Four Weeks of Cabin Fever

Posted on December 25, 2013 by jwj

It was four weeks of snow and ice, and extremely cold weather, before we had a break and could get back down to MFQ…the snow was so deep south of me in other areas that I couldn`t go anywhere for those four weeks…not only were the crystals under the snow and ice, so were the roads…my buddy Jim had told me that it took the highway department a week to clear the main highways due to the heavy ice under the deep snowpack. One thing I don`t like about winter driving, is ice…hard to drive on and impossible to stop on it.

Best thing to do when it gets icy, is just stay home…..I have worked way too many accidents in my nearly forty years on the fire department and seen way too many things that can happen to drivers traveling in bad weather.

I let Ray know I was going down there Sunday morning, but he was tied up that day and couldn`t get away. I comped out and came home from work early morning, intending to get about five hours of rest before driving on down. Just as I got home, I heard a loud crashing noise…a noise that I had heard a few nights before about the same time of early morning, on the railroad tracks a block behind my house, as a westbound train was coming through town. This time an eastbound train was passing through and came to a sudden stop…I got back in my truck and drove up to the Elmont Crossing to see if it had derailed, and found the train blocking the crossing. I called BNSF police dispatch, to let them know they had a problem on the tracks there, then called my buddy Linda, who dispatches nights at Sullivan Police, and let her know that all three crossings in town were blocked by the train. I then drove over to Hwy D and crossed the tracks on the bridge, and circled back to Main Street on the south side of the tracks, where I found the last six cars on the train, separated from the rest of the train by about an eight car length…I called Linda and updated her again, she said she would call BNSF and update them as well. I then drove down to the end of Hannah Street and located the Conductor walking the train to check the air hoses from car to car…I knew he was going to have a lengthy walk, so I called BNSF again and offered to give him a ride back to the end of the train, but was told that policy required him to walk the entire train to make sure no other cars in between were separated as well. I called Linda and updated her once more and then drove home and went to bed.

Five hours later, Missy and I got up and headed south…I walked out the door to find that we had received a dusting of snow, up close they looked like frozen flakes of ice…

…we got on the road headed west on 44 and saw that as we reached the west side of town, it looked like a blizzard had come through, but as we approached Bourbon, five miles further west, no snow at all seemed to have fallen there…not even a dusting. As we approached Leasburg tho, I we hit another stretch of heavy snow showers…

..and about every town from there to Rolla, we hit yet more snow showers…as we got to Rolla tho, it was all ice in the treetops…def looked like a winter wonderland there…

…and later, when I finally turned south, I saw a break in the clouds to the south…it was supposed to be around 45 degrees at MFQ that day….

…my buddy Jim had told me the night before, that the pile from the last blast was still there, not much had been removed due to the heavy snow and ice they had down there….he was right, when we arrived, we found about a third of the pile removed and the giant hydraulic jackhammer had been busting up the big boulders….

…I got out and it was a bit chilly, pulled on my boots and a blue hooded pullover, grabbed my gloves and mattox and headed to the wall to look for pockets. Within the first thirty minutes, I located a few nice pockets full of brown and orange dogtooth crystals, small ones but nice nonetheless. I also found some weird looking calcite chunks that looked like they had either deteriorated or come from a cave….

…these above would have been brown dogtooth crystals, large ones at that…but didn`t quite form out all the way…the ones below were simply chunks of calcite in different forms…

…and I also found some pockets of pretty red calcitic druse as well, some with poker chips attached to them….

…and this one has a poker chip attached below….

I also found a few pockets with some pretty chocolate brown crystals in them as well….

…I`ll get some more photos of the better ones from the four full bags that I brought back…I also found and brought back about ten yard rocks that were nice as well. here are some of the dogtooths I found that day….

Hope everyone has a MERRY CHRISTMAS today…..

Thanksgiving at MFQ

Posted on December 11, 2013 by jwj

I received a phone call a couple of weeks ago from a good friend who told me that there had been a blast at the quarry at MFQ a few days before Thanksgiving. I had to work Thanksgiving Eve and Thanksgiving night, but was off that weekend so I made plans to go the day after Thanksgiving. I emailed my friend Ray in St Louis and told him, and he decided to come along with me. I was able to get a good nap in and Ray met me at the house, we loaded up the truck, and headed out shortly after 8 am. After stopping for gas, we headed east and arrived about 11:30 am and osbserved the west corner of the cove wall had been blasted down…..

As we pulled up to the blast pile, we stopped and talked to one of the owners and his wife, for a few minutes, thanked them for allowing rockhounds to come there and rockhunt, and then we began searching to see what we could find after the blast. He told us that he had taken some of the pine cone looking crystals to his wife, occasionally, and they liked them too.

