I wish I could say I found yet another blue poker chip pocket for two days in a row, but I cant, cause I didnt.  I did find yet another pocket the very next day after the blue hole though and on the other side of the lower level.  As we were driving down there we came across this nice scene in a valley nearby….

…and once we  arrived, the clouds were once again very noticeable…and even though it was a little warm, there was a nice breeze blowing through thanks to the clouds.

…I had decided to try and dig down into that pocket and see just how deep it would go and if anything was in it…I stopped in Steelville at Casey`s,  and purchased a cheap flashlight, having gone off and left my really good one at home again. As it was, I didnt need it for this pocket, cause after digging down a little ways with the mini mattox, I bottomed out real quickly….

…so I backed off and tried a different route, thinking maybe there was a deeper pocket there nearby and I just wasnt sitting in the right spot for it. I dug down into every hole I could see and never did find a deep pocket anywhere, just lots of little shallow pockets and a few crystals.

..so I took a break after digging there for a couple of hours and drank some water, as it was starting to heat up again, and then decided to move about ten feet north and try my luck again….

…and as luck would have it, after scratching around and finding some signs of calcite….

…I soon had another pocket scouted out and quickly taking shape…

…and I no sooner had a small pile of crystals growing than  the pocket started moving in that direction and I had to move them to the right about three feet…as it was, I had to move them twice to the right….

…this pocket formed up fairly fast, with a large and extensive base plate that had a couple of clusters on it, but each one was about six inches thick and then attached to a thick shelf of rock underneath. I tried chipping out the clusters just to make it easier to access the holes leading to what I figured was a deeper pocket underneath the clusters, but the rock and calcite the clusters were attached to, wore me out fast. I finally decided to just go on and dig out around the edges more and see where that might lead to…

…holes were opening up all over the place when I was digging and scratching around. you can see a hole above, this one only led down to the side of the cluster there, but then when I got down to the side of the cluster, another hole opened up, leading me to think there was either a pocket underneath the cluster or off to the side into the rock….

…so on and on I dug…sometimes stopping to pull out a plate of druse or a poker chip….

…and pretty soon, more holes along with ledges, were opening up so I was exploring more and more, thinking eventually I might find a big pocket somewhere nearby that was chock full of crystals.

…I wish now I had had my little paint brush with me to sweep away the loose dirt and gravel, that would have made things much easier, something else to put on my list of things to bring along…in the next few minutes, a huge cluster revealed itself to me and a large hole opened up next to it….

…I reached down into this hole, it was pretty big…and I pulled out a couple of nice crystals…so I naturally continued to dig some more...it would have been nice to remove this huge cluster, but as I said before, it was firmly rooted to the base of the pocket with thick calcite. I hear so much about calcite not being very tough, only having a hardness of four, but let me tell you, when you start driving a chisel into it, you would swear it was more like a hardness of eight ! Wears you out real quickly.

I took another water break and then started trying to dig this cluster out, see how big it was, and in the process I discovered yet another pocket to the right of it, under a ledge of rock….

…and yet another hole opened up on the left side, right by that cluster of crystals…

…by this time, I was starting to wear down from the heat and the digging….I had tried to break into the clusters and chip them out and that alone wore me down…and I was going from hole to hole exploring and trying to find a way down into what I assumed was a pocket off to the side of those clusters, but I wasnt having much luck getting into any pockets yet. I started scratching around again and low and behold, an even bigger hole opened up right in front of me and not near the cluster either…

…I went back to the truck and grabbed my new flashlight and aimed it into the hole and it appeared the hole was fairly deep….

…so I started digging out the pocket on the left side and making my way toward the hole in the pocket to the right….

…and as I did, more ledges and holes appeared. I started pulling more crystals and druse plates out right and left….

…including one very nice large twin….

…the pocket finally joined up with the other pocket, and sure enough, it was a deep one….

…I kept pulling large crystals out of it and chipping off the roof to move it back…prob moved it back at least two feet before I ran out of gas….

…I laid down on my side and set the camera down on the floor of the pocket and using the flash, shot this photo of the interior of the pocket….

