the offer. Justin is a neat guy, very mature acting for his young age…he works in what some of us would consider a stressful job…hospice care…a very vital and caring field these days and one that is much appreciated as well by many….so I highly respect him even more for choosing such a field to work in. He drove up a few weeks ago on a Friday and arrived early evening…he checked out my collection inside the house that evening since it got dark soon after his arrival, and then the next day checked out my rock gardens during the daylight. I have heard many refer to my interior collection, like ” walking thru a museum ” but Justin thought the outside gardens were like a museum as well, although they could prob use some weeding and its been way too hot for that this summer.

We decided to drive down to MFQ the next morning, getting up and headed out by 7 am, stopping off at the donut shop so I could get one of my favorite donuts, the unfilled white icing long john with nuts sprinkled on top, and a chocolate milk. Soon after, Onyx, Justin, and I were heading for the quarry. They had done some blasting there a few weeks before and I told him that maybe they would have that pile cleaned up to where we could check the lower wall for dogtooth pockets, as we had found several in that wall there years prior. As we started down into the valley, we noticed some heavy fog and I told Justin that we might have some fog at the quarry as well, and sure enough we did have just a little bit of it when we arrived soon after, stopping off briefly to get some water for Onyx that I forgot to bring….here you see Justin halfway up the pile finding some nice calcites…

01-arrival

…he had his boots on when we arrived, so he took off and started walking and searching for crystals before grabbing a bag or anything to put them in….he was too excited to even grab his gloves or tools…as you can see, he made do with his shirt tail when he started finding them up there…..like a kid in a candy store believe me…..

02-justin-searches 03-blast-pile-still-there 04-looking-west

…and as you can see from the photos above, the blast pile was hugely still there, little had been worked to remove it…stretching back to the west much as it was the last time I was there. Soon I had my boots on and grabbed my gloves, tools and a bag and headed up into the base of the pile…and soon I was finding alot of dogtooth crystals, or what I would refer to as wanna be dogtooth crystals, five to ten inches long and a beautiful nestle chocolate brown color to them…many were upside down in what appeared as pockets blasted down from the wall intact and held in place by dirt and rock around them. It appeared they had been uncovered by the machinery recently, because they sure were not to be found or seen when I was there last…Justin was hollering every few minutes about finding something here and there, showing me some of his finds…..

06-shazam-they-r-everywhere

…..and finally made his way back to the bottom with his shirt full of crystals…

05-filling-up-his-shirt

…one thing was for sure, we sure had a beautiful day to collect there….gorgeous sky and nice weather, and it was warm just without the humidity if I recall correctly…but we did eventually warm up….

07-looking-east

…I pointed out the coved wall and told Justin that when MAGS was there in April, the quarry personnel had cleaned off the upper ledges and hundreds of dogtooth crystals landed down below on the floor and in the smaller piles near the coved wall….so he migrated over there to see what he could find…

08-coved-area 09-shirtless-now

…and actually did pretty good this time as well, eventually having to use his hat this time since he shed his now dirty shirt for the heat….I had forgotten to tell him about the short cleft wall we had pulled down with prybars when the Tyler Club was there with me, mainly to make it safer, but we also found pockets behind it and Justin was able to find several under the rocks in that area, many that made him happy. 🙂

Here are some of my finds that morning just doing some surface collecting mainly….

That cluster up above was one that I just found sitting in the pile and picked up…has a little damage to it but very nice spray looks like…I don`t have it cleaned up yet or would post a photo of it, but will eventually….

…I also found a few small orange dogtooth crystals too, here and there….

Justin had so much good luck on the right side of the coved wall, that he went back over there and looked some more, and found even more good stuff, this time using his hands and arms to hold them…

…then we moved back over to the big pile to look for more dogtooths…by the time we finished I had four bags full of them and I know Justin had more than I did, he was ecstatic over them too. 🙂 Pretty soon he was back up near the top of the pile looking for more….

…by this time, it was approaching 1 pm and we wanted to go to Rocky Falls and cool down a bit, then go see my buddy Dave so I could show Justin the pretty minerals and crystals that come out of the Viburnum Trend Doe Run owned mines, so we did a little high grading….or I should say Justin did….

37-a-bit-sunburned-now

…and then we headed over to Rocky Falls for a bit of a cool down…found a church group there…we hiked up to the top for the bigger view….

..and then we drove over to see my friend Dave, where Justin learned even more about lead minerals from the Viburnum Trend in Missouri. all in all a great day.

The next day we drove down to the druse spot…..we didn`t get an early start, slept in a bit as we were wore out from the day before. I had told Justin all about this location, assured him he would have no problem finding some nice stuff to take home, depending on what colors he liked in druse quartz…I think he was a bit skeptical of me…but within about five minutes of arriving, all that skepticism went right out the window. Onyx and I were up on the hill above him and we could hear him talking about it…sometimes to me…sometimes to Onyx…and sometimes I think, to himself…I even captured it on video…

…just click on download file and let it load up, then click on it and it will open and play full screen for you. Took Justin a while, but he finally made it about halfway up the hill to where Onyx and I were hunting….

…he was like a kid in a candy store and fun to watch…I don`t believe I have ever seen one person so enthusiastic about finding druse quartz, at this location especially !! I also don`t believe I have ever seen anyone load up as much druse quartz to take home with him from this location…he was starting to worry about having enough room in his car for it all by the time we got done. In the meantime, I was finding some nice stuff up the hill and to the south a little ways from him…

…next thing you know, Justin is halfway up the hill toward us, as Onyx and I are starting to move to the south to search the erosion ditches on the hillside…

…and then I found a smokey druse pocket….

….at the same time, Justin made it to the top of the hill and then checked out a freshly dug out area, where he also found some nice smokey plates and a ton of other nice stuff including some bubbles that he was searching for. A couple of hours later and we were fairly exhausted…Justin had a few buckets full plus his backpack, and I had a couple of bags full of wrapped pieces. We drove up to the local store nearby, and took a snack and water break.

From there we drove to the SS Quarry to see if we could find some poker chips or dogtooth crystals…while we were searching for pockets, Onyx decided to go wading and swimming….

01-onxy-goes-wading 03b Justin got his hard hat on and took off up to check out the old pockets at the base of the west wall and started exploring…due to his size, he was able to squeeze into some of the smaller pockets and pull some crystals that remained, out of them….

…I looked down at my feet and was surprised to see golden rod growing in the floor of the quarry….see it in the fields all the time, never expected to see it growing out of the rocks….

By this time, I was quickly running out of energy, having spent most of it at the druse spot and using up much of the rest of it trying to find Justin a dogtooth pocket so he could take home some beauties….it`s great to receive minerals and crystals as gifts but everyone likes to find them on their own even more, the thrill of pulling them out of a pocket is just much more exhillarating. I wasn`t able to find anything substantial, so Justin decided to try the wall on the north side, which is more vuggy and has produced many of the huge pockets I have found in the past. He walked over and came in from the top, taking my advice on how to reach the bottom, watching for plates of druse quartz that are often found over there…he did….

…and after about an hour over there, he finally had a shirt full of crystals and was ready to leave as well….

I`m not sure, but I think I was more worn out than he was…but a good meal at Missouri Hick really helped us both out and restored us just a little bit and the hot tub finished it up later on. After sleeping in again on Monday morning, Justin took some time to pack his car from the front seat to the trunk and then set off for home at noon, arriving about eight hours later safe and sound. It was great seeing him and rockhunting with him once again. See ya again in November Justin !!