We immediately started finding some nice crystals in various colors, that had survived the blast and the fifty foot throw to the ground as well…

…within minutes, I had one bag full and returned to the truck for another, as Ray climbed up on the pile in search of boulders with vugs…he found several and was able to remove some nice clusters from them…

I kept walking around the perimeter of the pile and soon found this one just sitting there waiting to go home with me…

…this of course is the cleaned up version of it…and we found a few that had a red crust on them…still haven`t figured that part out yet….

…although I can tell you that it isnt soft like clay, is hard and rough just like it looks, nothing seems to wash it off at all. I managed to find quite a few dark grey colored crystals, even a nice set of twins like these….

…and quite a few chocolate colored crystals as well….

…and some bigger chunks covered in chocolate brown crystals, too….

…Ray found a big chunk of crystals coated with that red crust and gave to me…he didn`t like that red crust at all….I don`t like it, but found it interesting since we have never seen it there before….

We were there til about 3 pm and then headed home, with a truckbed full of crystals…we didn`t find many pockets but were able to liberate quite a few crystals from the vugs we found.

Protected: Mid October at MFQ

Posted on November 22, 2013 by jwj

Arkansas Quartz Mining In Sad Shape

Posted on November 13, 2013 by jwj

I returned Sunday evening from five days of fall vacation in southern Arkansas, spending most of my time on Lake Ouachita at Mountain Harbor Resort once again. I really enjoy the restful atmosphere there, plus it`s dog friendly, friendly staff that goes above and beyond to make your stay there enjoyable, and they have great food at their lodge restaurant, too. Although I`m not into fishing and boating that much, they have a full service marina and can provide you with a rental boat of any size as well…I know this because I have photographed about every aspect of the place and met many of the staff members who work there, extremely friendly and knowledgeable folks there. My buddy Ray Roth wasnt able to make it up this trip, his dad was the victim of a mugging and vehicle accident a few weeks before and he suffered injuries that he was unable to recover from…Ray wisely decided to stay home and spend as much time with his dad as he could.

Missy and I picked up Mom early Wednesday morning and headed west, and within an hour, we left the remnants of the rain and storms behind, that had been hanging on for a few days. From there to the Arkansas line south of Joplin, we had cloudy skies that soon broke open as we were crossing the Boston Mountains and as with Missouri, we were seeing spotty color all the way down. I was a bit disappointed since the state of Arkansas had received much more rain than Missouri through the summer months and I figured the colors down there would be much more plentiful and beautiful. We made good time, arriving in Fort Smith a little after noon, and after a sandwich and chips with my Aunt Dorcas, who Mom was staying with for a few days, Missy and I headed south to Waldron, where I stopped off and visited with my three uncles for a bit at the family farm, before continuing on south to Lake Ouachita.

We arrived at Mountain Harbor and got checked in with thirty minutes to spare before the sun began to set…I figured from the heavy cloud base that we might just have a beautiful sunset tonight, and boy, was I right…..

…that was one heck of a beautiful sunset and just hung up there in the sky for the longest time that evening. I had actually figured it was over and began to head back over to the lodge from the Harbor North side, but then as the skies started turning cotton candy pink, then I found a new location to shoot from nearby and stayed to shoot a few more frames of it. In all, I believe I shot about two hundred images of it, before heading back to the guestroom and then meandering down to the lodge restaurant for a great plate of fried catfish strips with their famous baked potato salad and steamed veggies. They have several great food entrees there, no matter if you are there for breakfast, dinner, or supper, and from what I have heard, for groups, they also bake some great tasting cinnamon rolls. If there was one thing I could think of that was bad, it would only be that they actually shut down the restaurant from the first of December to about the first of March.

Missy and I woke up about 7 am the next morning and headed out for a good walk, getting in about a mile of small hills just walking around the immediate lodge and marina area. Below is what the main lodge looks like from the lake side, guestrooms are to the left, dining area to the far right…

There was some light fog out on the lake, covering some of the boats and docks, and I took my camera and photographed some of the scenery with the fog rolling across the waters….

After taking Missy back to the room and getting her fed, I wandered down to the lodge restaurant for a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon and toast with grape jelly. Besides the great atmosphere there, they also have a great view of the lake and marina area from the restaurant windows. After checking my emails, Missy and I then headed to Miller Mountain Mine on the northeast corner of Lake Ouachita…we bypassed Hot Springs traffic by cutting across Hwy 227 through Mountain Pine and passed by Lake Ouachita State Park to Jessieville and then back west on Hwy 298 to the mine. As we drove down the freshly graded gravel road, I noticed alot of recent logging activity…..you pass through a hunting club area on the way to the mine, it`s posted on both sides of the road there, white signs with red lettering, and loggers had cut a wide and deep swath through the heavily wooded area on both sides of the road. Missy and I normally see a few deer as we drive down this road, but today we saw absolutely nothing wildlife wise, but we did notice that the road had been extensively worked over by county maintenance and was in very good shape all the way up to the top of the mountain.

