BE Clement Museum Annual Rock Show and Dig 2012

Posted on June 7, 2012 by jwj

Missy and I loaded up the truck and headed south to Marion, Kentucky last Friday, June 1st, for the Clement Mineral Museum`s 2012 Rock Show and Dig Weekend. I had been planning this trip for sometime, talked with my good rockhunting friends Steven and April Gibbs from Memphis, who were also planning to go there, and talked with Tina, who runs the museum, earlier in the week. Tina told me they were in need of some pretty pieces of soda straw and bubble druse quartz for their silent auction, so I loaded up some and took to them. I never have a problem donating to a worthy cause, and the Clement Museum Staff do provide great locations and opportunities for rockhounds everywhere, for a very low fee, something that is becoming harder and harder to find these days.

Since Illinois I-57 is loaded down with road construction, I decided to stay in Missouri and headed south to Sikeston. Little did I know that Missouri has loaded up I-55 with road construction zones as well…which wouldnt be so bad, except you have these long five and ten mile stretches of cones and one lane, limited to 45 mph, and nothing going on except in one or two spots. Give me a break, there is no reason to make motorists drive that slow through long stretches of inactivity…geez….if only our Highway Department could enforce the rules for contractors on these projects and keep traffic moving between work stoppages…..seems to be a rampant problem everywhere these days.

Enough of my soapbox for the day….as we approached Sikeston, from as far away as Cape even, we started seeing huge, high clouds of smoke and I began to wonder what was on fire…I stopped in Charleston to fill my gas tank at the Caseys Store, gas there was 3.29 a gallon, and a resident there told me the fires were wheat farmers burning their fields off after harvesting the wheat crops….here is one of the clouds of heavy smoke as I was headed south toward the Twin Bridges near Cairo….

I crossed the Mississippi River on the first of two beautiful steel structure bridges shortly after….

…this bridge in particular was repaired in the past year after a barge struck one of its support pillars last year and damaged its structural integrity. I crossed over it and then crossed the second of the twin bridges, this one spanning the Ohio River and into Kentucky, a few hundred feet after crossing the Mississippi River into Illinois.

About 90 minutes later I was pulling into the Clement Museum in Marion and with help from the staff members there, I unloaded the druse for the silent auction and then registered for the dig the next two days. While talking to Tina, I volunteered to start the pump at the Eureka Mine and Bill Frazer said that would greatly free him up to take care of other things. I headed down to Kuttawa to get checked into my hotel room at the Days Inn, and then after cleaning up, walked over to the Oasis Southwest Grill for a good steak dinner. Steaks arent the only thing they cook well, they have good surf and turf combo plates too and great bbq as well, having invested in a smoker a couple of years ago. Several of us rockhounds have been eating there the past few years and there is a good atmosphere inside as well…it gets a little noisy inside on Friday and Saturday nights, but the food is sure worth it.

After supper, Missy and I headed down to Lake Barkley and after walking around a bit waiting for the sun to settle for the night, I snapped this sunset photo at the edge of the water….

We got up bright and early the next morning…I spotted Steven and April`s truck in the parking lot as we headed north to the Eureka Mine….this was the sunrise that greeted us as we left the hotel….

After stopping off at Miss Netta`s Donut Shop in Eddyville and picking up half a dozen donuts for the day, we drove on over to the mine…as we were driving down the hill approaching the creek bridge, we came upon a very large Bull at the side of the road…anyone who has been down that mine road can imagine this well…a two thousand pound curly brown haired bull standing on the side, leaving me just a little bit of extra space to veer around him and give him all the space he wanted. I rolled down the window and said, ” hey there buddy, you look a little lost to me “…. he just gave me a look and I decided to keep on driving…..didnt figure he needed any help from me….and drove on over to the mine….

I got the pump going quickly and it started pumping fast.

I then called Bill Frazer and told him about the bull in the roadway and he said he would come out and see if we could get him back in the fenced field somewhere before folks started arriving at the mine, wouldnt want that to be the welcome wagon for them. While waiting for Bill to arrive, Missy and I took a look around at the dirt piles that Wayne Crider moved around with the backhoe to get things ready for the rockhounds…

…while walking around, I nearly stepped on a beautiful plate that was covered with crystal cubes on both sides. I saw alot of potential cubes in the overturned area and figured there would be alot of happy diggers today. I also removed a couple of bags of crystals from years past and dumped them on the ground near my truck for kids to go through as a sure thing. Some kids burn out early and give up easily…course there are some adults that do that as well, so I always try to bring some extras along for them just in case. Hate for anyone to go home empty handed.

Missy and I walked down to the creek bridge…..

…and looking up the road, I no longer saw the bull, so I figured he must have walked up that hill to an opening….

…so we walked up to the base of the hill to see if we could spot him at all and waited for Bill to arrive….

….Bill arrived and we couldnt find the bull so he decided to look for him up above after placing a few parking signs for the diggers. He later told me he found the bull had wandered down the field up by the old garage building at the top of the hill by the mine road turn to the gate….Missy and I walked back to the pit and waited for the miners to start showing up. We didnt have to wait long, Rex was the first to arrive, having pre-registered with Bill ahead of time….

…he is from Albuquerque, New Mexico and no stranger to fluorite mining…we talked for a bit and I showed him a few areas and he settled into one quite nicely…here partially hidden behind this sprig working on the bench area. By 9 am, there were several miners hard at work in and around the pit itself….

…including Chris and his dad David, from Connecticutt, who settled into the bench area working the pockets right beside Rex….

..and these guys worked the north side of the pit across from them for much of the day….

..while even more decided to try to find the goodies in the overturned dirt piles….

and luckily, with the help of some much needed rain earlier in the week, the digging was much easier to do than it would be had it turned off hot and muggy instead…the weather over the weekend was near perfect for digging long hours…alot of kids and families showed up to dig as well….I spent most of the morning helping others find a good place to dig in and even helped spot a few crystals for some of the newbies…and when the kids couldnt find anything good, I had them check out a pile of crystals I had placed on the ground near my truck for them to look through….and I worked the pump all day long too…

…but by mid afternoon, only the more serious diggers were left working on site….