Protected: Central Kentucky Again By Invitation

Posted on September 9, 2016 by jwj

Green Poker Chip Pocket at MFQ

Posted on August 30, 2016 by jwj

Friday afternoon I received word from my buddy Jim, that more activity had occurred at MFQ that morning. Since I had to work that weekend, I let my buddy Chuck Reed know about it and he decided to drive down Sunday morning and see what he could find. I had driven down there the weekend before and discovered then, that more activity had occurred on the west wall of the quarry again, but they were drilling up on top of the wall between the cove and the west wall, and that wall had been full of dogtooth crystals pockets some years back. I let Chuck know this and wished him well. I called him Sunday evening on my way to work to see how he did, and he told me that he did pretty good, so I decided to take Onyx…despite the forecasted heat…and drive down Monday afternoon and see what I could find. After dealing with morons all Sunday night at work, I got a good five hour nap in Monday and then we headed down there. Here is what it looked like when we arrived…the cove is on the right side and to the left it tapers down to the ” West Side “, which you really cannot see in this photo below……

32 New Blast

I parked about midway down and rolled the windows down, got my boots on, my apron on, and took the next few photos with my camera….

01 Coved Wall 02 Blast Area Just West of Cove

…and the next photo shows the activity on the newly created ” west side ” of the quarry…

03 New Blast Area West of Cove

…after that I started hearing some rumblings of thunder just to the north of the quarry, and started studying the clouds above…to see which way it was moving…took awhile to figure it out cause they were moving extremely slow to the southwest…too bad, cause that blast pile was extremely dusty looking and I would have had no problem sitting in the truck waiting for a good washing off. I also started seeing some neat sunbeams…aka windows to Heaven…all over and above the quarry…I took them as a good sign…and maybe more than that….

07 Sunbeam City 10 Sunbeams to West

Beautiful Sunbeams on Arrival

…everyone that knows me, knows I LOVE sunbeams, sunsets, and sunrises…pretty much in that order, rainbows too, but they are much rarer to capture….and my Dad knew that I liked sunbeams too…and here I was at one of my favorite places to rockhunt at and within a few minutes, sunbeams started popping out all over the top of that quarry….

13 Sunbeams

14 Sunbeam City 15 Sunbeams Before Storm

…and I took that as a good sign of things to come and more…this happened yesterday and today is my Dad`s birthday. Onyx and I took a quick sashay around the front of the blast pile to see if we could find anything interesting, looked at the big boulders in the pile and checked for vugs…..didn`t see anything worthwhile, so I left my bag down near the bottom and climbed up along the wall starting on the west side to check the walls out for pockets….

17 Started On West Side

18 Moved Across to East Side

…and moved to the east side along the wall…finding very little of anything but the calcite that looks either rotten or ill formed, or looks like it belongs in a cave. I moved all the way across the east side and then came to a point sticking out….

…and as soon as I rounded that corner sticking out, I spotted about four pockets, but only one really caught my eye, due to the content of it that was plainly visible to my eye…

20 Pockets To Right of Broken Wall

If you can see my red handled mini mattox in the photo above, look to the left of that about ten feet to see the pocket I saw….if you still can`t see it, here it is below…

24 Pocket of Poker Chips in Red Druse

…filled with greenish brown poker chips nestled in red dolomite druse and several came out nice and intact, while some did look like they had some blast damage, which does happen from time to time. Shortly after cleaning it out, which took about 30 minutes to do, I looked back to check on Onyx in my truck below….

29 Truck in Cove

…and then pulled this huge center plate out of the pocket, revealing two smaller pockets behind it…which took only a few minutes to clean out each one of them, and then we headed for home, stopping off for ice cream at the Bourbon Family Center and then on home for a late supper. If you have any questions or just want to give me a shout, my email addy is jwjphoto7@gmail.com

Tyler Texas Gem & Mineral Club in Missouri July 2016

Posted on August 7, 2016 by jwj

The first morning of my vacation in early July, I was standing on the front porch of a landowner`s bed and breakfast near Bismarck, Arkansas, talking to him and Andrew Stauber, new rockhunting friend from Conway, about an old lead and copper mine located on the property. The landowner was showing us photos of the old mine back in its heyday and telling us what could be found there, when my cellphone rang. Not expecting a call that morning, I answered it and found WC Mc Daniels on the other end, the club President for MAGS…the Memphis Club I am a member of…and he wondered if I might be available to take the Gem and Mineral Club from Tyler, Texas, out rockhunting, as they were going to be up in Missouri later in July. I told him what weekends I had free in the few weeks ahead and then he asked where I was right then, and I told him I was checking out an old mine near Hot Springs, something I am sure he is used to hearing me say these days. He said he would put the Tyler bunch in touch with me next week and let me go to check out the old mine there a bit more. We actually decided against walking up the hill to check it out that day, due to the weather being very suitable for copperheads and water moccasins, both of which the landowner said were very prevalent near the old mine lately..me being allergic to both, we decided to bypass this exploration til the fall time when it would be cooler and more likely not to see any of them.

A week later, I received a call from Fred Mahaffey, the Field Trip Director for the Tyler Mineral Club and worked it out that his group could come up the weekend of my birthday to go rockhunting with me. The following weekend they were going to be on the other side of the state at Lincoln, to dig for Missouri`s state gemstone, Mozarkite, however I had to work that weekend, so they decided to come up a week before and stay over. On Saturday morning, the 23rd, I was already committed to something else, so I agreed to meet them at the Caseys Store at 3:30 pm…Onyx and I arrived to find them compacted into two pickup trucks, and after introductions, we headed to a druse location.

It was extremely hot out there, and I had already been outside much of the morning, but had kept hydrated and was hoping the heat would relent a bit or provide us with a bit of a breeze, so we could do some decent hunting out there. Alas, that did not happen, and while there was drusy everywhere to be found, and they found plenty of it, we only lasted about ninety minutes in the heat. I had taken them an assortment of crystals from Missouri, Arkansas, and Kentucky, from my travels, and let them go thru them and pick out whatever they wanted to keep. The rest of the material was placed in the truck of one of the members to take back to the rest of their members. Everyone headed back to their motels and campgrounds, some were staying in Rolla motels and some were staying at a campground near Steelville…we decided to meet at 6 am the next morning for the MFQ trip.

Onyx and I got up early Sunday morning and drove up to the meeting spot…and found the Texas rockhounds waiting for us and raring to go hunt on a much cooler morning. I had brought them some more material, in case we didn`t find anything at the quarry this morning, which sometimes can happen, and I also brought them a nice quartz cluster from my favorite mine in the Mt Ida area, for their club collection as well. We drove thru heavy fog along the way at various lowlying areas. I figured we would find fog at the quarry as well, but was pleasantly surprised to only find a cool shade waiting for us there…..

I told them as long as the shade stayed with us, we would be much cooler, but when the shade disappeared, we would need to as well, cause that sun would be unbearably hot by then…everyone spread out and started looking for poker chip crystals…a few of us walked down to the western side to check the recent blast area but found very little…and then we wandered back to the walls inside the shaded cove area…

Kenny, the guy in the blue shirt and hard hat above, and I, walked over to the east wall of the cove area and I showed him some of the pockets that I had worked there two weeks before…Fred wandered over and looked them over as well. I told them how you can look into older pockets along the wall and sometimes other openings and pockets will open up in the walls behind them, hiding even more pretty crystals and sometimes some neat looking dolomite and calcite druse plates and pieces too. We started working the area I had been in two weeks before….