We drove in and stopped up at the rock shop and office at the mine entrance, to find Bill and Faith sorting through single quartz crystals on the front porch of the office. There was a new guy working the office with them this time…I found out a bit later that Bill had recently undergone some cancer surgery and was recovering from it, with doctors orders not to do any heavy lifting for at least another three to six weeks, and the new guy was one of two now working there to do the work that Bill normally does there. Bill brought me up to speed on the current mining conditions in the Mount Ida and Jessieville area, and several events that had occurred since I was there last year in the fall. The short of it was that four mines were now shut down and no longer open to the public for digging at in the Mount Ida area alone.

A few years ago, a young couple from the East Coast had moved out to the Mt Ida area and purchased the leases on the old Fiddlers Ridge Mine and the old Arrowhead Mine. They planned to bring both mines into compliance with state and federal mining laws so that they could open both mines to the public once again, and even changed the name of the Arrowhead Mine to the Avatar Mine and the Fiddlers Ridge Mine to Fantasia Mine, boasting several new fee dig plans as well. They hired some local area miners to make the mines safe to the public for fee digging once again. After completing the work at the former Fiddlers Ridge Mine and after digging for a few months at the Avatar Mine, the local area miners decided to dig commercially instead and leased the Avatar from them for that purpose. I had heard from another good friend down there in the past year, that quartz crystals with red tips were being found there as well as blue phantom crystals, many blue phantoms reportedly found there in years past. At any rate, earlier this year, the local area miners were working one day at the Avatar and the Forest Service showed up and took control of the property once again…bottom line was that leases were not paid and property ownership defaulted back to the FS, from what I was told, and those two mines were shut down…the ironic thing is that if you do a google search for either mine by their new names, the young couple`s website comes up and reads as if they are in operation and nothing is wrong. I wonder how long that will last.

Sometime this summer, the Bear Mountain Mine was sold to another area miner and is now closed to the public as well, being mined commercially by the new owner. That makes three mines no longer open to the public and then there is yet another mine near Mt Ida, Wegner`s Crystal Ranch, that is advertising five adventure plans on their website, one that includes group mining at their phantom mine for a fee of $ 24 and allows four hours of digging time with a minimum of ten miners in each group to qualify.

Earlier this year, I emailed them to inquire about the Phantom Mine, and was told that while they planned to put this plan into operation sometime this year, the year is just about over and the plan has still not materialized. The ironic thing here, is the fee and the time allowed to dig…twenty four bucks for four hours when you can go to Miller Mtn Mine and pay only ten dollars at the most and allowed to dig all day long…its not rocket science folks…I would rather pay $ 10 dollars and dig for eight hours and keep all I find, rather than pay 48 dollars for eight hours and ” maybe ” find something good enough to keep.

The only other fee dig mine at Mt Ida is Sweet Surrender, where Ray and I wasted four hours of time and twenty bucks each at last year, and didn`t find anything worth keeping, lots of crappy rock but that was about it. Wont ever find me going back there. So as it stands now, there are these two mines at Mt Ida and the two Coleman brother`s mines near Jessieville that one can go pay to dig at. Miller Mtn Mine charges $ 10 per person or less for groups, and you can collect from sunrise to sundown and keep all you find. Ron Coleman`s Mine charges $ 20 per person….Sweet Surrender charges $ 20 per person, and Wegners Ranch fees start at $ 15 and go up for the mining and $ 10 for the tailings alone.

The Championship Dig held once again this year, only brought in sixteen diggers and many of them did not fare well, due to the mines they went to.

Bill told me that they are now digging into the mountain at Miller Mtn Mine once again, and so far the pit was about eighty feet deep and they were finding some beautiful stuff lately….they had two inches of rain on Tuesday and so conditions were still way too wet and muddy to do any digging that day, plus they needed to get some overhead rock out of the way first. I had a few hours to dig that day, before meeting a friend for lunch in Hot Springs, so I drove on up and parked, cracked the windows for Missy, and got ready to walk around in the wet mud. It was way too muddy to release her from my truck and Faith had a dog running around outside as well, and it was cool enough to leave her inside, about fifty five degrees at that time of the morning.