Steven and April made it out to the mine about 10:30 am and April`s mom was with them again this trip, she decided to see what she could find up in the loose dirt tailings, while Steven and April came over to the pit where I was at and we decided to dig down to the vein like we did last year. We were a bit higher up on the bank this time and so Steve had to dig down a little deeper to find it…about four feet down in fact and then widened it so at least one of us could get down into it.

I jumped down into it first and began pulling crystals and clusters out right and left…I was standing on what I thought was the vein, and was pulling some clusters and crystals out from under it…after a bit, Steve was able to get the shovel under it and pry it up and then we found out it wasnt the vein, it was simply a boulder with big crystals on the underside of it…eventually I was able to lift it up and lift it up to Steve who pulled it on out of the hole and set it nearby…it is now resting comfortably in my mom`s rock garden. Once it was removed, we started pulling clusters and crystals from the bottom clay layer about ten inches above the bottom of the hole as well as from the floor of the hole, and this worked out well for us too. As soon as I get some cleaned up, I`ll post them on here.

In the meantime, Chris was taking that bench he was working on, back about three feet slowly but surely…by mid day it was moved back about two feet….

…and he was finding some really nice pockets throughout the bench….

…that contained some beautiful purple cubes and sphalerite….

…he was having a lot of difficulty early on, getting into the pockets due to someone having used a rock saw and hammer drill on a prior dig there….some people will tell you that power equipment like that makes it easier for others to follow but in all truthfulness, it makes it much more difficult for the next person or group to access the pockets. One of those things that sounds good, but in all actuality, its not really a good thing, helps one at the time but wont help anyone who follows later. Chris did find a few chisels wedged into drill holes that those folks werent able to get back out as well….guess that would be Karma…what goes around, comes around….

The hosts for the Eureka Mine, Phil and Shirley, were found both days working the dirt pile at the south end of the Eureka Mine and were very helpful again as well…..

…Phil showed me some white, almost crystal clear fluorite that he found down in central Kentucky at some older fluorite mines near the Kentucky River that were quite pretty. Like me, they make several trips to the Eureka Mine for the public digs and are great to sit and visit with as well. They found some nice material in the south side dig pile too.

By 4 pm, most of us were tired enough to come to our senses and stop digging for the day…I decided to drive back up to the museum and check in with the crew up there regarding the pump on Sunday morning and talked to Bill Frazer who gave me the go ahead to start the pump again Sunday. As I was driving back to the hotel, I passed the new fire station and saw that their trucks were inside this time so it was obvious they had dedicated it finally and moved in….

…what I wasnt aware of though, was the fact that they had a ladder truck in their fleet…having seen the old firestation, not much more than a small shed, I didnt figure they had anything like that….takes a pretty good sized building and bay area to house a custom made fire truck like that…ladder trucks are pretty good sized trucks and lengthy too….

..I stopped and took a few photos and then beat feet back to the hotel as I had told Steve and April I would meet them at the steakhouse for dinner by 6 pm. As it was, I was able to return in time and we had a great dinner at the Oasis SW Grill. A word of warning if you go there…watch out for their addictive hot rolls…just sayin…

Missy and I slept in a little later Sunday morning and still made it to the Eureka Mine at 7 am….

…and we no sooner crossed the creek bridge and turned left to start up to the mine when a big gobbler ran from the mine`s south side and turned to run up the mine road toward the Mary Belle Mine…it happened so fast, I couldnt get the lens on it quick enough to snap a photo.

I started the pump up again…the water level didnt seem as high this time…….

…and it pumped down pretty quickly…..I also found about ten gallons of water in the hole April and I had pulled clusters out of the day before, so I had to lay down and let my five gallon bucket fill and then get up and raise the bucket out of the hole and turn around to dump it…I decided to wash off the muddy bench and ledges with it and kill two birds with one stone.

The diggers started showing up about 8 am this time, led off by Chris and his dad David, and Chris started pounding those pockets out once again. Steve and April were going to check out the rock show again, so I did a little exploratory digging down on the saddle where Rex had stopped digging the day before. By the time they arrived about mid morning, I had pulled a few more clusters out of the side pockets that Rex had found on Saturday and let April take over and work it. Steve decided to work across the water pond from us and dig out the side vein going to the right, and April`s mom can be seen up the bank behind Steve….

Well it didnt take Chris long to get going Sunday morning…he started popping more pockets out right and left and was finding alot of fluorite with sphalerite and greenockite as seen here in his basket of goodies…

I was tracking his progress since I was working alongside him this morning….and he found some fantastic pockets along the edge of the bench he was still working on….here is one of the pockets up close that he found….

…but let me tell you, the attention quickly shifted Saturday mid morning to his dad David, who was continuing to work the corner next to him, especially when David hit a pocket of calcite dogtooth crystals on some plates. Here is the first small plate that he found up behind this huge boulder that required both him and Chris to muscle out of the way….

…..a small plate of half inch high orange dogtooth crystals that were absolutely beautiful to see, here up closer….

…I pulled my cellphone out and called Bill Frazer, and told him about it and he said he would return to check it out….here is the area that David was working in and found the pocket of calcite in…

….well a few minutes went by and David found yet another plate of calcite crystals…these looked like little orbs of calcite melted down on a bigger plate……seen here close up…..

…and…..

…and a few minutes later, David started digging back further and it was starting to look like he was tunneling in now…

…and he found yet another small plate of calcite crystals….

…by this time, Bill Frazer had returned and came down to see the specimens himself…and after careful study of them, he stated what I was thinking the entire time….he had never seen anything like them and nothing like them had ever been found there….but very pretty looking.

And in the meantime, Chris started tapping out a few more big plates from pockets that he was finding in the bench….

..here he is tapping out a big chunk from the pocket below….

…and he reached down and pulled a small cluster out of that pocket down there, it was about to fall out into the water hole and then he would have had to put on scuba gear to find it….

…and here it is up close….

…so after setting this one down, he grabbed his small pry bar and started gently tugging this chunk out….

…and then carefully picked it up once loose….

…and turns with it in his hands and a big smile on his face…..

…and up close, showing heavy sphalerite and cubes above a wise seam of calcite….

…and here are a few more chunks with pockets of cubes in them…the one on the right is the one he let me take home because he didnt have room left in their truck for it…due to the many geodes from northeast Missouri….

…the one I took home has four pockets of fluorite cubes, one pocket of galena cubes and fluorite cubes, and there is greenockite all the way across it….