…while some of the gals were working the berm piles looking for crystals…which a lot of folks take for granted, but a few months before when MAGS was there, we were finding dogtooth crystals all over the place including those berm piles…..

..Kenny and I worked a few pockets there and did a little clean up along there as well, then when we finished, Fred came over and started working some pockets up higher as well….

…and here are a few photos of what Fred was able to extricate from the walls there….

…while Fred was working his pockets, the rest of us were taking it easy and cooling down with water and snacks…I took a few minutes to look over the flat of Texas agates and black palmwood that they brought me from Texas….

…and a few minutes later, when the shade left us, we left as well, driving over to see my buddy Dave, to show them what Viburnum Trend minerals look like, including the fab double terminated green and yellow calcite crystals encased in pyrite that have been coming out of the Fletcher Mine lately…they were very taken with the minerals and crystals he had on hand and purchased several from him. On the way up there, I had a buzzard take off in flight from the road right in front of me as I crested a hill…feathers flew and there was a pretty hard thump, and he spiraled up and over my truck and to the grassy shoulder on the far side of the road…I stopped a few miles down the road to check my grill, thinking I might have a damaged headlight…but to my surprise, I had no damage to the headlight or the grill. From Dave`s house, they headed back to their motel rooms and campers, and Onyx and I headed home…took a nap, and then I drove up to MO Hick to meet them for supper there. I invited them all down to my house the next morning to look at my collection and they decided to come down about mid morning. Like everyone else, they thought my house looked like a museum and really enjoyed my rock gardens. They were going to stick around a few days and then drive over to Lincoln to look for Mozarkite.

I heard from Fred a few days ago, seems they had very good luck at Lincoln, their guide there had just dug out an electric line underground to his house, and they were able to find some nice stuff in that ground cut. He also asked if they could join me on my vacation trip to the Hot Springs area in November, they are interested in getting some nice quality quartz crystals and novaculite for cutting material…so I am sure I will see some of them down there then. 🙂

If anyone else is interested, give me a shout at jwjphoto7@gmail.com

Quartz Crystals and 4th of July in Arkansas 2016

Posted on July 9, 2016 by jwj

Never has one of my previously planned trips to Arkansas come at a better time than my first week of July 2016 mini vacation trip. I remember letting my Mom and Dad know about six weeks ago that they were welcome to make the trip with Onyx and I if they wanted to take a few days off to rest and relax, as I would be staying at the condo on Lake Hamilton that I often stay at on my travels down there, and it`s a great place to stay and simply recharge your batteries at. Two weeks later, I lost my Dad to a massive heart attack, he collapsed in their front yard.

Jim Johnson, Honorary Firefighter

For the past four years, Dad had suffered from Vascular Dementia, a condition that means in addition to dementia, he was also prone to his body trying to form blood clots all the time, which is likely what caused the aortic anneurism problems that he went through two years ago and required lifesaving surgery. We laid him to rest three weeks ago with full fire department and military honors, and a few days after I returned to work, the mini vacation that I had set up back in December last year, finally arrived. Mom and I were exhausted and mentally drained from trying to get back to a new normal, adjusting to the loss of his presence in our daily lives. Mom decided to go and spend a few days with her brothers and their families in Fort Smith and Waldron, so Onyx and I dropped her off in Forth Smith and then drove on down to Hot Springs to spend time with several rockhunting friends looking for quartz crystals.

After dealing with alot of drama and stress during Dad`s funeral and in the few weeks afterward, we were both ready for some rest, relaxation, and fun digging for quartz. We had a nice drive down there, stopping off briefly in Fayetteville at a flea market where I purchased a nice pyrite cube cluster from Spain. Onxy and I then dropped Mom off at Aunt Dorcas and Uncle Harley`s house in Fort Smith and then drove on down to Hot Springs, arriving there by mid afternoon. After cleaning up a bit, Onyx and I drove up to the Hibachi Sushi Buffet location near the Mall for a nice evening meal, then I stopped off at the Home-made Ice Cream store called Scoops and picked up a quart of Butter Pecan to take back to the condo. I stopped off and replenished the ice in both of the coolers I brought down, filled with my spiked water, gatorade, and some snicker bars. While kicking back and relaxing on the balcony watching the speed boats go by….

01 Speedboat & Skiers Lake Hamilton 02 Speedboat & Skiers Lake Hamilton

….I called Chad, one of my friends who lives near Hot Springs, shortly after that and let him know of my plans to check out an old mine the next morning…he was interested in joining me and Andrew, a new rockhunting friend in Conway, who was driving down the next morning as well to meet me at the Mall. Chad said he would meet me at McDonalds, where I normally eat breakfast when down there, on Friday morning.

Since we had started our day early that morning, Onyx and I were in bed soon after the news and up again Friday morning by 6 am. After taking Onxy on a short walk around the condo complex, meeting a few of the other renters walking their pets, we headed to the McDonalds Restaurant just north of the Mall for breakfast…Chad arrived soon after and then we drove down to the Mall to meet up with Andrew Stauber from Conway. Andrew and I had been talking for a few weeks online after he found my website and discovered that I travel to Arkansas a few times a year for quartz crystals…he told me that he was new to rockhunting and would like to go rockhunting with me. I told him I was driving down the first few days of July and we agreed to meet up this morning to go check out an old copper/lead mine that he found out about online and secured permission to check out with the owner, since it was on private property. He arrived at the Mall shortly after Chad and I got there, and from there we drove south to the property, arriving a little after 9 am. We talked to the owner for about 20 minutes about the history of the old mine and then he told us that he had walked down to it a few days before and had to kill a water moccasin that popped up out of the creek water…a creek runs next to the old mine…and that he had seen a few copperheads there as well. I told Andrew I really didnt want to be messing with any poisonous snakes on this trip and would prefer to come back in the fall when it was much cooler and we didnt have to worry about such things. Chad agreed, mainly because Chad was wearing shorts and sandals, instead of boots and jeans like Andrew and I were wearing. We asked the owner if it was okay with him for us to return in the fall and apologized if we had wasted his time, but he was very nice and gracious, telling us that if it were up to him, he would rather we came back in the fall as well.

From there, not really having anything else planned out, I called another guy I had been talking to for quite some time online…Gary Fleck, a mineral and quartz dealer who lives on the west side of Hot Springs…and found out he was home with some spare time and we were welcome to go and visit with him for a bit. I had an appointment at 2 pm, so we headed over there to meet and visit with him.

Gary used to own a quartz mine near Oden and has been a quartz and mineral dealer for many years, lives on Lake Hamilton and has many beautiful crystals and minerals in his collection and many more for sale as well. We visited with him and his wife for about 90 minutes before I had to take off…before leaving tho, I did purchase a nice dolomite piece from the Elmwood Mines with some small fluorite cubes on it for my personal collection, and I gave him some nice double terminated calcites on pyrite and chalcopyrite from the Viburnum Trend mines, too. Later that evening, Chad and I met up with Virgil Richards, a good rockhunting friend of mine from Tulsa, at the Cracker Barrel Restaurant for supper…Virgil had driven in that afternoon, the first of many friends that would be digging with me the next couple of days, for quartz crystals. We had a great supper and then all three of us split up for the rest of the evening.

Onyx and I were up early once again, this time catching the sunrise over Lake Hamilton right off my balcony…..