I grabbed a bag with some wrapping cloths, got my gloves on and grabbed my mattox and headed up into the tailing piles of fresh wet clay to see what I could find on the surface. I walked up the outside of the huge pile, away from the office, to the interior access turn in, and checked the outer edge of the mud pile, and within a few minutes had turned over a few medium sized clusters that were sitting upside down, pretty side down and ugly side up, that apparently had been ignored because of that. I wrapped them up and placed them in the bag and continued on…saw that the new machine dig area was fenced off at the top of the hill beyond me, near the camping area at the back of the pile. I walked back to the turn in and climbed up to the top of the center of the pile, talked to a few people digging in the back of the tailing pile and then started down the center of the top of the pile, checking the freshly overturned small piles and the new small piles as well, and seeing glints of crystals shining in the sunshine all over the place. After checking the first three piles on top, I had my bag half filled with small clusters and double terminated small crystals laying all over the place. After about two hours of walking around in the ooey gooey mud, I had my bag filled completely and I had found a couple of yard rocks as well. I took a break and checked on Missy, she was doing fine,but obviously wanted to get out and stretch her legs. I decided to wait til we got to Gulpha Gorge to check out the fall color in the creek and campground area. I wrapped up my crystals and cleaned up, then drove back down to the office to get a couple of baskets of quartz crystal plates and talk with Faith and Bill a bit more before heading out.

I drove down to Hot Springs to pick up a friend and go hiking some…that evening, we drove over to Harbor north to see if we were going to get another pretty sunset when we came across some beautiful deer grazing by the road on the plentiful acorns….

…and we definitely found a pretty sunset about an hour later….

Later that evening, I met up with Aaron, a private area collector who I had corresponded with online earlier in the week, and we made arrangements to meet up and trade some material. Aaron had some great minerals and crystals from the Magnet Cove area including some smokey quartz with phantoms, pyrite cubes, brookite crystals, some with pyrite….

….magnetite crystals, and some novaculite suitable for cutting material. I had brought Aaron quite a bit of druse quartz from Missouri, at his request, as well as some purple fluorite cubes from western Kentucky, and some Doe Run minerals too. He parked next to my truck and uncovered the goodies that he had brought to trade, and I discovered he had a couple of tubs of pyrite with white feldspar from Cove Creek, one large chunk of pyrite on white feldspar that weighed at least twenty pounds by itself, a tub of shell and screw fossils from Leslie, Arkansas, a large slab covered in trilobites that measured eighteen inches high by ten inches wide and at least three inches thick…..

…a few large chunks of novaculite that was as pretty as some agates, a box full of brookite crystals from Cove Creek….

….and a few smokey quartz crystals, one large one with a phantom at the top of it…..

He then proceeded to unwrap a nice large cluster of quartz crystals from the pit at Miller Mtn Mine and handed it over to me….it was quite beautiful !!

Thanks again, Aaron !!

I had a bit of trouble with acid reflux that night and lost a few hours of sleep…so I opted to do nothing at all on Friday til later in the day… afterall, it was a vacation and I felt that I needed at least one day of doing absolutely nothing, so after a good hike at daybreak, capturing more fog on the water…

….we moved from the guestroom, to a log cabin at Harbor North. While out hiking, we came across this neat outcrop of layered, colored shale on the lakeshore…….

Later in the day though, I drove into Mt Ida and met up with Jeff Burrows of Collier Creek Crystals and saw some of the prettiest quartz crystals I have ever seen…aura quartz in a few colors….

….irradiated quartz….

smokey quartz, golden healers, large clusters, and then he showed me some Mexican minerals including dogtooth calcite crystals in flower form, selenite, fluorite, and huge pallets full of geodes coated with druse quartz, Jeff was able to fill me in on some more happenings in the quartz mining of the area as well. He said he could remember a time when there were about twenty five mines operating in the area, but these days, due to the extensive regulations by the present administration, only a few mines remained open to the public. You can view more of the crystals Jeff has for sale at www.colliercreekcrystals.com

Saturday, after a good hike with Missy around the north lakeshore, I had a good hearty breakfast at the lodge and then we drove down to Charleton Lake Park and hiked down to the waterfall and checked out the fall foliage…..

..there is a neat looking rock on the right side of the falls, looks like a magma flow, specially up close….

I had received a call from a good friend the night before, and he decided to drive down to visit that afternoon so I spent the rest of the morning repacking the truck, redistributing the rocks and minerals in the bed especially. After a short nap, I drove up to the firehouse to wait for my friend Pierre to show up. We had a great visit, went for a nice hike to some beautiful fall foliage areas and then had some great food at the lodge restaurant before he headed back home that evening.

The next morning, I headed back up to Waldron to the family farm for an annual reunion with family and friends, and a big dinner. On the way up, we spotted some pretty foliage along Hwy 270…

Mom and I visited with several family members and area friends before heading for home about mid afternoon. Luckily, this year I had taken a few extra days off to catch up and rest up before heading back to work. As soon as I get caught up, I will post some photos of my finds and trades.

