BE Clement Mineral Museum Annual Show June 2022

Posted on by

I took the weekend of June 4th off so I could drive down to the B.E. Clement Mineral Museum and visit my friends in Marion, Kentucky and see the show this summer. I used to see my Marion friends a few times a year, back when my group and I were going down to dig out the Eureka Fluorite Mine to help the Board of Directors provide a good digging location each year to the hundreds of rockhounds who visited each month during the public dig season. We truly miss those opportunities these days, as do hundreds of rockhounds who are no longer allowed to go dig there any longer. It is especially saddening, after all the time consuming leg work that Bill Frazer put into getting the mess straightened out, that brought those public and private digs to a screeching halt a few years ago. Bill put his heart and soul into making things right for everyone, exhausting himself doing so, only to then find out that the Board members were split on their decision to re-open it to patient rockhounds who desperately wanted to return to dig there some more. Disheartening to say the least.

I wasn`t able to see Bill or Sherry while there…I had been told by a Board member there, that neither one was at the show and she had no idea where they were even at. I didn`t find out til after I returned home, that Sherry had been at the show and Bill was at home. Needless to say, I wasn`t happy that I had been lied to about that matter, either, as Bill and Sherry are dear friends of mine.

I did get to visit with Gary and Walter Griffith, while I was there…as usual, they were sitting just inside the entryway at a couple of tables covered with fluorites. I had talked to Gary by phone a few weeks before and he told me that they were completely sold out of fluorites, yet here they had some on the table in front of them. When I mentioned that, he grinned and said they had managed to put some back with the show in mind and were able to provide another dump truck load of fluorite chips for the children to dig for outside the Museum. Good people, very resourceful, and great friends.

Walter`s wife came in shortly after I arrived, with their lunch and the grandkids, so I left them to have lunch and went to visit with other dealer friends there, like Jay Tripp from the Bowling Green area of Kentucky, who sells Elmwood Mine material as well as Fluorites from Worldwide sources, and Steve Manley from the Belleville area of Illinois, who collects and sells a variety of crystals and minerals from all over the world….their booths were next to each other so it was easy to visit with them…

the 2 flats at the top are some of Jay`s fluorites and the flat below is Spirit Amethyst from South Africa.

While standing there talking to them, Ed Clement came around the corner and stopped next to me, he was being driven by his daughter, as Ed was recuperating from surgery and unable to walk at the time…I told him it was good seeing him although I would have rather seen him in better health. We visited for a few minutes and then she whisked him off to visit with more folks there. I stayed a few hours and then headed back home. I have been going to the Clement Mineral Museum Shows since 2010.

 

Unique Bladed Barite Piece

Posted on by

I didn`t go rockhounding the summer of 2022 very much, hardly at all, as I was working nearly every weekend at the golf course as we were shorthanded like every other business was.

One day in May, I was up at City Hall making my monthly utilities payment, and stopped in to see my rockhound friend Jan, who is the Secretary to the City Council. She had a huge bladed barite piece sitting on her desk, among the many rocks and crystals I had given her over the years. I had never seen one this color, it was dark grey to black, has a glassy calcite coating on it, with chalcopyrite bobbles and DT calcites on it. She said a local farmer, who worked at Pea Ridge Iron Ore Mine many years ago, had dropped by and gifted her with it. He died a few months later. I was able to identify it by its shape, but like I told her, I had no clue that bladed barite could even be found out there…even though the mine is located well within Washington County…a few miles south of there is the Pea Ridge State Forest and druse quartz is very rarely found out there, except in small sizes and sugary frosting.


Pretty neat piece for sure !!

Geode Fest 2021

Posted on by

Well I thought I had posted this story late last year, but cannot seem to locate it now, so will re-post as much of it as I can remember, meaning the highlights. 🙂

I recall getting up there early last year to visit with vendor friends, namely my buddy John Oostenryk, good friends Charity and Jamey Moog, Dennis Kossow, Kirk the Geode Fest Director, and since 2021 was the first year for Greg Coleman and Johnboy from Haunted Ridge Druse Farm, I wandered over to find them setting up their booth soon after I arrived. They were going to be selling druse quartz from Greg`s farm each day, so naturally I visited with them each day they were there and provided them with insight from my many past experiences during several years of Geode Fest. 

…and across the way from their booth were several tables covered with Viburnum Trend Minerals…albeit expensive ones…and I was especially intrigued with two huge clusters of calcites from the Fletcher Mine that were on display…I dont believe either one sold while there, but they were sure beautiful….here is one….

I was told a day later, that the price tag on it was $ 2500…that prob explains why it didn`t sell while there. I also recall the price didn`t get lowered on the last day, either. Here is another photo of the booths at Geode Fest 2021….