05 Sunrise Saturday Morning

…we got ready for the day, then drove up to the Courtyard Marriott Hotel to pick up my St Louis County buddy Chuck Reed, who was staying there with his family, he wanted to leave his truck there for his wife and two daughters so they could go visit downtown Hot Springs while we were digging for quartz that day. We then drove over to McDonalds, had breakfast, and then drove over to the Mall to meet up with Alina and Pat Klein and their two sons Finn and Coen…they had arrived late the night before driving in from Indianapolis…Chuck and his family arrived around 11 pm. Everyone else had texted me the night before or earlier in the morning to let me know they would meet us at Mt Ida, including Virgil since he was staying at a motel on the west side of Hot Springs, so we headed west soon after, in order to meet everyone in Mt Ida by 8:45 am.

On the way up there Chuck texted Tony, the mine owner, to let him know we would arrive at his mine a little after 9 am, we were slowed down by heavy traffic outside of Mt Ida…weekenders driving 45 mph instead of 55 mph. We soon arrived in Mt Ida tho, getting around the slowpokes in the passing lanes of Hwy 270 about ten miles east of town, and shortly after pulling into the old Exxon Station we met up with Justin from Hot Springs, Virgil from Tulsa, as well as Chris and Kim Bryant with their son Preston, from Birmingham… soon we were driving over to Tony`s mine. We arrived about 9:15 and found Tony waiting for us by his trackhoe at his new digging area…he showed us some gorgeous small clusters that he had pulled out of some pockets in the new area and we were soon off to the races, looking for quartz…Chuck found a nice yard rock not five minutes after walking up into the dig area…

..so soon after photographing Chuck with his find, I walked up into the dig area and was seeing crystals laying all over the place, picking up several and placing them in my bag before I even got to the back wall of the new area….from there, I turned around and snapped a few photos of everyone else searching the tailing piles for crystals and every few seconds, someone was calling out that they found something nice….

I set up shop next to Virgil who was already hard at work digging out crystals in the clay on the back wall, using a flat head screwdriver….

16 Virgil Digging Out Crystals

..and here is one of his finds soon after….

Pretty soon the heat of the day began catching up with us, so we started taking breaks and drinking our fluids…along the wall we were in the shade for a while that morning, the canopy of tall pines presenting a great cover for us for much of the day….when I looked back behind me the next time, I saw people spread out digging all over the place…

…and Justin was off to my left on top of one of the tailing piles pulling out some nice crystals..he and Finn were searching for the single points and they were finding some nice ones…

…and through the morning hours, Onyx did well in the shade next to me, stretched out on the cool…to him…clay dirt….

…Chuck was behind me and Virgil looking for plates and yard rocks during the morning hours….

…and everytime I looked over at Justin, he was pulling crystal after crystal out of that tailing pile he was working on…

19 Justin Looks For Crystals

…Chuck was soon joined by Coen, while working behind Virgil and I, and they began discussing minerals and quartz while taking a break from the heat….

…and then I saw Justin walking around and surface collecting some more…

…and then shortly after noon, more took breaks from the building heat while Chuck and Justin decided to head on up the mountain to the old mine and see what more could be found up there….here you see Pat and his dog Toby have decided to join me and Virgil on the back wall area…

…and here comes Alina and Preston surface collecting, as Chuck walks back to my truck with his tool bag full of crystals….

…Finn was relentless in his search for single crystal points…had I known that`s what he was after, I wouldn`t have handed him all those little clusters I found….

…by the time 3 pm rolled around, Virgil and I were getting tired, mainly of the oppressive heat…

….we were still finding a lot of crystals, even pulled a large piece of rock away to reveal a nice pocket of crystals and worked that for awhile and Virgil found a huge yard rock too….

31 Yard Rock

…most everyone else had gone on up to the top to the old mine and were finding some nice ones up there, so we decided to follow. As we were packing up and getting ready to head up there, Justin showed me a super nice single point that he found up there, as he was getting ready to head out…if you have heard of one but never seen one…this is what a happy camper looks like……

Chuck walked back down, having found several nice crystals up at the top and so rode with me to the top, Virgil following soon after, and we stayed up there awhile and looked for a few more, finding some nice ones up there too…here Chuck caught me surface collecting up there…….by that time, I had my floppy hat on to keep the sun off the back of my neck….

34 Me Searching Upper Pit

35 Upper Mine 36 Me PIcking Up Crystals

…Virgil, Chuck, and I were the last ones to leave…we were all out of there by 4 pm and although we were exhausted due to the heat, we were all very happy with our finds…I had four bags full of wrapped crystals and some of us also had some nice yard rocks. Tony was a great host once again, and we look forward to returning to his mine again this fall. We headed back to Hot Springs to get cleaned up and have supper…this was the night that the entire Hot Springs area celebrates the 4th of July with their huge fireworks display over Lake Hamilton. I no sooner arrived at my condo after dropping Chuck off at his hotel, then I discovered a major parking issue…I had to park at the next condo building up from the one my condo was located in. Chuck and his family were going to come down and watch the fireworks while I photographed them, as we would have front row seats to the display…they are set off at the Power Boats Business across the water from the Clarion Hotel, a quarter mile east of the condo. About an hour later tho, the parking situation lightened up and everyone was able to come over to watch and enjoy the fireworks with me….by 8:30 pm, the boats were starting to accumulate out in the channel behind the condo….

…and right before the display started, some folks about two buildings up had their own private show down next to the water with some pretty commercial grade fireworks….

07 From Pier Next Door 08 From Pier Next Door

…and then soon after that, the huge display started and lit up the night skies over Lake Hamilton….

09 Yellow Starburst

This year I was able to capture over a hundred nice images of the fireworks and I know that I stood there and snapped over 200 photos during the display, shooting some video as well, once again, it was a GREAT show there !! I dont know who sets them off there, but JOB WELL DONE FOLKS !!!

Sunday morning, our plan was to drive up to Twin Creek Mine and dig in a private pocket there. I had set this into motion on June 19th when I started talking to Miss Dixie on FB, letting her know that we would be there on Sunday, July 3rd and would like to dig in the special private area to the right as you enter the mine area, not the public dig area…four of us had dug there back in November and did quite well there. She started telling me that they had expanded their operation and were now digging 75 feet up the hill from the public dig area and had hit a ten foot wide quartz vein up there…and that they were going to let us dig there, that it was going to be their private pocket dig area for the next few years…she said that pocket would cost us from $ 300 to $ 500 for those of us that would be there that morning and she said they were finding blue phantoms up on that ridge as well. I told her that would work for us and I would contact there the day before to firm things up. I emailed her again on FB the evening before driving down to Arkansas to let her know we were looking forward to digging there again, and she responded by letting me know that everything was looking very promising for us.

So Saturday evening, before everyone arrived to watch the fireworks with me, I started texting Miss Dixie to make sure we were still on for Sunday morning in the private pocket area…I kept all my texts and emails on my FB page to refresh my memory on this….she said Bobby had been working hard and would meet us at the mine in the morning to show us the possibilities…said there was more than one spot and more than one side of the mine to choose from as to where we could dig…then I asked her about the price…a few weeks prior she told me the price would be $ 300 to $ 500 for the group of us and that is what I told me crew so they would know how much money to bring with them for this dig…we had 7 to 9 adults and four children 10 years of age and younger.