If anyone is looking for some novaculite for cutting material or knapping material, I know a great little quarry one can go to and be welcome at, to get some great pretty material there. Give me a shout and I will put you in touch with the owner.

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

Had a Virgil Richards Day at MFQ

Posted on October 10, 2013 by jwj

Missy and I drove down to MFQ Sunday morning, hoping to find some more pretty crystals. I had received word from a good friend down there, that there had been some blasting activity there earlier in the week, so we were on the road a little after six am. It was a bit chilly when we hit the road, high forties, and it was only forecast to reach a high of sixty two that day, with some gusty winds expected. I had hoped to get down there the previous morning but the rain forecast for that afternoon, came in a bit earlier than expected, so we waited instead. My right arm was still hurting, but it seems like I have been adjusting and getting used to the pain somewhat.

However, I saw my doctor yesterday and he said I have tendonitis and gave me a few options on how to treat it…trying option one now, which includes alleve twice a day with some minor exercises and using my tens unit twice a day. If that doesn`t help it, then he can inject cortisone in my arm and see if that takes care of it…and if that doesn`t do it, then surgery is an option as well….I`m hoping we don`t have to go that far. Original injury occurred over thirty years ago while I was in college and helping a state trooper buddy chip out his driveway of two inch deep ice so he could get his patrol car in and out just fine…I basically just overworked the muscle tissue of my arm that day and back then, the prescription was to rest it in a sling for ten days, easy enough back then since I didn`t have a job then. Even helped me get out of a few tests, lol.

Missy and I arrived around 10 am and it was still just a bit cool when we got out of the truck….didn`t phase Missy at all, cause she now has her winter coat back on and am sure it felt quite nice to her. I started out with a long sleeve shirt and made it thru the day with it on, actually, mainly because that gusty wind was quite a cool breeze all day long. She bounded out of the truck and took off to check things out and I didn`t see her again for about thirty minutes. I got my boots laced up and put a light core jacket on and decided to walk around and see what I could find on the surface first. The main obvious changes were that the cove pile had been completely removed on the west facing wall on the north end…..

…and the blasting had occurred above our heads where the north end upper bench had previously been, now the wall up above was completely even with that north end upper bench wall…..

….after walking around and not finding much along the wall…it was also obvious that there were many pockets way up high from all the glittering I could see where the sun was hitting the wall high up, but I found no pockets down below at all. I decided to walk down the wall to the east and see what I could find, checking along the base where much of the ground material had been scooped up and removed as well, since my last visit. I soon came upon a section of the wall where there were some apparent crystal formations….

…so I stopped and started exploring…pretty soon I had found a few nice pockets that were chock full of beautiful crystals and druse combinations, and within minutes, I was pulling one cluster after another out of the pocket opening, each one covered with dogtooth crystals…I took a break and went to the truck to get a couple of bags full of wrapping cloths….these were way too beautiful and delicate looking to take any chances…I decided to wrap them double before setting them in the bag. After about twenty minutes, I had two bags completely full of double wrapped crystals and clusters, and after placing them into the backseat of my truck for better ride stability, I returned to the wall with another bag of cloths. I worked my way down the wall about ten feet and looked up and saw this….

…and closer up….

…I could see the end of a crystal sticking out slightly…after cleaning out the surrounding area carefully first, I reached inside and pulled out this large double poker chip with exposed dogtooth crystal tips….

…and further inside the initial pocket opening, you can see yet another pocket opening up deeper inside the wall from the first one…and let me tell you, about every cluster that I pulled out after that initial shock, consisted of alot of oohhhs and ahhhsss and holie cows too….within five minutes I had the third bag filled and was headed to the truck for yet another two bags….an hour later I had those two bags filled and the pockets were empty. I decided to drive over to the newer blast pile area and see what could be found there.

Missy had trotted off in that direction already, so I loaded up and drove on over to that pile next. I had seen a trackhoe up on the upper bench on the south end when we drove into the quarry and it appeared that the hoe was pulling material off the upper bench and pushing it over the edge and down below…..

….that material had formed a couple of small piles which could be climbed, so climb I did…..

…and when I reached the top, after cutting out stairs to climb up on, I found a couple of large openings at the top…you guessed it, more pockets…..

….opened up from the vibrations of the blasting on the wall two hundred feet to the north, and crystals laying all over the place up there in the opening space of each pocket, and underneath the loose crystals were clusters of crystals laying all over the place, many with very pretty bright yellow calcite druse nestled all around the crystals. I was pulling several crystals out that had orange centers, some had brown centers, and some had black centers, some had frosting all over them and looked like the brown dogtooth crystals that my buddy, Virgil, had found several years earlier one day there.