..it was jammed full of large poker chip crystals…no I did not leave those inside the pocket intentionally…yes I ran out of energy, but if at all possible, I still would have reached in and removed them…had Mother Nature let me…they were firmly rooted to the bottom of the pocket like superglue…so that is how I left them….for another day.

On the way out, I shot some beautiful sunsets of the thunderheads overhead in the sky….

I decided to take my short day off the first weekend of July, after a long week of brush fires and a fun filled week at work, and drove down to the secret spot again to see if I could locate another pocket.  Missy and I arrived and I decided to do a little walking around to see what I could find in the rockpile first. I found a huge boulder with some pockets on it right away….

…but I didnt attempt to liberate any.

I moved around to the other side of the rock pile and looked around at some areas where the foliage was growing and decided to start digging into those areas to see if I could find another pocket. We have discovered that the foliage usually takes root in some deep pocket holes,  and they have led us to some nice pockets in the past. I started digging here first…

I started digging down by this small bush…

and within a few minutes, I had found some signs of calcite off to the side of it, so I moved over to the area of the roots….

…and within a few minutes of intense digging, I pulled out these two plates, which is a better sign of a pocket very closeby….

I was surprised, not expecting to find roots so thick and long, and began wishing I had brought a saw or an axe with me. These things were long and getting in my way fast. I continued to dig and expand the pocket despite the long and tough roots….

…after expanding the pocket around the bush roots, I started finding little ledges down underneath and then some holes started opening up as well, usually an indication of a pocket underneath the ledges….

…so I started digging out the ledges and within a few minutes, I was rewarded for my efforts with this beautiful poker chip….

…after taking a short water break, I began the task of taking on the roots once again….

…and boy were they tough….couldnt even bend them to move them out of my way…

…I soon got tired of fighting these roots and so I moved to my left about five or six feet and discovered yet another pocket area and began working it…no bushes or roots to deal with there…and within about thirty minutes of digging it out, I had a nice pile of crystals….

…this pocket started on the left side, where I hit the calcite base pretty quickly and then it moved to the right where it went deeper….most of the crystals in the pile above came from the deeper end of the pocket…

…and I was pulling a variety of plates and crystals from it….

…and pretty soon I was wore out and ready to wrap up everything and head for home…it was hot and I was soaked in sweat and dirt……think those roots prob wore me out more than anything.  As I headed home, I began to see storm clouds forming to the north near the interstate and I sure hoped we would get some more rain soon after….

…and here is the storm moving east along the north side of the interstate as I am driving home…it did rain about 30 minutes later and we received about half an inch of rainfall. it was a welcome relief, but we definitely need more, as does most of the country. I have never seen a drought like this before. I sure hope we all get some good rainfall soon and a break from this excessive heat spell, too.

I rearranged my schedule twice this weekend and drove back down to the secret spot early Saturday morning…they were calling for a high of 106, so Missy and I got up at 4 am and were on the road forty five minutes later. Docia wouldnt be able to make it down, she had a memorial service to go to for an aunt, so it would just be Missy and I this trip down. I hoped for a good five hours to work that pocket over some more after Tuesday evening. We arrived just after 6 am and got started on the north end of the pocket…..

…within a few minutes, I hit a shallow pocket, that contained a few single chips with a black center, and then a twin with black colored centers popped out as well….

..the pocket stayed shallow and didn`t go very far, trapped between two larger pockets as it were….

…and produced these guys…..

…after a few minutes, it didnt appear to me that the pocket was going anywhere on the north end, so I switched to the south end and began digging once again and pretty soon it appeared that I had chosen the right path….

…pretty soon I started seeing crystals and holes again started appearing…this time I decided I wasnt going to get my hopes up…if a hole led to something bigger and better, so be it, but if now, oh well….

…one thing was for sure, I was finding some plates and chunks of a pretty orange colored bubbly druse…..

…and within a few minutes, the pocket was expanding and filled with poker chip crystals nestled in the clay mix of dirt and mud, just like the day before….