She texted me back and said $ 100 per person is the special dig price and Bobby is seeing 3 or 4 pockets worth $ 300 to $ 400….one may open bigger, but the price stays the same and Bobby can show you…I texted her back, to confirm she just told me that the cost was now $ 100 per person, and she confirmed it…told her we could not afford to pay $ 100 per person, that she had told me prior that the cost would be $ 300 to $ 500 for the group…she came back with, okay what were you thinking…told her back in the fall the price was split up by four people for the special pocket location, that was what we were figuring on doing this time too…she said she didnt know what Bobby had set up for us last fall. Bobby had given us a pocket price for two different pockets back in November, when one didnt work out, he let us have the other pocket for a lower amount. She said we could work something out, give her a few min and she would get back to me….a few hours later, she came back to me and said $ 450 was the best she could do for a private dig area, and if Bobby had not made the deal with us the last time, she would not even consider that, she said Bobby would meet us at the mine at 8 am.

Chuck and I met up at Mc Donalds the next morning at 7 am and shortly after, met Alina, Pat, Finn and Coen at the Mall, and we took off to the west to meet the others at the parking lot across from the Crystal Inn on Hwy 270. Virgil was just ahead of us and let me know there was a bad vehicle accident on 270 on the west side of Hot Springs, head on collision and only one lane open. We had to stop briefly when we arrived and observed a pickup with heavy damage to the front, but no other vehicle in sight…I did notice half a dozen Hot Springs firefighters standing on the bank above the lake on the other side of the guard rail, looking down…which indicated to me that the other car was in the lake below, not a good sign. We found out later that evening, that the two young men in the car were pronounced fatally injured at the scene, they crossed over the center line and struck the truck head on, then caromed off the pickup and went flying thru the air landing down the embankment and in the water of the lake…prob a good thing most folks couldnt see the end result.

When we arrived at the parking lot across from Crystal Inn, we found Chris, Kim, Preston, and Virgil, waiting on us…two of the adults who were going to go with us, didn`t show up, so I let everyone else know it was going to cost each adult $ 60 plus $ 12.50 for each of the kids.

We drove on over to the mine and met our hostess, Jennifer, at the gate, she was arriving at the same time as we were, and we followed her down to the camper office where we found Bobby greasing up his new trackhoe. I let him know that we were ready to go up the hill to the new private pocket area and he looked at me like I had lost my mind…told him that was what Dixie had told us, we would be digging up the hill where the ten foot wide vein was found and he said he was confused…told him I had been confused as well, even showed him the texts that she had sent me, he read those and decided that she had lost her mind… so he decided to call her to see if he could clear this all up. He came back a few min later and told us that we would be digging in the small commercial mine where the four of us dug in November, not up on the hill in the new private pocket area. We walked up there and he showed us the expanded work area, more wall exposed with crystals in plain view on the wall, pointed out a few other areas where pockets were located and offered to bring the trackhoe over there after dinner to stir things up even more. He let us move our vehicles over there as well, which would free up parking for public diggers. We paid Jennifer our fees and started searching for crystals as the heat and humidity began to build….

38 Sunday Morn Twin Creek Mine

39 Twin Creek Mine 40 Working In Shade As Much As Possible

Jennifer was a great hostess, she came over to check on us frequently, brought some water bottle spritzers over with her a few times to spray us down due to the heat and humidity being so high…even brought us some umbrellas for shade….

41 Looking Back Toward Trucks 42 Looking Back Toward Trucks

…and here she is looking pretty hot herself…..

43 Jennifer Our Hostess

…with her awesome assistance, we endured the humidity til about 1 pm…we were still fairly wore out from the day before, when a couple of the kids went down from the heat on Saturday and Virgil had taken a fall and hurt himself as well at the end of the day, and the rest of us were just a little sore in places. We thanked her with a big tip for her awesomeness and sparkling personality, and headed up the hill and out of there. Chuck said he would lead the way to the main road and once we got out on the gravel road and started down the hill, he came to a sudden stop half way down that steep hill….and started veering to the right into the ditch…anyone that has traveled Forest Service Roads in the past few years, knows that these days they are all narrow, and the gravel is slanted down to a 45 degree angle into the ditchline on both sides of the road…what happened is we met Miss Dixie coming up the hill in her 4wd pickup, all duded up in red, white, and blue, and so we all moved over to the ditchline and passed by her truck…as I passed by she smiled and waved, and I waved back.

Once we hit the main road, I took the lead and led everyone over to Bill and Faiths Blue Moon Crystal Shop on Hwy 270, a few miles east of the turn off to Mountain Harbor. Bill and Faith have been good friends of mine for several years, Ray Roth and I met them years ago when we began going to Miller Mountain Mine each year in the fall…they were the most honest, reliable, dependable, hard working and friendly mine operators I had ever met down there, and now they operate their rock shop out of their home in the same manner. Just great down to earth folks with very affordable quartz crystals, jewelry, and minerals from other states and countries as well…we were all shopping inside and I was looking at some spirit amethyst crystal clusters from South Africa when my phone started blowing up with texts…from Miss Dixie….the first one wasnt too bad, read ” Didnt want to say hi in the road ? “

While I was typing out my answer ” we were all hot and tired and didnt want to block the road, so I waved and smiled and drove on “, when her next text hit me and the look on my face when I read it, concerned a few of my group and they came to look with me…..it said ….” Prolly best you didnt “…so I added on to my first message back to her and asked her if I had offended her in some way….and she answered ” Yes sir I believe so “…so I asked how I offended her and she answered that ” she felt that I had mislead her intentionally about the pricing on the pockets and said I was not honest with her “….so I told her, figuring she didnt know, that we had paid $ 470 that morning, $ 20 more than the $ 450 she had asked for…and then she came back with ” its all good and said she would pay better attention to detail the next time “. However by the time all of my group read what she was texting me, and getting an attitude with me about it, it wasn`t all good and no one had any desire to return there to dig again.

We all headed back to Hot Springs shortly after that, I set Virgil up to meet a good dealer friend of mine in Hot Springs on his way home in the morning, Gary had some good Elmwood Mine material that I was sure Virgil would like to see, and I told Bill and Faith that I would stop off the next morning to see them on my way home too. Virgil and I met up later at the Hibachi again for another good supper and then I headed back to the condo to relax down. However folks living on the other side of the lake drew my attention outside on the balcony, many were setting off their own fireworks shows….

The next morning, Onyx and I tried our best to sleep in, made it to sunrise…..

59A Sunrise Monday Morning

….and then again at 7 am, so we got up that time and started packing the truck. Once I filled the gas tank and re-filled the coolers with ice, we headed west on 270 to Bill and Faith`s Rock Shop again, where I stopped off to get a few crystals…they had a couple of the spirit amethyst crystal clusters and I selected one of those along with some glassbacks and small clusters that I really liked. From there, we headed west to Hwy 71, then north to Fort Smith, where I stopped off to pick up Mom…discovered my cousin Sherry with her two boys Derek and Seth, so after a short visit with all of them, Mom and I headed north on 71 to Missouri. We made one pit stop along the way, stopping off in Fayetteville briefly to photograph the Johnson Mill, which was restored several years prior and converted first to an Architectural Office, then it became a bed and breakfast, and this time we discovered it was now a hotel with an old brick house across the street converted to a bed and breakfast…called the Johnson House appropriately enough….

60 Johnson House

…and then while Mom took Onyx for a short walk, I photographed the old mill, with the huge water wheel, water flume, and waterfalls…..