The two pockets on the left seen above, were the first two I located once I reached the top of the pile, and the ones to the right were additional pockets that I found by following the bread crumbs while up there, a line of crystals going from the first pockets to four more pockets…..plus two of the pockets went deep down and one went underneath a huge rock that was sitting up there on the right side, too. I had to make four trips to the truck to get more bags and wrapping cloths as I kept pulling crystals and clusters out of each pocket opening and kept running out of wrapping cloths, the initial pocket required at least an hour and two bags, to clean it out !! That brown trail you see on the right side of the rocky slope in the image below….

…is the trail I left, when I slid down the pile each time on my butt, like a big slide…carrying one filled bag in my left hand, and a large cluster in my right hand or on my lap…it was quite fun sliding down each time, but let me tell you it was a lot of work climbing back up each time, and cutting those steps out each step of the way….but well worth it too.

By 3:30 pm, I was wore out and decided to go up above to the upper bench to check it out…I figured it the track hoe was up there, maybe there was something worthwhile up there to be found.

I hadn`t been up there since Ian was down the first time, and once up there, I only found a few green clusters and that was all. Needless to say, I wasn`t up there long and soon enough Missy and I were headed home.

I stopped off near Raymondville, to visit a good friend, at his family`s dairy farm and finally got to see what chocolate milk cows look like. They have a large herd of Brown Swiss and Holsteins both.

James 🙂

jwjphoto7@gmail.com

Rockhound Friend Ray Roth Visits

Posted on September 27, 2013 by jwj

True to his word, Ray Roth came up to see me on his way to Keokuk, Iowa last week, and stopped off for a few days to go rockhunting with me.

I had a rough week before he arrived, tooth pulled on Tuesday, thought it was gonna be cut out but the oral surgeon was able to get ahold of it and it came right out…or at least it felt that way…after all I was very numbed up and could only feel the pressure thankfully. The week before that, somehow, I re-injured my right arm…yes the arm that I injured in a fall while rockhunting earlier this year, but also injured it thirty some odd years ago as well while at college, and still have no idea how I re-injured it two weeks ago..memory isnt what it used to be any longer. Original injury was a tendon injury, from helping a trooper friend chip out his ice covered driveway so he could get his patrol car out, treated back then with a sling and tylenol, and doctors orders to rest as much as possible for two weeks…so I treated it this time with pain meds, arnicare salve, a tens unit, and lots of rest when possible…I say possible because the tendons are in my elbow joint and I have to use my arm everyday, and no matter what you do with your right hand or arm, the tendons come into play no matter what you are doing, whether you are moving your fingers like typing, or moving your wrist or arm. Between the arnicare and pain meds alone tho, if I had something I had to do with it, both products sure made it feel quite normal….course when they wore off, it was quite a different story.

Ray was on the road most of Saturday and stopped off in Van Buren for the night…he told me he would be off the road by 6 pm and eating supper while watching the LSU football game, lol….so we made plans to meet at MFQ on Sunday morning around 8 am. St Louis Ray and I got up early Sunday morning and drove down to meet Cajun Ray and led him to the quarry. It was a little froggy when we arrived….

…but it soon burned off and we were left with a gloriously beautiful day of normal temperatures and sunshine all day long, with nice cool breezes as well. As we pulled into the cove area, we discovered the knob that we had been working the past several weeks, was all but gone…..

……now just a few piles of rocks left at the bottom of the wall…we checked the piles first and found a few remnants of clusters, then checked the wall pockets and St Louis Ray spotted a pretty crystal cluster sitting about ten feet up in situ matrix…and was able to climb up and retrieve it without any problem. For the next couple of hours, we scraped along the wall and found a few pockets of small clusters….

After checking this wall, we moved on down to the east to the other blast zone and while St Louis Ray wandered down to his special place further east, to find more vugs in boulders, Cajun Ray and I searched the remainder of the blast pile and found some goodies…Ray checked along the edge and I up the slope a bit, found a pocket that had apparently blasted down from the high wall intact, and buried near the top of the pile. After pulling half a dozen small clusters out from under some small boulders, I went back to retrieve a few bags and wound up filling two with wrapped goodies alone ! After another hour of this, we decided to head to the secret spot and see if we could find anything there…Cajun Ray had never been there but had heard about it from several of my posts. It hasn`t been blasted in a while there now, but we were able to liberate some goodies from some older pockets there and found some vugs in some boulders that had some nice druse and poker chip combos as well. The water spots there made for some great reflections late in the day there, too….