…I was pulling them out of the pockets right and left, until all that was left were bigger ones, some attached to the side walls and some loose but in the sticky clay mud…..

…after a few more minutes of digging out the crystals and chipping out a few of the larger ones attached to the sidewalls, I found a large chunk right in the middle of two pockets…it had some chips attached to the base of it, but I wasnt sure if it was going to lead to something else or was an end to the pocket….

…I grabbed ahold of it and found it to be a bit loose, so I dug around the back side of it, which was no easy task let me tell you…that dirt on top attached at the back was like concrete, due to the dry heat we have been experiencing lately. After ripping it back and away though, it was looking like I might be able to move this huge chunk out of there soon…..

…I grabbed it again and this time it came right out…I turned it over and was like….HOLIE COW !!!!!

…a very happy guy….and was beginning to think it was Christmas in June, lol….removing this druse combo opened up another nice pocket of crystals behind it….

…which at first appeared to me as an endwall of the pocket, but the next plate I pulled out, changed my mind again…..

…and closer up….

…and then I took a short break, got some water, and chipped this twin with a base to it out…..

…pretty soon though, it was apparent that I was nearing the end of the pocket, plus I was getting tired, and the heat level was rising. I took another short break and got another bottle of water, and put Missy in the truck and turned the ac on…it wasnt going to be long before I would be joining her so I wanted it nice and cool when I got in there.

I came back and dug a little more and finally hit the end wall and removed what I could…I was fast running out of steam and the humidity just kept climbing….it was sapping my strength quickly…

…I returned to my truck and retrieved another two bags full of cloth wraps and returned and wrapped as many of the nicer ones and then filled two bags full of poker chip single crystals alone….here is what the pocket looked like after I finished digging…from three feet long at the start to now over nine feet long….

…and after wrapping up the goodies, I took one last look around and saw this spot, with a big weedy looking shrub growing up out of it and dug down a little ways…wanted to see how deep the roots went for one thing, not very far I found out but did find some signs of calcite down below…so maybe a good spot to explore further the next time….…sure hope its cooler by then…luckily we did get a spotty shower this evening and about twenty minutes of rainfall, but it didnt rain many other places….hope everyone is staying cool and hydrated out there this summer. As soon as I get some cleaned up from yesterday`s dig, I`ll post some more photos.

I hadnt been down to the secret spot for a few weeks, so Tuesday evening,  Missy and I loaded up and headed that way at 4 pm…this was before the record heat levels set in, so the evening temps were cooling down instead of heating up. By the next day, everything reversed and that all went out the window.

We arrived a little after 5 pm and the pocket I was intending to expand, was out in the direct sunlight, so I opted to check out other areas instead. I briefly walked around the pile of rocks to see if any new disturbances showed signs of life, but I moved over to a shady area, that I had previously worked before all the blasting occurred, and decided to try some of the areas where vegetation was showing….

…I`m not sure why we never checked these strips of vegetation before, but I sure plan on doing more of it now….

…we have found alot of pockets going where the vegetation is at and there were rows of vegetation in this area between slabs of rocks…if there is one thing we have learned, its that the floor here appears to be chock full of pockets in various areas….

…and while sometimes it takes a bit of time to find a pocket, today it didnt take long at all before I found some promising signs of a good pocket nearby…..

…I kept on digging down and pretty soon was seeing poker chips all over the place popping up in the clay dirt below…in fact, I found the clay dirt so tightly packed around these crystals, it reminded me of the way the clay dirt protects Arkansas quartz crystals too….

…and in some ways, this pocket was completely different than others I have found nearby…each time a hole would open up like the one below, I got a bit excited and anticipated a pocket or cavern opening up below….

…so I would back off and widen out the pocket area, thinking maybe I would get some indication of whether or not there really was a cavern of crystals below that hole…..

…and while I would pull a nice variety of poker chip crystals out of that widening detail….

…and while it gave me good indications of which way the pocket was going to move in and how wide it would go…..

…and how deep it might extend…..