We arrived home safe and sound by 6 pm…in time to rest up and get ready to shoot the fireworks that evening at the fairgrounds. Check my blogsite for that story…www.jwjphotoblog.com

Here are some of the crystals I found down there….

70 Clusters From Twin Creek Mine Wall 71 Small Clusters & Glassback Twin Creek 72 Small Glassback Twin Creek 72A Small Glassback Twin Creek

The first four were found at Twin Creek….starting with the fifth one, the rest were found at Tony`s Mine on Saturday….I still have a few more to clean up and post, too….

73 Small Cluster Tonys Mine 74 Small Cluster Tonys Mine 75 Fist Sized Cluster Tonys Mine 76 Smokeys From Tonys Mine 77 Smaller Ones Tonys Mine 78 Tonys Mine 79 Big Single Points

Annual Clement Mineral Museum`s 2016 Show and Dig

Posted on June 16, 2016 by jwj

Every year when I get the chance at work to select my dates for vacation time through out the year ahead, I always look at the first weekend in June…and take it as vacation if I am slated to work it…because that is the weekend of the Clement Mineral Museum`s Annual Mineral Show and Dig, and I always travel down to host the Eureka Mine and free up the Museum Staff for other details. There are a group of people down there that I truly care about and they have a cause for rockhounds that I truly care about as well…the provide a place for rockhounds to go and dig for pretty crystals for one thing. They also have an outstanding Museum there that is truly worth visiting and admiring the gorgeous minerals and crystals inside, and for anyone that is into blacklight minerals and crystals, they have a room completely designed with you in mind as well. In years past, I have also taken them buckets of grab bag material, and although I had some still on hand, after giving ten buckets of material to MAGS back in April, they received some donations from some good friends of mine and were not in need of any this time around, leaving me room in the bed of my truck to take some Missouri minerals, Arkansas crystals, and purple fluorite to give away to anyone that struck out digging up some pretties that weekend. I also took some crystals down for their silent auction and took a few pieces of wavellite to give to some good friends of mine who I knew would be there.

Onyx and I drove down on Friday morning, with the intention of meeting a good friend in southern Illinois and doing some hiking at one of the pretty spots along the way. We met up with Mark about 2:30 pm and had a great hike at one of the scenic areas in that area, called RimRock Trail…..century old knarly cedar trees growing out of huge rocks, a very long staircase that descends to the bottom of rocks that are larger than houses, and in the valley below is a beautiful creek with bluffs lined with huge ferns….and a beautiful tunnel created by the huge rocks at the bottom of the stairs as well….

Stairs to Passageways Foot of the Escarpment Narrow Passage Betw Boulders Shaded Steps Passageway 2 Creek and Ferns

…..even tho it was humid as could be and we were drenched by the time we returned to the parking lot 90 min later. Mark had the rest of the day off and decided to travel on down to the steakhouse and have supper with me, so we drove down to Cave-In-Rock and crossed the muddy Ohio River on the ferry and then drove ten miles to the Museum in Marion, Kentucky. We found several of the staff there making final preparations for the weekend working inside…Tina who is in charge of the show and manages the Museum daily, her husband Brad, Sherry who assists Tina with the Museum through the week, as well as David and Janyce Sorrell who serve on the board there and live nearby in Paducah. After visiting with them for a few minutes, Mark and I headed on down to the Days Inn at Kuttawa, where I always stay when down there, so I could get checked in before supper…I had also been in contact with Matthew and Carolyn Lybanon of MAGS, who were going to be there that weekend and let them know what time I would get there so we could go to supper together at the nearby Oasis Southwest Grill…one of the best steakhouses in the country as far as I`m concerned. We arrived at the hotel about 30 min later and freshened up and then as we walked out to walk over to the Oasis, it was threatening to rain, so Matthew loaded us up in his car and drove us over instead. Matthew is the newsletter editor of MAGS, the Memphis Archaeological and Geological Society Club that I have been a member of for several years, and Carolyn is the Hospitality Director for the club as well, both are very nice and good friends as well, we often keep in contact by email and they have gone rockhunting with me in Missouri as well. We had a great visit and supper at the Oasis that evening, and afterwards, Mark and I walked back to the hotel as by then it had stopped raining. Mark headed back to the Carbondale area while I checked my email and walked Onyx before retiring to bed.

Onyx and I were awake by 7 am Saturday morning and after a walk around the hotel, then a good breakfast in the breakfast bar there, we headed toward the Eureka Mine. We arrived 30 min later…I unlocked and opened the gate and then drove on down to the mine to look things over…for many years past, I have always been joined by a good group of rockhound friends there each spring where we rent a trackhoe and operator, and dig out the pit in search of good material and to open up the pit to enable rockhounds that come there thru out the year afterwards, have a much easier time of finding some good crystals to take home with them. In the past few years, the new pit we have been digging had been headed toward the logging road that runs along the mine, this year we actually tied into the road with the pit and had to block it off with large rocks that were pulled from the ground and a berm on the other side of the open pit. Here is what the old pit looks like now, we filled it in at the request of the Museum staff last year, it is tied to the new pit only by a drainage way now…

06 Old Pit Area

Tina and David told me the day before that a private collector from New York state had been there a few weeks prior for a private dig, digging into the spot where my group had stopped with the trackhoe back in April. He dug by hand shovel and apparently found a nice vein there, which resulted in some nice cubes and plates, but also left some great stuff behind for others. Here is how the pit looked when we arrived….

01 Eureka Mine Saturday Morning

…and you can see a small pile in the foreground of the photo above next to my logo, and then there is a huge pile of material dug out and left behind at the other end of the pit….that`s more of the material that he left behind…..

04 Eureka Mine Saturday Morning

I put my boots on cause it was a little soft in places and wet in the pit below, and took my camera with me for a walk around to look for material, so I would have an idea of where to direct diggers to, depending on if they wanted the hard rock mining or easy surface collecting or combing thru the tailings with a handrake…we get all types of diggers showing up shortly after 9 am each day there during the annual show. After walking up on the huge tailing pile first, I was encouraged by what I found on the surface and cubes sticking out just a bit to tease and tantalize, so I knew that folks should be able to find some nice stuff there if they were using just a hand rake or surface collecting on that pile and the piles to the right side of the roadway above the pit. I then climbed down to see how soft the floor of the pit was…there was a small water hole down there but it was mainly just a bit soft mud due to all the rain they had received the day before. Then I walked up toward the end of the pit to check out the material the private collector left behind, and saw some beautiful cubes up there starting about the middle of the pit….

07 Eureka Freshest Tailing Pile

…and the farther up the pit I walked, the better it got…I know some folks were going to be real excited when they arrived and seen all of it sitting there waiting to go home with someone…

08 Eureka Freshest Tailing Pile

…including this beauty just laying there waiting to be selected, wrapped up, and taken home by some lucky collector….

10 Fluorite Crystals On Chunk

11 Fluorite Crystals On Chunk

This photo below shows the end of the pit where we stopped digging in April with the trackhoe and the private collector dug into and tapped into a vein….

05 Eureka Mine Saturday Morning

…I walked back toward the truck to get my crystals and minerals set up on the tail gate of my truck and almost stepped on this guy who was on his way down the small hill toward the watering hole in the pit….

13 Box Turtle

…and soon after, the first two diggers showed up, a wrecking crew of young men from Evansville, Indiana, who immediately headed to the end of the pit with the intent of finding some more nice cubes evidently…..