Pete Hahn came up on Saturday, to help Johnboy and Greg work their booth, and went out hunting with me on Sunday morning. The first couple of days I went hunting with John and Sie Shell from Northwestern Iowa, went with us. I had met Shell a year or two before, she is a friend of my Tennessee Rockhound friend Abigail, who has been under the weather for a couple of years now with some health related problems, we hope to see her back out rockhounding with us soon. Shell joined John and I on one of the Railroad Creek locations, upstream from our friend Josh`s place. As usual, Shell and I could not keep up with John that morning….

I had two buckets filled fairly quickly and decided to go back to my truck with them…on the way, I snapped a photo of Shell posing next to the creek…

I remember posting this photo of her on my FB page and several comments from good friends here locally, saying ” they now understood the obsession of rocks now “……or something like that. I got a good chuckle out of it.  🙂   

It was pretty warm last year and I recall visiting the Amish booth with the home made ice cream a few times that weekend. Each evening, several of us went out to eat to the Italian Restaurant in downtown Keokuk, Angelini`s Ristorante is what it`s called, great low light atmosphere inside a remodeled storefront on Main Street and great food, too….

Josh and his wife Jennifer, joined us each evening for dinner there and we sampled the wine selections as well.

Saturday morning Shell and I went back to Railroad Creek and walked downstream to a few locations, she wanted to check out a secret location for geodes…we dug there in the hillside for a bit, didnt find much, and then we walked on down the creek to another place where I had good luck finding good stuff, geodes and calcite chunks, along with John and Chuck Reed, a few years before…we dug into that short bank for quite a while…

I think the best days of collecting were the first day and the last day…Pete and I went to Josh`s Railroad Creek Farm location on Sunday morning, got there ahead of the crowd by different route, and walked upstream to a certain spot we had been directed to, that supposedly had purple interior geodes. I called to check on Shell, and she told me she was preparing to head home early, had changed into her clean clothes and was headed out the door, then asked where we were going…told her we were on our way to RR Creek to find the purple interior geodes…and the line went quiet for a long second, and then she freaked out, decided she would join us, and showed up about 15 minutes later. She wasn`t real happy about it, but excited to see what could be found…amethyst in geodes seems to really bring out the ” FREAK ” in some people. 🙂

As we were walking down thru the brush on a short cut to the creek, I was leading the way with Shell behind me narrating one of her many videos for her sales page, and I recall her telling her people ” that she had woke up that morning and decided to head home, but then received a phone call from some a__hole who told her he and a friend were going to a location that is known to have purple interior geodes…. so she had to change back into her dirty clothes and drive over to join them and now was following the a__hole thru the brush to the location. ” 

I was chuckling about it then, thinking whatever, not like we twisted your arm and made you come with us, sounded like a bit of whining to me. I didnt realize she was recording it til later, when I had several friends see her video and emailed me to tell me she was referring to me as the a__hole on the video, and they were not happy about it. I was like whatever but I understand that she had some blowback on it and this year when I saw her, she apologized for it. We remain good friends. We dug into that bank like there was no tomorrow, and while we found a few geodes, we didn`t find many we could keep due to the size and very few of them felt hollow…

…when you arent finding good stuff…you dont last long at that location and tend to move on to another…

She also got a bit perturbed with me for cracking open my geodes right then and there, when I was pulling them out of the mucky clay mud and dirt…it was dry dirt under the tree roots and clay mud all over the rest of the bank. I was pulling cannonball sized geodes out and while I did break some into three pieces, I also managed to cleanly break a few hollows into just halves…like this pair….

many of the ones I smashed into a million pieces weren`t that great to look at anyway, so no big loss to me, and I wasn`t setting a bad example for any younger rockhounds as there was no one around us for awhile anyway. As far as I recall, we did not find any geodes with amethyst inside them, but we had a good workout and a good time trying. She headed home soon after that and I returned to the booth area to visit with friends before heading home.

John showed me some geodes he picked up from a dealer a few booths away…

…and I snapped a photo of a couple of guys holding one of the biggest geodes I had seen that weekend, one that John cracked open for them soon after I returned to the venue…

I also found out that Greg and Johnboy had done well on druse quartz sales, they were able to sell everything they brought with them. 

 

 

Barites From Washington County

Posted on by

Well I am finally getting some time off, boss decided to trust the weather forecasters and believe this winter, Nov 2022 into March 2023, is going to be harsh and snowy, and laid all of us part timers off for the winter season. Now I have some time to catch up on some of my trips and stories and photos. I am reminded weekly from readers how much they like to read my blog site…thanks for your patience. My email is jwjphoto7@gmail.com if you want to send me any additional comments.