After digging all morning and into the afternoon a bit at MFQ and then a few hours at the SSQ, Ray and I wore out by 4:30 pm and decided to call it quits….my right arm was ordering me to stop now….I hadn`t overdone it again yet, but it was telling me it was time to stop for the day and I decided to listen. We were covered in dirt and dust, and had several goodies to clean up yet from our digs, plus Ray needed to check in at the Wagon Wheel Motel in Cuba and get cleaned up for supper. We checked with St Louis Ray and he was ready to call it a day as well, so we loaded up and headed home.

After taking St Louis Ray back to his truck at my place, I cleaned up quickly and headed back to meet Ray at Mo Hick for some fantastic BBQ in Cuba. I had to stop off at my parents house and drop off some goodies that Ray had brought up with him for them…gumbo goodies and some great brownies from a company in Louisiana too. When I got to MO Hick, he was already sitting inside admiring the beautiful cedar wood interior that Dennis the owner, had made on his own.

The next morning, Ray drove down to my place to get one of his tires fixed, he had picked up a nail somewhere along the road up to Missouri and while it wasn`t leaking, he wanted to get it repaired before driving on up to Keokuk and then back home. I took him over to Harry`s Tire Service in Sullivan, where I always get my tires serviced at, and after about 20 minutes, the guys there had him in good shape once again and ready to travel. We decided to head to my house so he could see my collection and while there, decided to have breakfast at Cracker Barrel before heading out to hunt more. My parents met us at CB and paid Ray back for the gumbo and cajun cooking goodies that he had brought up with him and given to them the day before. After a great brunch, Ray and I headed to the new druse spot to check it out…it had rained pretty good a few days before and as I told Ray, that`s the best time to search there.

We walked up to the top of the hill as seen in the photo above, first…as I explained to Ray after arriving and getting our boots on…I have had better luck finding beautiful bubbles up there. We each grabbed a couple of bags and tools and headed up the hill with Missy in hot pursuit. I stayed to the left and walked up a trail that had been drastically eroded by heavy rainfall and Ray went up the little road going up the hill to the right….within thirty minutes, I spotted a pile of dirt and on closer inspection, found several plates of smokey colored druse quartz…one of my favorite colors there…I walked back to the truck to get more bags and wraps and returned to wrap them up.

About two hours later, we both had three or four full bags each and were a bit tired, but we managed to take a water break, then walk over to the other side and check the drainage ditches and filled yet another bag each. By this time, we were both done in for the day, and we headed back to town. After cleaning up, I met Ray over at our Chinese Buffet Restaurant and we had a great meal there…Ray topping off his meal with two huge dips of ice cream. Here are some neat sunbeams I shot on the way to the restaurant….

We were gonna go horseback riding the next morning, but my friend who has the horses, got called into St Louis Tuesday morning so we postponed to Wed morning instead and spent the day goofing off and cleaning up our finds from previous days. Ray decided to also give his suv a good wash and then re-arranged the rock load so that he would be sure to have some room for geodes once he got to Iowa.

Ray came over to my house bright and early on Wed morning…ready to go horseback riding…..I asked him where his jeans were cause he was wearing shorts, and he said he figured he would be okay in shorts…lol…he rode with me up to my friend`s horse farm out of Bourbon, the Meramac Farm Bed and Breakfast Horse Farm….its a Century Farm, over 100 years old, they have a few horsebarns there, one is over 125 years old and built with wooden pegs instead of nails…you can see them in the huge loft beams. They have several horses there and easily accomodate groups for trail rides with over 900 acres of farmland and forested hills. This is a view of their farm back in 2009 from one of their hilltop views….

...and it shows both barns and the original farm house where my friend Carol, has lived much of her life, the farm in her family for many generations. Tragically in 2010, during a severe storm, the farmhouse was struck by lightning and burned to the ground despite the best efforts of several fire departments who responded. Despite the tremendous loss, Carol and her family and staff, bounced back from it and built a new farmhouse, a North Carolina style farmhouse, complete with a bright copper colored metal roof…

…and a beautiful white picket fence surrounding it….it`s like a bright beacon from the roadway and is just as pretty on the inside as it is on the outside. We arrived at the farm a little after 10 am and found Carol and Jerry saddling up horses for us…Ray was no sooner out of my truck and walking across to meet Carol…..

….when she asked Ray, if he had any jeans to ride in….I just chuckled when he gave them his answer…they shook their heads and said, okay…they were waiting on a lady that wanted to go riding that morning as well and she was running late, having trouble finding their farm. Carol pointed out an Eagle perched high in a dead tree top way across their north field, about three hundred yards…I put my camera lens on it, but it was still way over there…

and my lens wasn`t able to pull it in sharply at all….