15 First 2 Diggers Are From Evansville 18 These Two Guys Dug All Day

…and let me tell you, these two guys didn`t even stop for lunch…..brought their own water with them and all their tools too. Mary from Ohio was the next digger, she is a regular like me there…and just like that morning, always arrives early on no matter what….here she is on the right trying to help another digger new to the scene on what to look for in the pit…

20 Mary Moving Around Pit

Many people see others in the pit and automatically think that is the place to be to find some good stuff…they do not realize that in most cases, whether it be a fluorite mine or quartz mine, that that is where the hard rock mining takes place to get to the good stuff and then one has to work even harder and longer to get that good stuff out. In this case, this particular weekend, they were lucky and found some nice stuff laying around on the floor of the pit, having been left behind by that private collector, but it is normally not that way at all. Some folks found that out that weekend, when the good stuff ran out and they wanted to get down to the vein to find some pockets and possibly some plates or single cubes…I was able to explain to most of them that while it is possible to dig down to that vein, you have to be prepared to put some major effort into it, as that vein can be anywhere from six inches to two or three feet under their feet, and they have to remove alot of heavy mud if it is located deeper, then once they find the vein in the bedrock below, they then have to carefully look for the pockets with their hands and fingers…not their rockhammers. Another thing I have to watch for are young kids running around with rockhammers, cause they are naturally kids and always want to find a rock to pound that hammer on…the problem being that if they use those hammers on crystals on the rocks, they will destroy and decimate them very fast and some kids really need to be supervised there because in the past we have seen alot of unsupervised kids that ran around and started hammering on everything in sight, including crystals on rocks that collectors had set up on the bank above where they were working. Kids and some adults have no idea how soft fluorite can be, compared to other crystals like quartz which is much tougher, however one still does not want to hammer them because you can easily cause damage that can not be undone later on. At any rate, more people showed up and I was able to direct them to the right areas for what type of digging or collecting they wanted to do there….you will notice some came prepared for rain which we dealt with til mid morning and then it cleared off and became hot and humid….

14 Diggers Start Showing Up 16 Father and Son on Huge Pile 17 Digging In the Mud In The Rain

19 Others Begin To Show Up

Then about mid morning a young man walked up with a couple of blonde headed boys with him…and introduced himself as James from Hopkinsville….I had talked with him earlier in the week regarding where he could take his boys rockhunting and I had suggested that he bring them to the dig this weekend since it was closeby for them…and here they were arriving…I showed them some easy pickins spots and they quickly started filling their big blue buckets….they were full of energy and fun to watch too…

21 Looking Everywhere For Crystals 22 James Cassata Brought His Boys

A few minutes later, a couple more young boys showed up with their parents in tow, and turns out I had talked to their Mom by email also and made the same suggestion to her as well….here you see Coen about to step off in the mudhole and sink down before I could warn him…luckily his Dad was right behind him and able to rescue him before he sank too deep….and his brother Finn in the red shirt in the second photo with his Mom in the pink shirt on the left side in the pit…..

23 Cohen & His Dad Arriving 24 Fenn Digs Into Wall

…both of these two lads had alot of energy as well and were very knowledgeable about rocks and minerals…I was astounded when they started talking and I could tell how much they knew about minerals and crystals, they were a total joy to be around that day and it was nice to see the parents there that fully supported them in their quest to find some nice minerals. I had that same type of support from both my Mom and Dad 49 years ago when I started collecting rocks and minerals…it sure makes a difference let me tell ya and creates a lifetime of lasting memories as well !! I met a couple of other lads that day that were a little younger than Finn and Coen but just as sharp and keen eyed on crystals and minerals, which really makes my day when out there all day long. Another highlight of my day was when Bill Frazer and Brad Walker showed up to check on us and see how everyone was doing…it`s always a pleasure to visit with these guys…they made sure everyone was okay before heading back to the Museum.

As the day wore on, more diggers showed up, many of them checking out the huge tailing pile since the pit was often full when new folks showed up…..

25 Several Up on Tailing Piles

…and then as we approached 4 pm, we saw some more rain clouds approaching, but the rains held off til closing time before moving in…here you see Mary taking another water break and Onyx nosing around….

26 Mary Takes a Break

..and you can see the two young men still working the end of the pit while others have obviously sifted thru the tailings left in the pit by the private collector…the guy kneeling down in jeans actually dug down into the remains of that pile after Matthew and Carolyn worked it pretty heavily earlier in the day, and this guy found some nice larger matrix pieces with some nice cubes on them….

27 Evansville Guys Still At It 28 Still Going Strong in the Pit

…by 5 pm, most everyone had cleared the pit and piles and remaining diggers were cleaning off in the creek below the bridge…soon after Onyx and I were locking the gate and headed back to the Museum to report the very few problems that we had, and found folks there that were just as tired as we were. I also got to visit with a few of the directors and staff that had not been there on Friday when I arrived.

Onyx and I soon headed back to the hotel to get cleaned up and ready for supper at the Oasis again. On the way there, the storm clouds that we had spotted rolling in around 4 pm, were apparently part of some stray showers that were then followed by another group of clouds that came into view as I was leaving Marion headed south toward the hotel. I stopped a couple of times to photograph them, first catching this rainbow in the first set of clouds, that was a double base instead of an arch…never seen one like that before…

29 Rainbows After Brief Shower 30 Another Storm Rolls In 31 Storm Approaches From North 32 Storm Approaches From North 33 Storm Approaches From North

As I was driving and watching the clouds, I also talked to my buddy Chuck Reed from St Louis County who was camping at Paducah and decided he and his daughter Mackenzie would drive down and meet me at the Oasis for supper that evening. Matthew and Carolyn decided to try another restaurant in the area over on Lake Barkley instead….I stopped at one of my favorite spots to shoot some more clouds…..and then the center mass changed to a light blue mass in just a few minutes, I had never seen anything like that either….

34 Storm Behind Horse Barns 37 Storm Behind Horse Barns 38 Storm Behind Horse Barns 39 Storm Behind Horse Barns

We had a great time, food as usual was very good there again and nice atmosphere as well. Chuck was going to attend the night dig that evening but his plans changed and they were going to head over to Mammoth Cave the next day and then up to the fun park at Santa Clause, Indiana for a few days afterward. We made plans to get together at the Park Hills show which was the following weekend.

Sunday went well too, however I only stayed a few hours in the morning before stopping off at the show to shop a bit before heading home. As always, I had a great time helping everyone out and helping the new and young rockhounds find some nice stuff to take home and enjoy. Email me at jwjphoto7@gmail.com if you have any questions.

Pocket City Wall at MFQ

Posted on June 16, 2016 by jwj

Onyx and I had not been rockhunting for a few weeks, so we drove down to MFQ on Sunday May 29th to see what we could find there. My buddy Jim had been laid up recovering from surgery and so I had no information on the quarry down there, just figured we would drive down and check things out. We got a later start, and arrived about 10 am, finding that the entire west side of the quarry where they had been pushing the hilltop back lately, had been terraced and walls of rock replaced all the clay dirt…..

…the first photo shows the far west end of the area and the lower photo shows the right side of the new area going into the coved wall. I laced my boots up and grabbed my tools and gloves and started a surface hunt from left to right and when I reached the short wall on the right side, had quite a surprise…pockets all over it….

…and I don`t even know if the photo above even does it justice, as the pockets were hard to see until you walked right up on the wall. I was able to photograph several of the pockets as I worked on them as you will see from here on….here are a few of the first ones I started working….