….despite all that, and the fact that even more holes opened up throughout all this effort, as shown below, there were no caverns or cavities or pockets down below at all…..

…but I was never disappointed the whole time in as far as what I found during the three hours I was there…lots of bubbly druse plates, some with crystals attached, and some beautiful poker chips in singles, twins and triples….

…and within a few minutes, yet another hole opened up…which basically turned out to be a hollow spot under this cluster of poker chips that was attached to the side of the pocket, but since it was hollow underneath, I had high hopes of chipping it out later….

…and as it was…I was able to chip it out and it turned out to be a nice cluster, although it doesnt look like it here. I kept digging and the pocket kept on expanding in a seam like fashion…..

I stopped to take a water break, and returned with my four pound hammer and chisels, and was able to chip out a few nice clusters….

…as well as a few nice plates of druse and chips combined….

…and so the pile continues to grow….

…and pretty soon I had a pile of clusters big and small sitting nearby as well….some days you can chip them out and some days you only tear them up it seems like…today was producing some nice ones….

…and I was even able to chip out a nice druse plate with a chip or two attached…I gave this one to my friend Kaye…she wanted to come with me but had to go to a memorial service instead this evening….

..and below are some of my finds after cleaning them up a bit with soap and water….

this next little guy was kind of unique…it looks like another poker chip attached to a plate of druse from this side….

…but when you turn it over, here is the backside, which I normally dont get to see…..

…and this next one was actually laying loose below a huge chunk of bubble druse…I had reached under the chunk and tried to wiggle it back and forth and bring it out by itself…but it wouldnt budge, and not wanting to risk damaging it, I left it alone. Instead I took my hammer and chisel and knocked the back end of that chunk loose and then was able to retrieve this beauty afterwards….

…after taking a closer look at it, one might say it has damage, and maybe it does, maybe it happened with that chunk came down, maybe it happened before when it possibly fell off on its own…doesn`t matter to me, I still like it….even if they don`t.

…and between these beauties and this twin below…I was convinced that I needed to return and see if that pocket would expand and produce more than it did today….

…so I decided to come back a few days later…..stay tuned….

I meant to have this story posted by Sunday night, but a bee interrupted my plans and stung me instead….I didnt feel the sting, which is unusual for me as bees and wasps normally get me pretty good, but I hadnt sat down at my computer to work on the story for ten minutes til I def felt the symptoms coming on…at first I figured I was imagining things, since I hadnt felt any sting nor had I been stung in about ten years….so when my hands started tingling and the light itching sensations came on, I started thinking maybe I had ate something that I was allergic to…but no, I hadnt ate anything for hours, so knew it couldnt be that….then when my throat started swelling and my airway tightening up, I knew it had to be an insect sting….and started looking for one, and found one shortly thereafter on my chest. It didnt have the telltale signs of a major sting, so I grabbed one of my allergy pills and within a few minutes, my throat muscles started relaxing and the itching started to ease up as well. I called Dr. Mom as well and she suggested I put some rubbing alchol on the sting wound and then take a zyrtec….this was around 9 pm Sunday evening and by 9:30 pm, the zrytec was making me sooooo drowsy that all I wanted to do was climb into bed and go to sleep…so thats what I did folks and it was 8 am Monday morning before I woke back up. All day Monday, I was groggy from the sting effects so I just basically rested up and didnt do much til it was time to go to work that evening.

Missy and I got up early, 3:30 am and got on the road by 4 am, headed south to Eminence to meet up with Docia and her grandson, David, who I hadnt seen for a couple of years, as he lives in Alabama and only comes up to visit with them occasionally. David enjoys rockhunting though so we were looking forward to seeing him once again. We took our normal route, down Hwy 19 and 49 to Viburnum, and then down Hwy KK and TT, 72, and then B to 106 and back west to Eminence. These roads are all well maintained and lots straighter and less hilly than Hwy 19, and actually twenty miles less traveling than if I took the traditional route through Rolla and Salem.  We were about twenty miles down Hwy B, when I came around a corner and a full size deer jumped out in front of me, luckily I wasnt going real fast and was able to slow down enough to let her get on across in front of me in about three leaps…she sure was pretty, her color a reddish brown, and we continued on down the road. We arrived at the quarry about ten minutes ahead of David and Docia, and I went ahead and changed to my boots and then started digging in the hillside where I had dug the previous pockets out…

…some stuff had been pushed down from above to the ground floor on the other side, so we would have another pile to check out for goodies later on…..