…and here is a pocket on one side of the other chunks that he took home with him….very pretty deep purple cubes inside it….

A few more kids showed up at the Eureka Mine on Sunday and I was able to provide them with some nice crystals to take home, left over from the day before. I was even able to provide some crystals to the parents as well. This was the first time I didnt have to take any of the give away crystals back home with me as well.

I had been planning to leave Sunday about noon and head home by way of Eminence, but received a call from my mom who was checking radar for me…the forecast the night before was for storms in the Eminence area on Sunday. I decided I really didnt want to drive over there if it was going to be 85 and storming, so I stayed til about 3 pm and then headed home. Steve and April headed to the rock show to shop a little more before heading to their home in Memphis. I stopped by the museum to change clothes and say goodbyes to all my friends there, and then headed home. I was one tired puppy and Missy was the only one refreshed, having sat in the ac for the past few hours. Luckily I had a few Arizona Green Tea cans with me for the trip home…they are about the only thing that keeps me awake and worked well….I crossed back over the bridges near Cairo and crossed back into Missouri….

…an amazing bridge with amazing structural steel support….

…and as I rolled west by Six Flags over Mid America, I spotted these neat looking sunbeams….

…and then later saw this beautiful sunset as I was getting ready to eat supper….

MFQ on Memorial Day

Posted on June 6, 2012 by jwj

I drove home from work and picked up Missy and then headed MFQ, to meet up with Docia, Floyd, Mike, and Chrissy at the quarry there to rock hunt on my day off. We arrived around 9:30 am and found everyone busily digging into the small bluff on the south side of the quarry.

…the appearance of this bluff had really changed from when I was there last in December with Ashley, when we found the neat pockets of dolomite druse covering poker chip crystals in matrix…so I had to look things over and decide where to start digging in. I opted to start down near the end and see if I could climb up to the last level I had been at.

…I started down on the right side end of the bluff and worked my way up to the midway point and dug in after finding some small crystals in matrix near the bottom, thinking maybe they had rolled down from a pocket up above. Chrissy found some crystals loose in the dirt over to the right below me and she settled in to dig where you see the umbrella in the photo above. There was a lot of loose dirt covering the bluff and pockets so I had to rake that off and then dig in when I found the pockets….

…there were pockets all over the place under that loose fill dirt and most were full of dolomite crystals in different colors….

We withstood the heat, temps got up to somewhere in the 90`s and it was very hot out there folks…cant remember how hot but we were digging hard and heavy, pulling out goodies galore for a few hours at least….I finally took a break around 11 am…Floyd and Docia took off somewhere in there to return home and put some baby back ribs on for Mike and Chrissy…I was invited too but had told my parents I would be home to eat with them later…Chrissy was finding alot of material over to my right and Mike was still prying around on pockets to my left….I decided to go up to the upper bench and see what I could find up there…

I got up there and walked into the main collecting area, and was looking down to see what was there…and looked up and to my right for a second and spotted this KILLER piece….

…just sitting there on the ground below the bluff…man I could not believe my luck !!! its a beautiful chocolate brown blending into green and honey yellow poker chip, and its actually like two large poker chips merged into one large one….I went over and picked it up and then started looking around and spotted several smaller poker chip crystals all over in the same colors….I looked up and spotted a pocket of them about ten feet up on the wall and about twenty feet higher, was a twin to this large one, still attached to the wall, and believe me, it was gonna stay there !!!

I also spotted this chunk of calcite that was weirdly shaped, reminded me of the many large chunks of weird shaped calcite that Virgil and his friend Floyd found when they were visiting last year from Tulsa…..

…and here are a few matrix pieces I found up there not far from the pocket in the wall of the chocolate colored poker chips….

and…

and here is a selection of the dolomite crystals that I found and cleaned up later….

…I filled four bags full of goodies up there, this time I didnt find any wall pockets full of poker chips, just more dolomite crystals and since I already had five bags full of them from down below, I didnt feel like collecting even more. I took the bags and two large poker chips back to the truck and rejoined Mike and Chrissy, who by that time, were wrapping up specimens they planned to take back home with them. I showed them the killer piece of chocolate colored poker chip I found up above and Mike showed me a nice cluster of poker chips he cobbed down from a boulder Chrissy had uncovered. I was feeling light headed and while leaning on the bed of my truck, I grabbed two bottles of water and drank them down, waited a few minutes and then headed for the ac in the truck, and headed home after bidding them further safe adventures and a safe trip home.

Memorial Day Weekend Visit from…

Posted on June 6, 2012 by jwj

As usual, I was going to have to work Memorial Day Weekend this year in dispatch…not sure who makes up the calendar every year, but it never seems to fall on my weekend off. Docia had emailed to let me know that Mike and Chrissy Streeter, and Opal, were driving over to Oklahoma and planned to stop and visit with us a couple of days over the weekend. I was able to move my work schedule around and take advantage of some comp time to do some collecting with them, and Floyd was home as well. It was slated to be a very hot weekend though, weather wise, so I allotted some extra recoup time as well. High temps and over exertion work against me all the time, specially when I get around good pockets of poker chips.

I comped out of work early Sunday morning and was able to get a few hours rest before Missy and I drove down to the secret spot. For some reason I thought it started getting light about 6:30 am, but as it turned out, it was light around 5:30 am. We got on the road a little earlier and driving down through the Huzzah valley I snapped this sunrise photo….

…we arrived to a beautiful cool morning and the light clouds in the sky indicated a nice day ahead with temps in the mid eighties….a perfect day to collect and dig for crystals….

Docia, Floyd, Mike, Chrissy, and Opal, werent due to arrive til about 8 am, so I had a couple of hours to expand the waterhole pocket and see if I could find another way into the hollow dome of rock before they got there. I started by draining the big waterhole again and then bailed water from the pocket too….

…looking into the bottom of the hole, I could see more crystals around the edge and the top side in the photo above…I hadnt noticed those a few days before, probably because my light was fading fast when I worked it then….

…so I started working the pocket to the top side and to the right side and started pulling crystal after crystal out of the muck…I pulled this beautiful combo plate out soon after….

…I tried to work back toward where I was sitting as well, having found alot of calcite potential, and a few crystals in the loose muck under my feet, but the water from the waterhole started trying to rush in and I couldnt dam it up fast enough, so I mainly concentrated on expanding the original pocket as much as I could.