These are some of the barites I have collected in the past year in Washington County, near Potosi, on private property locations. I heard about Blue Barite long before I ever saw it in person, and so far, I have only found it at one location in Washington County…before this, I had only found Bladed Barite and thought it to be the prettiest barite I have seen…I can now safely add Blue Barite, Crystalline Barite, and Turtleback Barite, to that list of pretty barites.

Here is a flat of Crystalline Barites that I found earlier this spring, I need to clean them up a bit more, however I like the clay coloring on the barite to some level…this level at least, as it makes it easier to distinguish the texture of the crystalline…….

the second photo shows some on my tailgate after cleaning them in Iron Out, so you can see the difference between clean and cleaner. Some of these are crystalline barites on druse quartz and some art turtleback barites on druse quartz, these were found at a newer location in Washington County.

The next photos show blue barites along and some on druse quartz, from the same location as those above….

Some of the best Bladed Barites I have found, have come from a tailings dam location at the north end of Washington County, and from an old mining community near the south end of Washington County….

…and one plate I found at the newer location which is what I would call northwest Washington County…a small section of the barite attached to some beautiful rootbeer colored druse….

Recently my group and I discovered some really pretty Bladed Barites at a new location…stay tuned for the new story on that location…

 

Arkansas November Fall Trip 2020

Posted on by

My apologies for the delay on this trip story…I usually have the story in here within two weeks of my return from Arkansas, but in December, I began helping the landowner of Haunted Ridge Druse Farm near Potosi, kickstart the opening of his farm to rockhounds from all over the state of Missouri at first, Mineral Clubs and then after the first of the new years, we made the farm available to rockhounds across the country…the initial hangup being the liability waiver…at first it was created for clubs only and he had his attorney draw one up for individual rockhounds instead. I am now working with a second landowner and getting him set up with groups and clubs as well at a more relaxed pace.

At any rate, we had a pretty good time quartz crystal collecting once again in the Hot Springs and Mount Ida areas, with a couple of snags thrown in that kept us on our toes and changed our schedule just a wee bit. Slade made it down for the fun this time around again as did Chris Bryant and his son, and David Bruce. I took most of the photos with my phone this time around, mainly because our weather was  a bit wet at times when we were out digging for crystals.

The first snag for Onyx and I was the inability to stay at my friend`s condo on Lake Hamilton this time around. Due to the Covid Sham early last year, the Condo owners could not find anyone to stay at their rentals, so they rented them instead, to people looking for a condo to stay at for months at a time instead. Cant blame them, but sure did inconvenience a lot of us tourists and makes one wonder if they will get back to allowing tourists to stay there or not. I booked a small suite at La Quinta Inn and Suites for a week instead this year and they put us up on the 3rd floor and right over the front door with a nice view of the car lot next door and the sunrise each morning. I had bigger windows than any other room or suite in the hotel…think they were about ten foot high and six feet wide !!  Slade had stayed there on his previous trip a few years ago and liked it so well he stayed there again this time, too.

Onyx and I got on the way down there fairly early in the morning, intending to stop off at Justin`s with a load of flats and some larger druse plates, that he was in need of for his online store. He always has some nice and neat stuff, so I purchased a nice calcite from Mexico from him…pretty neat looking material….

When I reached out to Tony about his Southfork Mine over the late summer months, I discovered that he had sold the mine to Dane, his good friend from San Diego that had moved to Arkansas, tired of the California politics, the year before, and then Dane helped Tony out the year before, when Tony threw his back out and couldnt come meet us at the gate to let us in. So I called Dane and set it up to go to his mine on Friday morning and dig all day, and he met us at the gate that morning. Dane`s wife drove down in her jeep and Chris` son liked the jeep so well, he rode on up to the mine in her jeep…

We had some new folks join us this trip from the Tulsa area, Darla and Bill Rogers, both new to rockhunting, but they got their initial start at one of the easiest mines to dig in and find stuff in. They both got a good workout in and had a blast finding nice crystals. Tony had done some digging on the left side of the pit of the lower mine and hit some nice quartz, and we were able to do some more hand digging to find even more.

Slade and David Hodge went up to the higher wall area of the lower pit mine, where John and others had had good success with large crystal points in years past…

Patty, Colby, and Gabriella worked the short wall the left side of the newer pit on the left side, at least they started out there and we were all looking for some signs of a crystal pocket…when we all spotted something, we simply dug in and worked to pull crystals out…Patty spotted some crystals in a small pocket up high on the rock and had to twist and contort herself so as to get her arm into the pocket to pull crystals out…she is a real trooper tho, she worked that pocket pretty much all day to harvest quite a haul in crystals…

Darla and Bill Rogers are working pockets on the far left side above…


That is Dane above on the right side…talking to me as I am photographing Patty up on the rock working the pocket…

..and that is Colby and Gabriella on the left side of the rocks as Patty is climbing and stretching to pull more crystals out of that narrow pocket…I prob wouldn`t have been able to move well the next day, had I contorted myself as she did that day.