…as it was, Docia spotted a pocket of poker chips near that pile and told me about it later on, and so I checked it out when the pockets on the hillside played out. On their arrival, I gave Docia the gift that Steven and April Gibbs, of MAGS in Memphis, had given to me at Marion, Kentucky, a few weeks back and asked me to convey to her. She opened it up and found a beautiful wire wrapped druse quartz necklace that they had made special for her. She was very happy let me tell ya.

She and David started digging near me on the hillside and quickly began finding pockets of dolomite druse as I had been finding just prior to their arrival. We found several of those pockets, but only very shallow pockets of the poker chips, even though we pretty much covered that entire hillside and twenty feet in both directions as well.

Docia took a walk around the walls and came back about an hour later with some bags of goodies, but was having problems with her blood pressure and so they left soon after about mid morning. Prior to leaving she told me about a section of the wall that looked like an apparent pocket of poker chips. I worked the wall for pockets  near the hillside for another thirty minutes and then drove over to check out this possible wall pocket. I parked in the shade of the wall and left Missy inside with the ac on full blast, since by now the temps outside were about 92 degrees and still warming up.

I grabbed a couple of bags and my mini mattox and walked over to the short wall and after scanning it a few minutes, noticed several poker chips attached to a matrix and began working a few loose from the matrix with the mattox tool. I had some white cloths in the bags and pulled them out and laid these poker chips on the cloths. Pretty soon I had a bag full of chips and some nice dolomite druse plates as well, and it looked like a pocket was opening up to the right of the main pocket I was working on, and behind one of the large chunks I was working on, so I took a break, and went back to get another bag and my four pound hammer and chisels, as it looked like I was going to have to pop a few of the bigger chunks out. After taking a big drink of water, I came back and popped a couple of the larger chunks of poker chips in matrix out of the wall…. 

then chiseled one out to the right, and sure enough, it looked like another pocket of chips was located behind the chunk of matrix to the right of the first pocket, as seen below……

…and closer up as seen below…..

..its kinda funny when I think back now to what I had first found in the first pocket, compared to what I was about to find in this second pocket and then the next pocket behind it as well…there was no comparison…the photo below shows some of the first material from the first pocket, and it doesnt even compare to the photo above….

…and below is one of the chunks I popped from the wall, to get to this second pocket, and you can see it is chock full of gray colored and some green colored, poker chips….very nice after washed off….

and a side view of it as well…..

…and while there was some dolomite druse in this pocket with the poker chips. alot of the poker chips I pulled out were in a brown dolomite matrix mainly, but still quite pretty.  I worked this pocket and then a third pocket opened up behind the second one, and I started pullign crystal clusters out right and left…..until utter exhaustion set in and I just couldnt do anymore. I took a short break, got some more water, and then I spent thirty minutes to wrap and bag all the clusters and chunks,  and we were soon on the way home by a little after noon.

All in all, I filled five bags alone from this one pocket and had about fifteen bigger chunks from it as well as some found on the floor below the pocket that had rolled loose from the wall in colors of green, gray, and black, and a few chocolate browns. I`ll get some extra photos of them posted tomorrow. Here is what the pocket looked like after I ran out of steam…..

On the way home, on the short stretch of Hwy 72, we spotted a beautiful eagle gliding toward us about a hundred feet up or less. I dont always get to see eagles….we seem to see alot of buzzards and chickenhawks….. he sure was pretty and a sight to behold….. they just look so majestic to me when I see them gliding along like that. I still wish I had stopped and tried to get the camera on him.  I know where he roosted, so maybe the next time I`m down that way I can spot him again, and photograph him.