At 8 o`clock sharp, Docia and Floyd came driving down the hillside, followed by Mike, Chrissy, and Opal, and pretty soon Missy had a companion to visit with as well….

…within a few minutes, they all split up and went in different directions, Chrissy and Docia exploring pockets along the walls, Mike started checking out some of our older pockets in the floor….

…and Floyd went up above to look for druse plates….

…after a couple of hours went by, it started heating up, for those of us out in the sun, and I looked over and saw that Mike and Chrissy came prepared, bringing their beach umbrella with them….

…the heat really took its toll on Opal and Missy though…they got to where they wanted to stand in the waterholes and stay there. Floyd and the gals found some great plates of druse soda straws up on the hill, filling several bags full of them, Docia showed me a few that were rainbow colored even. Mike found some new pockets in the old pockets we had worked earlier in the year there….

and liberated this beautiful poker chip twin in one of the pockets, it even had dogtooth points in each chip….

..in the meantime, I was wearing down after digging out several areas looking for more pockets…I hadnt found any and the effort combined with the heat was wearing me down fast, plus I still had to get a nap in and return to work that evening again….I was just about to wrap it up when I found a pocket in the top of the dome of rock near my truck….

…I looked down and could see crystals inside, so I retrieved my four pound hammer and chisels from the truck and started hammering with what strength I had left, which was very little by now, and liberated a few crystals and plates, including this dusty twin and a few singles…

…one of the first things I pulled out was a crystal with a small wasp nest attached to it, and I no sooner set it down in the gravel than a wasp came crawling out of the hole looking for his nest I guess…since I`m highly allergic to their stings, I wasted no time in picking up the hammer and smushing him….figured he might be a bit upset with me robbing him of his home. Soon afterward, I picked up and wrapped up and then packed up and headed home to get some rest before work that evening. We made plans to meet up at Eminence Quarry the next morning, on Memorial Day, my day off.

Here are photos of the twin crystal and the nice combo plate all cleaned up.

Waterhole Pocket End of May

Posted on June 6, 2012 by jwj

Well I am now officially four stories behind…thats what I get for traveling so much I guess, going to have to take off more time to catch up after I return I guess.

I decided to return to the secret spot and see if I could find more of the dogtooth crystals, so I drove down one evening mid week and took a look around. After examining the pocket more closely, I was only able to pull a few more out and decided to leave the embedded ones for Docia to chip out, cause she is better at chipping those little crystals out than I am. I scratched around the surface on either side of the pocket to see if I could locate a back way in, but had no luck. I also attempted to drain the waterhole above the pocket since it seemed to drain well into the second and third waterhole, so I expanded the little trench to do so…felt like a kid again, playing in the water….

…I found a few small pockets down below the dogtooth pocket but nothing to write home about……

….I felt the big waterhole calling to me so I went up to explore it further and after scratching around and finding potential calcite, I decided to do some tamping around a bit on the dome rock…. it sounded hollow so I decided to dig and explore as much as I could…

…and so I dug in and pretty soon the bottom dropped out and this hole appeared….

I decided if this wound up being a pocket, I sure didnt want to flood it, so I backed off and dammed off the waterhole so it wouldnt flood it…..

…after I got that done, I started working on exploring the hole more…

…and let me tell you, everytime something fell down into that hole, it sounded deep, could hear water below and the rocks were splashing so I figured it must be a deep pocket of something, which didnt surprise me since the dome of rock to my left side sounded hollow. I started removing some thick plates of druse and pretty soon had the pocket expanded to this….

…I pulled about six plates out as I was expanding the pocket and several poker chip crystals from the bottom…all too soon, the sun started setting on me, and Missy and I decided to wrap up what I had collected and head home….

Brown Dogtooth Pocket Found

Posted on May 20, 2012 by jwj

I decided to return to the secret spot yesterday and see if I could find another pocket, whether in the blast pile or on the floor again. I didnt get to bed as early as I wanted to Friday, and then got up early to beat the projected heat in Saturday`s forecast. Missy and I arrived about 7:30 am and started looking around. I made a short sashay up on the pile but didnt locate anymore pockets in the slopes, so I climbed over to the pocket that the loose rock had been cleared away from and found a nice plate of crystals that needed to be busted free with a hammer. I walked back down to my truck and retrieved my hammer and chisel and after about thirty minutes, was able to liberate it.

I then walked it back to the truck after wrapping it up and as I was climbing back down, I came across a short stack pile that seemed to have some potential for a pocket. With my mini mattox in hand, I walked around and did some exploring, found a few small loose crystals, embedded in the dirt but no pockets at all. I walked over to the waterhole that Missy was wading in and started seeing some calcite signs at the edge. After making a few scratches and working my way back toward the water, I finally located some low spots and dug in to see if I could find anything…

…in the photo above you can see where I set my blue bag down, thats the area I saw some signs of chips up on the top of the small ridge there…the next photo shows where I found the potential pocket on the floor by the waterhole…

…I started scratching around with the mini mattox on the left, finding only solid rock, and then after moving back toward the water, found the low spot and started digging in….

…those low spots can be a good sign all on their own, specially if there are small tree or plant roots doing down in them…or a sign of a depression indicates with water rings indicates the water had to go somewhere…course occasionally it will just be a drill hole that opens up underneath, too.

This time though, I dug down and hit shale and then started pulling up small poker chip crystal pieces….

…which is always a good sign of things to come…if you can find the pocket…the next thing I turned up with the mattox were a few druse plates….

….yet another good sign, and when they are upside down as these were, you know you are on top of a pocket….how good the pocket is remains to be seen from there though…..

I decided to take a few minutes and clear back some big rocks and loose dirt and gravel and give myself some room to work on this one.

I wasn` far from the water`s edge and the ground there was pretty saturated, but it was beginning to warm up so I didn`t mind getting muddy and wet at the same time. I started digging down and the first thing I came up on was this nice druse plate hanging upside down….

…and figured if I found nothing else, at least the druse was pretty enough to take home…I have been skunked a few times before with mainly druse pockets, but I like druse too. I continued to dig down and pulled out plate after plate of druse, but was seeing some smaller poker chips too so figured it would work out just fine…..

…so I`ve laid the mattox down now and I`m pulling one druse plate after another out of the hole and the next thing you know, I pull this out….