Onyx and I found a nice pocket and settled in that morning to liberate quite a few nice crystals from it…

We worked the lower pit for awhile, and I took that bucket back to the truck, grabbed another one and then we walked up to the old mine at the top of the hill and after a bit, I found yet another pocket up there and liberated some more crystals and small clusters…

…this is the view at the top of the hill…

…the wind rustles through those pine trees and is music soothing to the ears let me tell ya…I could have stretched out on my tailgate and gone right off to a nice nap for sure…

Lots of  history at that old mine on top of the hill, too…and the tailings up there produce year after year, beautiful small and large clusters can be found just by digging down into the soft clay dirt up there.

Here are a few of Patty`s finds from that pockets…she sent me these photos in December…

We headed back to our hotels by 4 pm, worn out and happy..Dane let us know if we ran out of places to go, we could always come back another day.

The next morning we were looking forward to going to a new mine just northwest of Mt Ida…I had contacted the owner, Tommy Wingfield, about it, the charge there was $ 25 per adult, but he had assured me that he was finding really nice quartz crystals and clusters there and occasionally pockets of green chloride quartz had been found there too.

A guy that Justin knows well, had been there and he verified to Justin that what he had found was truly a pocket of green chloride quartz, so we were stoked and amped to go and see what we could find. Saturday morning was threatening rain showers about 9 am, so we got there early, paid our fees and walked up to the top of the hill on the west side of the parking area, which is at the foot of the hill from both the east hill mine and west hill mine. Tommy told us in the parking lot that he would start us on the west side hill and see how we did, and let us dig on the east side hill the next day, said there was a pit on the far side of the west side hill that we were welcome to dig in as well. When Slade, Justin, and David Hodge got up there, all they found was a trench cut, no pit, and after digging around in the trench and finding very little for their efforts, we all started wondering if we had been taken.

The ground up there was not clay dirt at all, alot of multi colored shale and massive quartz laying all over the place…the rock in the trench cut was more of a wet muck, very rocky and difficult to dig into and see what you were looking at…icky is the word that came to my mind. Patty and Colby had dug into some tailing piles and the rest of us wandered around looking to the ground for sparkles…I saw none…no one else was finding anything either…Chris and his son were finding nothing as well. Tommy kept walking around telling us there were crystals to be found all over that hillside…we were wondering where they were if they were up there…and after two hours of digging all over up there, the heavens opened up and a deluge of rain began falling…we all picked up our buckets and tools and ran down the hill to our vehicles…waiting it out inside them…when the rains stopped, we all gathered together in the parking lot and decided we had had enough of this place and wanted to go somewhere else.

I asked David Hodge to call Wegners and see if we could go up to the Phantom Mine…so he did and found out there was a small group going soon and we were welcome to join them, so we jumped in our vehicles and headed that way. Patty and Colby had been there on Thursday and let us know they had great luck and found some great stuff there. She told me later that Tommy saw us all drive off and was disappointed we didnt stick around and try harder to find some good crystals…we all wondered what he was smoking !!

We arrived at Wegners with time to spare, paid our fee for the Phantom Mine, discovered Mike, an old friend, was our driver to the mine once again, and all of a sudden we were all stoked once again to go find some good stuff. We were confined to the tailing piles only but we had a good time and did wind up finding some nice stuff.

Above is Chris Bryant on the left, talking to Justin in the middle, and Chris` son on the right…and Onyx camped out next to Justin….

You pay for five hours of digging time and take home whatever you want from there. Mike had turned over the piles the day before we were there and did a pretty good job of it. I filled two buckets but purchased a couple of small plates of better stuff when we returned to the gift barn. Mike also took me down into the basement to see a few hundred clusters that he and a few other miners had harvested from pit pockets the week or two before we arrived…talk about CANDYLAND !!

I texted Dane to let him know of our dismal situation and he graciously offered his mine to us for sunday, so we drove back over there again and had another great time exploring and collecting there. Despite a few setbacks and one definite learning experience about a joke of a mine and mine owner, we still had a good time digging and collecting beautiful quartz crystals.

One sidenote, Shane texted me around Christmas and said he and Tony hoped to be able to offer us another good mine to dig at in the fall of 2021, their new mine near Jessieville and he also hinted at possibly another place as well. Looking forward to it.