…and pretty soon it was evident I was going to be there for quite a while, because after working several pockets that were visible, I discovered there were one to two pockets more behind the pocket I was working on, hence the name pocket city….so I grabbed another bag of cloths and a bottle of water and kept on pulling crystals from pockets….

…pulling plates of crystals like these out…

…including some nice black dogtooth crystals….

…and this unique pocket too…

All in all, after four hours, I had six bags full of wrapped crystals and plates, some gorgeous stuff, will post some more photos as soon as I get them cleaned up.

MAGsters Rockhunt Missouri 2016

Posted on April 13, 2016 by jwj

Members of MAGS, the Memphis Archaeological and Geological Society, a club I am a member of as well, came up to Missouri two weeks ago to go rockhunting with me at the SS and MFQ areas. Also on that day, I was contacted by a guy out of the Chicago area named Bill, who had his own blogsite….he had contacted me the week before by email, said he was an avid fan of my rockhunting blog site…this site….and that he enjoyed my stories and photos…I was floored, because I had been reading his site recently about some locations he had been to recently, and told him that I enjoyed reading his stories too. He and his girlfriend Debbie were up in the KC area at that time and would be traveling back to the Chicago area by way of the scenic route, they were planning to drive to Potosi to look for druse…I advised him that they might want to avoid that area, because recently many locations where we used to be able to go to and collect both druse and barite at, had become closed to rockhunters. Many of those areas are very rural properties, they have become infested with meth labs and overzealous rockhounds, so property owners in that area are no longer tolerant of rockhounds on their property there. I suggested that he instead join MAGS members on their druse hunt with me…he and Debbie stopped off at my home to visit with me and see my outside rock collection. Before heading on to Potosi for the night, they decided they would drive over the next morning to join MAGS as members and go with us to the druse hunt.

Many of the MAGsters drove up on Friday afternoon, April 1st, some camping out in various areas, some staying in motel rooms…. Onyx and I drove down early Saturday morning to meet them at the meeting spot. We arrived a few minutes before 8 am and soon after, Bill and Debbie showed up, and then some of the MAGS members started showing up as well. WC, the club President, had told me a week earlier that he was not sure how many were coming up for the trip, he figured it might be a small group, but as more and more folks showed up, I decided we had better relocate to a larger parking lot just north of where we were at now.

While waiting for some of the members who had spent the night in Park Hills, Bill and Debbie joined the MAGS Club and I was able to meet Charles Hill, the Field Trip Director for MAGS..I have been talking to him for months but had no idea what he looked like and vice versa I am sure for him…it was nice to finally put a face to the emails. My friends Carrie, Jeff, and Bentley from the KC area, arrived soon after, camping just north of the meeting spot, and I was able to visit with them as well. WC and a few other members arrived soon after from Park Hills, bringing Betty Marler with them…I hadn`t seen Betty in a couple of years and wondered how she was doing. One of her nephews brought her over to join us and she looked and sounded just great…it was a real joy to visit with her that day, she and her husband Lloyd were some of the founding members of the Park Hills Mineral Club, they host the Park Hills Show at the old Federal Mine each year, which over the years has become a well attended and well liked show each year in June.

We soon were all headed down the road to the druse location, everyone following me in single file and we soon arrived there…I pulled over and directed everyone into the entrance, some driving up a small hill to the right and others pulling in to the left side to park…we had several vehicles but had plenty of room for all to park off the road. From there, everyone booted up, grabbed tools and buckets and headed out in different directions to hunt for druse quartz….

05 Bill and Debbie of Chicago

…while there, one of the local neighbors, who lives on down the road, and had invited us to her property when we finished collecting there the year before. stopped by to visit with us and see how we were doing. After collecting there all morning, we drove to a second location, an area that I have often referred to as the secret spot. There were some MAGsters who had inquired about getting some larger druse, and so we drove there because as Onyx and I had discovered a few weeks prior on a scouting trip, there were several large chunks of druse quartz there, and the members that drove over there looking for them, found several nice ones to take home with them. We were there for a couple of hours and then I led a few of the rockhounds still with us, down to the home of a good friend of mine who is a Viburnum Trend mineral dealer…he doesn`t charge an arm and a leg and is very knowledgeable about the minerals that come from the area mines as well. He had several pyrite encased double terminated calcite crystal pieces as well as lead cubes…..

….and those who purchased from him left very happy. Onyx and I headed home, scheduled to meet them at MFQ the next morning at 8:30. Once home, I loaded up the bed of my truck with twelve buckets of grab bag material for the club`s annual show which is held the last weekend in April each year.

Early the next morning, a fire truck woke me up going by my house at 4 am, enroute to a house fire north of town…Onxy and I drove out to the location, where I photographed the fire for the local paper….which I do quite often. It was a devastating fire, the family escaping with only the clothes on their backs and had to break in a front side window to get their grandson out as well.

Forty five minutes later I was back home, editing up a few photos for the paper before heading south once again to meet the MAGSters at the MFQ. We arrived a little after 8 am, to find a couple of members from Mississippi there waiting, and soon after, Charles, Mike, and the rest arrived and we all proceeded down to the coved wall area and spread out to look for goodies, which were high in abundance that day, including many dogtooth crystals found laying all over the place, prime for the picking….

24 Eminence Quarry 26 Eminence Quarry

I walked up on the knob in front of Charles in the middle of the center mass of rock and found a pocket at the base of it…everyone was busy with their own finds, so I grabbed my new mini mattox and was able to dig it out shortly after….

…soon after that, Chuck Reed and family showed up from the St Louis County area…Chuck and his daughter Mackenzie recently joined MAGS…he and I are also members of one of the St Louis area clubs, however MAGS is very proactive with field trips for its members where many clubs these days are not…field trips can be the very lifeblood of a club these days. We hunted there for another couple of hours before folks started heading for home…while I was out helping others find some nice crystals to take home with them…Bob Cooper, the Membership Director for MAGS, transferred the many buckets of grab bag material that I had transported down there in my truck, over to his heavy duty diesel truck to transport back to Memphis. If you find yourself down in the Memphis area the last weekend in April looking for something to do and see, The Earth Wide Open is a great rockhound show to attend there, something for adults as well as the kids. More info can be found on the show at www.theearthwideopen.com

We were finding alot of dogtooth crystals laying all over the floor of the quarry, as well as in several of the berms next to the walls…there were many pockets high up on the wall and it appeared the they had likely rolled out of the pockets and fell to the floor, many of them undamaged by the fall. Needless to say, many who found them, were quite happy with their finds, much easier to pick them up then to have to work a wall pocket to find them. Chuck and his family followed me up to my mineral dealer`s home shortly after everyone took off for home, and we purchased a few more crystals there before heading home as well. A long weekend for sure, but a very worthwhile and nice time visiting with good friends.

Lately, I have found out that several who read my blogsite stories, try to figure out where I am going to rockhunt at. Let me advise you first, that some of the locations I go to, are on private property and require permission to go there…I have that permission to go there and rockhunt there…if you do not have it, or you dont want to make the effort to get it, do not go and trespass there thinking just because I wrote about it, you can use my name to get access, or that it entitles you to go there as well. Those landowners won`t buy your story either, and you will wind up in jail for trespassing, or worse.

This is why I do not list the locations many times, because some assume that they can go there without permission. Do the ethical thing, abide by the laws of the land, make the effort to contact the landowner yourself and secure permission to go there and hunt. It`s not any different from any other type of hunting on private property.

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

JWJ Rocks

Just another WordPress site