…and I`m like HOLIE COW !!!!!! has to be the largest single dogtooth crystal I have ever found, let alone seen….Docia and I have hit pockets of little ones, but never seen one THIS size…

…its every bit of at least five or six inches long…and pretty as can be…

…and then for the next hour…I`m pulling smaller ones out of the pocket right and left, so I pulled a white cloth out of the bag and placed them on it, just so I wouldnt lose any in the gravel there.

Well the pocket started expanding back toward the rock pile in the form of a trench, so I figured there wouldnt be a deep pocket, and would have to see how far back it went before ending to see what all I would be able to harvest from it…

..some of those trench pockets wear out fast….this one did not…it kept going and going and going….for awhile there I thought I would be moving some big rocks but fortunately that didnt happen…here is a photo of the dogtooth crystals I found initially, sitting on the white cloth…..

The next thing you know, I`m pulling several single poker chip crystals out of the hole, and I start to notice that they are dark colored…pretty soon I pull a large one out that isnt covered with mud all over, and it appears to be a blue color….

…I was pulling several of them out, a few at the start of the pocket but now several are coming out in the middle of the pocket and kept on as the pocket trenched backwards toward the blast pile….

…and the pile of crystals and plates just kept on expanding right along with the pocket size….

…and by noon, I was done…the heat was coming on fast and I was ready to wrap and get out of there…it def was a nice morning for collecting though….

…as soon as I finished wrapping and switching out from my boots to my street shoes…I decided to go take a look at the rock wall that was formed up the clay dirt road that leads to the druse plate location up the hill….the rock they had removed from the pile was used to form an erosion blocker and they led it right up that old road to the top of the hill…

…luckily I was able to find some nice chunks of bubbly druse in the rocks, even a few that had poker chips attached….all in all, another great day of rock collecting at the secret spot…bout stepped on this guy in the rocks…

…and here are some of my finds all cleaned up….

Secret Spot Pocket in May

Posted on May 20, 2012 by jwj

Missy and I returned to the secret spot last weekend, a week after returning from Arkansas. I had taken off Sunday in anticipation of a photo shoot for a friend but when he didnt show up, I switched to plan B and we headed down there instead. It was mid day when we arrived and I discovered that more rock had been removed from the blast pile so I put on my boots and grabbed a bag and tools and headed over to climb around and see what could be found.

I climbed up through this gap and walked around the top of it for a few minutes….

…as I was climbing up through there, though, I noticed the sun really sparkling on this guy….

…so I picked him up and carried him over to my truck. I came back and started to climb up again, when I noticed this pretty one….

…but decided to leave it there…and continued to climb to the top…I looked around up there for a few minutes, then looked down to spot these two just sitting there patiently waiting for someone to come along and take them home….

..I walked down to take a closer look at them and then I saw more crystals above them….all over the place….yellow ones even….

…crystals all over up and down about a fifteen to twenty foot stretch above the two large clusters…figured there must be a pocket in there…

…so I decided to go get another bag and some wrapping cloths and as I turned to go back to the truck, I saw the corner of this one sticking up out of the dirt and rocks….

…and right above it, appeared to be more calcite poker chips sticking out of the dirt, so I figured there might be another pocket in there as well, this about 40 feet to the right and on another slope facing a different direction. I was happy now with two pockets to check out and three nice specimens without having even started to dig yet….

…so I decided to grab two more bags and lots of cloths for wrapping and returned to the first potential pocket. I sat the bags down and looked up to find this one looking right at me….

and right above it in this order…..

…so I began to pull what loose ones out that I could find, wrapped them up and bagged them, and then started sliding the loose rocks down on the left side of the pocket path. I wanted to clear out an area on the left, then concentrate my efforts on the pocket path to the right. There was an overhanging set of large rocks above the pocket path and I figured I would work the left side if that all came crashing down and covered up the pocket path.

…as I started working the pocket path, more crystals started popping up out of the dirt and rock, right and left….

…and pretty soon, it was apparent that I was on top of the main pocket, where all the loose crystals had originated from….

…this went on for a couple of hours…I would slide rocks down and pull out crystals and clusters and twins and triples, found very few single crystals at all….it was beginning to heat up and Missy had decided to camp out under my truck bed….

I took a break and got some water, then came back to start working this main pocket some more….

…here is what the main worry looked like above me….

…now I know what you are thinking…you are thinking those big rocks you see are to the left of the main pocket…but no, the main pocket is actually below them…that cleared off area to the right up above is another area I dug out after finding a nice plate.

Well I dug into the main pocket and found some nice crystals lurking under the dirt and gravel….

…and once I cleared everything out that I could find, I went ahead and triggered the rocks above to slide down….

…then moved over to the left side and kept on digging….

…and found yet another pocket on the left side…this one had a lot of crushed up chips and pieces of chips though….

…so after about four hours of digging out crystals, I decided to stretch my legs and walk around more of the pile to see if there were anymore pockets. I walked around the rest of the slopes and didnt find too much, then climbed up on top and found some nice plates of druse all over the place, including this huge plate of druse…

…it measures about 25 inches long and about 15 inches wide and has a lot of base rock on it, prob weighs about 125 lbs…it took me three trips but I finally made it back to the truck with it….had to slide and carry it down three slopes and decided to just set it in my lap and slide down each one til I got to the bottom, then carried it to the truck. I was tired from all the digging and so it was a little heavy. and you should see the one I left up there, with calcite crystals and bubbles of druse…I`m guessing it prob weighed about another 75 lbs…yeah, its still there. I gave this one to my mom for Mothers Day.

I finally got some of my finds cleaned up…here they are below….

so all in all, Sunday the 13th worked out well in my favor. 🙂

Arkansas Quartz in May 2012

Posted on May 8, 2012 by jwj

Missy and I traveled down to Lake Ouachita last Tuesday for a six day stay on the lake. I had been hired to do some photo work for a private client for a real estate website last fall, and the work includes a few extra visits down there at various times through out the year, so this was the spring trip. We stayed at a beautiful private condo at the Mountain Harbor Resort east of Mount Ida while there and had great weather the first couple of days, then it heated up and became muggy over the weekend. Since I wouldnt be shooting the bulk of the photo work until the weekend, I had the first few days free to dig and collect quartz crystals.