Here are a few more photos of the nice poker chips I found nestled in matrix or dolomite druse down there….

Last weekend I planned to take off Sunday and return to MFQ to look for more poker chips, but some of my co-workers needed my day off instead, so I re-arranged my schedule and came home late Saturday night, then got up early and drove to MFQ and dug for two hours instead. Missy and I arrived about 9:30 am and found it to be a little overcast, even misted on us for about ten minutes on the way down there,  but it was cooler so I didnt mind at all…this is how it looked when we arrived…..

…wound up working the end of the bank on the left in the photo above…which is where I had been digging at on Memorial Day when Mike and Chrissy were here…and was trying to find a pocket of poker chips nestled in the dolomite druse so Mike could work it and take some nice specimens home with him.  As luck would have it, I hit a pocket of them today and was only about ten inches from where I had been digging that day….I walked up to the bank after we arrived and I changed into my work boots, and found chunks and pieces of clusters of poker chips and dolomite druse, that had rolled down to the bottom of that pile….

…so I knew they had to be rolling down from a pocket up above somewhere…so I started digging to the left side of my pocket on Monday, and sure enough, within about ten minutes, I located a pocket of chips and dolomite druse….

…not knowing how big this pocket would be, compared to the pocket I found there in the same bank back in the late fall last year…and knowing I had only a few hours to dig there…I didnt waste any time getting the pocket opened up to see what all was inside….

…when I was there early December last fall, Ashley and I had found a few pockets of the dolomite druse on the bluff at a higher level up…but back then, there was a dirt bank sloping up to the higher level and this time there was no sloping dirt bank up the bluff at all. In fact, as I stood there and looked on down the bluff where that pocket had been located in December, I was a good ten to twelve feet below it and probably thirty feet to the right of it, good evidence that these pockets can be found anywhere in this bluff wall. That pocket in December, also took a few hours to clean out and filled four of my bags and probable four of Ashley`s bags, too.

I decided to expand this opening so I could reach in and pull out crystals without too much trouble, and the first big piece I removed in so doing, was this one….

…a nice chunk laced with pockets of dolomite druse, that resembles chalcopyrite when held in the sunlight, it just glitters and speckles…and this chunk had two nice poker chips perched on one corner of it. The next one I chipped out, was even bigger and had a double poker chip of a chocolate brown color, nestled in a patch of dolomite crystals, on one end of it….

…and seen closer up here….

…and then I reached into the now expanded pocket and began pulling loose crystals out of it…the first one I pulled out loose was this gray colored poker chip on matrix….

…followed by this nice little round dark gray colored poker chip, the center of which was almost black in color….

…I had to do some more expanding and pretty soon, I came up to the back of the pocket, which was the bluff wall, and the pocket turned to the right and then went down into the rock more, but there was evidence that there were more gray colored poker chips in matrix as well….

…I was just going to have to chip them out of the matrix to free them.

I began hearing some bird noise and I turned around to see buzzards circling above the big wall…and then they all landed in this lone tree at the top of the wall….

…thinking there were more buzzards down here than at the secret spot…last time I was there, I saw three circling and sitting on the top of the bluff wall there.

I went back to chipping out the matrix pieces and this was the next one that came off in my hands…

…and then I pulled a few more loose ones out with color like this….

…by this time, I had two bags full of poker chips and two full of dolomite druse. I pulled one more chunk out of the pocket….

…before the pocket seemed to drop into the ground below…I didnt have the energy to follow it so I concentrated on another pocket opening that I had found earlier. After removing a few big chunks, this is what I saw….

…and up close, this is what it looked like….

…and turned out to be mainly a smaller pocket that ended too soon, of dolomite druse…there were one or two pieces with small poker chips on them, but that was all…so now I had yet another bag full of druse.

I moved up the bank a little higher and discovered even more pockets of druse along the underside of a ledge of rock….

…by this time though, I was out of time and decided to head back so I could get a good nap in before heading to work. I got my nap in and unloaded the crystals and then shot this beautiful sunset before heading to supper…..