Missy and I woke up on Wednesday morning and when I didnt hear from a friend who was thinking of coming to visit us, we headed south of Mt Ida to Bear Mountain Mine, one of my favorite places to look for quartz crystals. After registering at Fiddlers Ridge Rock Shop and talking to Bobby by cellphone, discovering he wasnt going to make it up to the mine that day, we headed south to the mine. I noticed the road up the mountain was a little rougher this time….

…in fact it was so rough right above the gate, that Bobby had posted a speed limit of five miles per hour…heck I couldnt even go that fast up that hill…I was doing maybe 3 miles per hour…it finally smoothed out near the top though when I crossed the bluff area….

…and when I finally got to the top of the mountain and drove up to the tailing area….

I saw that Bobby had really expanded the size of the tailing pile area….

…where you see that blue dump truck in the photo above, there used to be a road there that took you to the other side of the pit to more tailing piles…obviously one cant drive over there any longer…and this new tailing pile is high and huge….

…so I parked, got out and got my boots on, and walked over to the edge of the pit to get a look at what he had done with the trackhoe since I had been there last….

…..there was quartz crystals laying all over the place, big and small plates and singles, and chunks with quartz crystals all over the faces….and I saw a guy walking around the top of the huge new pile.

I say new pile, cause the last time I was there, that huge pile wasn`t there….the photo below shows the pit and Bobby working on the overhang above the pit the last time I was there….

…so you can see the entire shape of the pit and overhang above has changed, the overhang is basically cut down to size and removed. The pit was looking quite a bit deeper this time as well….

…so as you can see, Bobby had knocked off quite a bit above the pit and he had told me this pit was pretty deep as well underwater….

…after setting my camera back in the truck, I gathered up my rake and mini mattox and a couple of bags, and headed over to the small spread out tailing piles near the entrance to surface collect and then worked my way up the bigger new tailing pile and ran into the guy walking around….Ed, who said he was a retired firefighter from Tulsa Fire Department. We talked Fire Dept shop talk for a few minutes, then I found out he was also into photography a bit and we talked about cameras a bit more and then we started looking for crystals. He had already been down the short ridgeline right above the pit wall and had found quite a few nice crystals in the clay pockets in that wall. We were finding some purple colored looking clay while looking around the area. I walked up and over to one of the new huge rock piles and started finding crystals in cluster form right away…some small ones and some medium sized ones…it was warming up fast but luckily there was also a good stiff breeze blowing up there as well…so you would heat up and then the wind would cool you back down. Despite this, I still took a few breaks and drank my water, just to stay hydrated in that heat, cause I only had a few hours to hunt and wanted to make the most of it.

Eventually, we both found some nice ones and on one of my breaks, I carried a few of the larger chunks I found with quartz all over the faces of them, to the truck….like this one….

…Ed wandered over to the far side while I was carrying the big ones back to the truck…he joined up with another guy who I could only see in the distance over there, later finding out his name was Casey. I was finding so much right there within 100 feet of my truck that I didn`t want to venture any further out to look for more…the idea of finding something nice way over on the other side, and then carrying it across there, didn`t really appeal to me at that time.

Another couple showed up and started walking around the same area I had covered when I first arrived, and then made their way up on the top of that huge pile and wandered toward the far side…they didn`t stop to chat at all…I walked down to a newer area and within moments, I started finding nice plates all over this new pile and some medium sized chunks with crystals all over the top of them, like these….

…and it was during this time that Casey made his way over to the parking area with a nice big plate up on his shoulder, and then he returned for yet another smaller plate that he had chipped off the top of a boulder that he found on the very far side of the pit. He had to make a few trips across there to bring back all of his finds and then return for his bucket of tools…in the time that he was back at his truck, I discovered that he was from the northeast area of Montana and had been down in Texas where he found some nice petrified wood and was spending a few days in Arkansas for quartz before returning home. I gave him and Ed some samples of Missouri druse quartz and calcite crystals and bladed barite as well. I took a photo of Casey with his plates….

by this time it was close to 4 pm and we wound our day down with some more small talk and packing away our nice crystals….

Ed was heading to Texas the next day so we bid him a farewell and good safe travel.

Casey was looking for a place to camp out for the night and I told him Miller Mtn had a small camping area, so he decided to drive on over and camp there for the night, then wait for my arrival and hunt quartz there with me on Thursday.

Thursday morning, Missy and I got up early and headed over to Miller Mountain Mine on the northeast corner of Lake Ouachita. It was a bit foggy and we hit some stretches of slightly drizzly rain conditions, sure wasn`t anything close to the forecast from the night before.

We took the backcountry route crossing below the Blakely Dam and cutting past Lake Ouachita State Park, coming out two miles south of Hwy 298 on Hwy 7 at Hot Springs Village. This cuts about twenty minutes off my drive time had I gone through Hot Springs itself. As it was, I got stuck behind a slow driver on Hwy 270 who didnt want to get up over 35 mph in a 55 mph zone.

Despite leaving early, it was 8 am before I arrived and Casey was waiting on me. I was pleasantly surprised to find the road going to the mine was nicely graded, widened, and very smooth this time. We registered with Bill and Faith, the caretakers for Miller Mtn Mine at the mine rock shop and we quickly got started looking for quartz. Without sunshine to help us find glimmers of crystals, we were going to have the subdued light for a few hours to contend with…. the fog had lifted as we climbed up the mountain to the mine, and the drizzle had ended, but it was def going to be cloudy light, for a while at least.

Bill had brought up two new loads of clay mud and quartz that morning prior to our arrival and turned over four existing loads from the day before. I walked over to one of the fresh piles and quickly pulled two crystal clumps of clay out, one fairly small one and one fairly big one….

They were mostly clumps of clay but I could see one crystal sticking out of each one. I took them to the truck and came back to start digging into one of the dirt piles. Casey sat down on the other side of one of the fresh clay piles and starting digging in, to see what he could find. Another couple joined us shortly after, and then yet another couple showed up soon after and started digging alongside us as well….

On one of my many breaks that morning, my knees were still sore from the day before at Bear Mountain, I looked over the edge of the parking lot hill and down into the mine area, and saw a trackhoe…which I had never observed there before, and it looked to be in working condition too….

…Bill told me later that day, that they were now digging out their own crystals once again, no longer trucking in tailings from other mines. He also told me that Ron Coleman hadn`t been digging from his mine for the past two years, nothing since he struck the spring and then found the huge pocket of large crystals that he dug out and took to Arizona to sell at the Tucson show. He also told me that two guys had purchased the land where one of the original mines in Jessieville was located, a mile west of Hwy 7 on Hwy 298, and had invested several thousands of dollars to find the crystal vein, and after hundreds of hours of hard work, only coming up with the discovery of several cave like pockets of white aragonite. He showed me some flats of the aragonite that he had on hand.

A few minutes later, after returning to the dig piles, I found a nice single finger crystal packed into a clump of clay dirt….

…having started early, I began wearing out by 1 pm, which is about when the sun finally burned off the fog and cloudy conditions from the top of the mountain. I caught up with Casey on the other side of the tailings area, and let him know I was leaving early. He continued to dig and indicated he might return to Bear Mountain Mine on Friday, since we had seen so much quartz laying all over the place over there the previous day.

It was doubtful I would be able to join him since I was sure I would be busy with photo work for the client. I headed down to Hot Springs intending to stop and have lunch with a friend there, but couldn`t locate him and wound up grabbing a Little Caesers Pizza instead and driving back to the condo for a nap.

The next morning, I contacted Stu Schmidt, a former mine owner and now crystal buyer, who lives near Mountain Harbor and had some beautiful green and blue wavellite that I wanted to take a look at. I had contacted Mr. Schmidt by email the year before but didn`t get a chance to meet up with him at that time, and since wavellite is so hard to come by, I def wanted to do so this time. With a free hour this morning, I called him up and drove over to meet him and check out his wavellite collection. He lives up on a beautiful hillside above the highway with tall pine trees surrounding his home, the wind whistles through the trees and creates a pleasant windsong that just soothes and puts one right at ease. It reminded me of my grandfathers farm north of there in the Waldron area, which brings back so many great memories from my years of growing up and visiting at various times of the year.

Mr. Schmidt was cleaning up some crystals that he had found the day before at one of the older mines in the Mount Ida area, and after some small talk, we moved inside his garage to look at the many flats of wavellite that he had on hand from his former mine in the Avante area. He recently sold his Avante diggings claim and also his mine, Clear Creek Quartz Mine, which was located west of Mount Ida. He was now in the position of buying minerals and crystals instead of digging for them and it was much easier to do, no more hassles with the government agencies that regulate everything to death in the area. As a mine owner, you first have to deal with the US Forest Service if you lease the land where you intend to mine for quartz, then you have to deal with IMSHA and OSHA and the EPA as well, and each agency can be a real headache to work with. If you purchase the land, then you can drop the Forest Service from the list. Most of the mine owners lease the land these days.

As I looked for a few nice pieces of wavellite to take home with me, he brought me up to speed on the mines in the Mount Ida area as well. It seems the old Arrowhead Mine and former Fiddlers Ridge Mine, were purchased by a young couple from out of state recently. Mr. Schmidt and Bobby Fecho were hired by the couple to do some work at both mines to bring them back into compliance with the safety and environmental laws of each agency so that the couple can eventually re-open the mines to the public for fee digging. This explained why Bobby had moved his trackhoe off Bear Mountain because he was now digging at the older two mines to get them cleaned up and ready for digging at within the next few months. They hope to have both mines open within the next year at some point. From then on, those two mines and Bear Mountain Mine will be the only three doing their own digging and Miller Mountain Mine in Jessieville, that are open to the public for fee digging.

Here are photos of the first two crystal clusters I pulled out of the fresh piles at Miller Mountain Thursday morning, May 3rd….

…and the smaller crystal I pulled out of the pile right after I pulled the big cluster out….

…and a few more that I found, like this large single point with a small cluster of crystals attached at the base….

…and these two small plates of golden healers….

Buzzards at the Secret Spot

Posted on April 26, 2012 by jwj

Saturday I loaded up the truck and headed down to the secret spot Saturday last week, to meet up with Docia and a friend of hers. I wanted to get some more druse plates from the clay embankment and Docia`s friend was looking for anything pretty, so like Docia said, this would be a perfect spot for finding pretty stuff. Her friend was running late so I arrived about twenty minutes ahead of them. I no sooner pulled up and walked over to the edge to see if anything had changed when something big took off flying from the ledge about fifty feet from me…

…turned out to be a large buzzard…I was a little disappointed, as Docia has been seeing eagles and I was hoping it would be an eagle….but as it turned out, after shooting about twenty photos of it, they turned out well as you can see….

…and was quite pretty with his plumage in flight as he glided back and forth checking me out….

…and flew around quite gracefully….

…after he finally gained some elevation right over the druse area, he was shortly joined by four other buzzards and they flew up the hill to look for something to do I guess….I parked above the druse area and walked down into the pit to see what I could find…

…and started seeing druse plates all over the place…within feet of the truck…

…and some very pretty plates at that….

…I looked around and finally found the source of some beautiful smokey colored quartz plates of druse with soda straw fingers in a clay embankment and started digging down….

…and pretty soon, plate after plate came out of the pocket….

…but most of the plates were dirt covered and yet one could still make out smokey colored straws and fingers on the plates…

..and bubbles like these….

..including large bubbles….

…about this time, I heard Docia coming down the road and she and her friend soon joined me looking for druse plates. I started walking around the area I was digging in and found yet another spot where plates were just laying all around….…so as Docia and her friend were walking all over picking up plates, I filled two more bags full of plates and druse bubbles, including this nice large plates of bubbles covered in limonite that I found on top….

..and then I drove down to the lower area to see if I could find another pocket…I had it in mind to go over closer to the backside of the pile and look, but didn`t get far from where I parked when I looked down and saw poker chip crystals laying all over the place in the gravels…which is normally a good sign that there is a pocket nearby, so I sat down and started raking through the gravel with my mini mattox…

…and after about twenty minutes, I had found a small shallow trench, and after a few more minutes of scratching around, a hole opened up at one end of the trench….

..I raked back the other way just to clear the area back and make sure this wasnt the only entrance to a potential pocket…sometimes a hole on one end is accompanied by another entrance…and soon enough I had my answer…...I started finding signs about a foot away from the hole and soon enough I had exposed a small rock wall and under the wall, more crystals appeared….

…and after a little more careful digging, a pocket opened up at the bottom of this rock wall to the left….…I reached into the pocket and after pulling some ugly pieces of dolomite out, the next two were plates of pretty druse with tiny needles of druse on them and a few poker chips attached as well…

…about this time, Docia and her friend rejoined me down at the lower level and they walked over to the Tulsa pocket to see if they could pull anymore crystals out of it. I continued to work this pocket and it expanded in a circle counterclockwise to the side of the pocket I was sitting on…

….and pretty soon it became deeper as well with some pockets located inside behind a cluster of large poker chips attached to the top plate….

…I cleaned it out as well as I could and attempted to remove the top plate with the cluster of crystals on top, but the layer of rock on top was way too thick and heavy, and by this time in the day, I was too pooped to pop. Docia and her friend had left by this time with a load of druse and her friend was very happy. I left soon after with a load of druse and two bags of poker chips and a few plates as well.

Secret Spot April 16th

Posted on April 26, 2012 by jwj

After a few friends visited over the weekend with Docia, I returned to the secret spot to see how they did with the pocket I left them. Docia had told me that a few of them were as calcite crazy as I was and worked it pretty good, for about five hours in fact, and pulled some nice crystals out of the pockets there and filled several bags with poker chips. Missy and I walked over to check out what was left of it….Docia figured there might still be a few inside it as well as some plates of poker chips attached to druse plates under heavy rock that they were unable to hammer out….

…and after cleaning it out, I discovered they had left behind a few nice crystals, including a nice twin or two….

…I cleaned out the pocket on the west end and pulled a few nice crystals out that had been overlooked and tried to hammer a few plates out, but let me tell you, that rock above was thick and heavy, and hard as a rock, so to speak. 🙂

You can see in the next photo, inside the pocket and how thick that layer of rock is on top of the crystals…

Despite not being able to pound any plates down due to the extremely heavy rock layer above the crystals, I did manage to liberate this nice poker chip on top of soda straw druse….

…this and a small pile of crystals was all I could find in the west end pocket, so I decided to move over to an area that I had dug into the time before, when I was finding shallow pockets all over the place, but no entry into any of them short of hammering and chiseling one out…

..within a few moments of digging in one of these spots again, a hole opened up at what appeared to be a dead end….

…and I pulled a few small plates of druse out….

..and the hole opened up even more….

…and I was hoping the pocket wouldnt require me moving this pile of rock above it….soon a crystal could be seen down in the pocket….

I decided to see if I could expand the opening more and see just how big a pocket I was looking at here….

…and soon I could see even more crystals inside the pocket….

…and soon I was pulling this nice druse plate out as well as some loose crystals…

…and pretty soon the pocket was expanding even more at the base of the lip of rock surrounding it inside this trench….

…and off to the right and above my mini mattox you can see a shallow hole opening up where yet another pocket was found….

…I dug around the base of the rock walls inside the trench and then dug down and found that other pocket off to the right, and found a large ledge of bubbly druse with poker chips attached at the base of it, a curved wall at the base I should say, instead of a vertical wall…

…located on the right side of the new pocket wall…and from this curved druse wall, I was able to dig out a beautiful small druse plate with two poker chips attached to it, one on each side of the druse plate….

…after that, I was able to connect the two pockets by digging out the middle section……and then I took a closer look at the nice plate of druse with the two poker chips attached to it….

…very pretty….I took a short break and then grabbed my hammer and chisel, and chiseled out an interior cluster from the pocket….

Mercifully for me, the pocket ended at this point and I didnt have to start chucking big rocks out of the way to go any further with the expansion…I was glad as I was just approaching worn out stage…

….here are some of the crystals and plates I found, all cleaned up….

and…

Secret Spot in April

Posted on April 23, 2012 by jwj

Docia and I drove over to the secret spot after spending the morning and early afternoon looking for more bladed barite in Washington County near Potosi. We hadn`t been there for about four weeks and wanted to see if anything had changed and see if we could find some more druse plates as well as check for more pockets. As soon as we arrived, Docia decided to walk up on top since it hadnt rained in a while to see if she could find any druse plates…..

….while I decided to see if I could find a new pocket….

…and within moments I had a shallow trench in front of me and a few druse plates popping up, which is always a good sign of a pocket nearby….…but the trench played out, so I worked around the immediate area and did some more raking and pretty soon, I had openings all over the place….

…and the one in the upper end, above, soon played out as seen in the photo below….

So I kept raking around, found a few more promising spots, and one pocket of bubbly druse, but no chips at all….

…and Docia walked back down with two bags full of plates of druse from above, and grabbed a couple more bags, said there were plates all over up there. I moved over to a spot about ten feet away and started raking again and soon found a shallow spot that opened up into a ledge with an opening, looking very promising….

…I reached down and pulled out a plate and a nice twin….very promising signs of a pocket found….

…within moments everything had turned around and things were looking up quite nicely for me…the pocket opened up and soon I was pulling out crystal after crystal, and a few plates too…

…and soon the pile began to grow even more….

…including some nice combo plates….

…and since the pocket was opening up nicely, I took a photo of it upside down….

…showing some nice crystals inside. I cleaned it out as well as I could and then decided to work the outside wall to the right, and that`s when the pocket took a turn….

…yes, I had to move the pile back about a foot, after doing so and digging some more, another ledge revealed itself and opened up underneath….

…and with a little bit of pressure on the top of that ledge plate, it rolled over and this was what was hanging there waiting for me to find….…with just a little bit of damage, but soooo pretty to me…..

…..and the pocket kept going back, so again, I moved the pile of crystals back some more….

…allowing me more room to expand the pocket some more….

…I removed a few more plates and crystals and this pocket just kept on moving back some more…...which didn`t bother me in the least when I reached in and pulled out another big crystal….

…shortly after this, knowing I had three bags to fill up with crystals and several plates, I decided to leave the remainder of the pocket….

…for some friends who would be there in a few days, to clean out. Docia had left about an hour earlier with four bags full of druse plates and still more left up there…but by this time, light was beginning to fade so there was no way I could go up and even look for any. Figured I would get some another day, possibly after another good rain when more would be exposed. I headed home with the truck bed full of bladed barite and poker chips.

JWJ Rocks

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Arkansas Quartz in May 2012

Buzzards at the Secret Spot

Secret Spot April 16th

Secret Spot in April