We signed the releases and got saddled up while waiting for her to arrive. Here you see Jerry adjusting the stirrups for Ray as he is sitting on his horse….

…and soon after, we were on the way…we rode down into that north field first, as Carol wanted to see if we could get closer to the Eagle, but as soon as we got into the bottom of the field, we saw that the Eagle had flown off. This is a pretty pasture, I go there often in the spring when bluebell flowers bloom all over the place on the river side….

…and we soon were up on the main road, on our way to the back side of the farm where more pretty trails awaited our arrival…here you see Ray and Jerry bringing up the rear of the trail ride….

…all in all, we had a great two hour ride…it had been ten years since Ray had gone horseback riding and only four years for me. He texted me the next day to let me know he was out looking around and finding geodes, but was being picky as to what he was going to take home with him due to the restrictions on space. He was a bit sore while up in Iowa geode hunting, but had a great time while here.

James 🙂

jwjphoto7@gmail.com

MFQ Early September too….

Posted on September 12, 2013 by jwj

Sure is a beautiful day today….Thursday, September 12th, that is….weather forecasters have been telling us all week that today we would break the hot spell and cooler weather would return…..while I had my doubts, I knew last night that something was coming our way cause my sinuses were out of whack again…had to take half a zirtec and some alleve for my toothache and arm pain….the zirtec worked and cleared up my breathing, the alleve alleviated the pain, and combined, they both put me to sleep early last night, giving me a good ten hours of rest.

Woke up this morning to a nice cool refreshing breeze from the north, and while it has dissipated somewhat this afternoon, it sure is a lot cooler than it was yesterday…we haven`t even hit the projected high of 86 today, so far it`s only 82 out there and we still have the occasional cool breeze. Rain is forecast for this evening and I`m looking forward to that as well…and they are telling us now that we wont hit the mid eighties again til late next week. I think our cool down has finally arrived. Missy and I went down to MFQ again the last couple of weekends and brought back some great stuff again. I`ll combine both hunts in this story, along with photos.

The first trip down was on Labor Day itself…I had taken off the day before from work to rest up, and we rose early Monday morning to drive there and arrive at dawn…because it was due to be a bit warm that day. We took the easy route down and as I was making a highway change, the sun was just starting to rise in a big yellow fireball in the red predawn skies….

We arrived about an hour later and it was fairly cool, so I wasted no time in making a surface search of the area…the knob was still intact for the most part, but it looked like the machinery had been up on it dragging some of the bigger rocks at the base, back away from it, which is good because they could be a real hazard to walk over and around,specially with your hands full of beautiful crystals…..

…after a surface search, which turned up a few nice chocolate brown twins and triples that someone had obviously left behind for whatever reason, I started cleaning out the pockets in clear view. After clearing some of the loose stuff in plain view, I began digging back into the pockets and pretty soon, I had my hands full and my pocket apron full as well. I always wear a carpenters apron when I go rockhunting, it has two large pockets in the front of it, so I call it my pocket apron. After filling it up, I took a break and wrapped up the better ones and then continued digging. I was concentrating on these pockets to the right of my bags….

…which took about an hour to clear out…then I concentrated on the pockets to the left of my bags…

…and after cleaning them out, I stood back and looked at the knob once again, and spotted what looked like a few more pocket possibilities on the right side, and explored them….

…and as it turned out, there were alot more pockets there than I originally thought, so I cleaned them out as well, finding some very nice goodies in them. Not only that, but the pockets I was finding here, were much deeper than pockets previously found there….

…after digging for a few hours there, the heat was beginning to catch up, so I put Missy back in the truck with the ac on, changed into dryer clothes and then packed up. I had five bags full of beautiful wrapped crystals, a few dogtooths in them, and was quite happy with my finds. I then drove over to the new blast area to check it out….

…they had worked it back to almost the wall by this time…

Not even a week later, I was off for the weekend, and missed a chance to go rockhunting on Saturday, which would have been a little cooler, so Missy and I got up early on Sunday morning and took off for MFQ once again. There was a chance of scattered showers and after checking the radar, it appeared that there was a line of showers moving to the south from the north and hovering around Columbia as we headed out the door, so I figured we would have five hours of clear skies before rain would move in. We took the smooth and clear sailing route again, stopping off for a sausage and egg biscuit and fuel, before driving on….after arriving we found that the knob had been worked over with the machinery, and the entire right side was basically gone….

…quite a change, but as it turned out, for the better because there were quite a few pockets exposed and just waiting for the right collector to come along and harvest the bounty inside them….…and harvest we did…there must have been twenty pockets alone in the face of the newly worked over knob wall, many of them just staring me in the face when I walked up to take a closer look at it…so I went back to the truck and retrieved five bags and started pulling cluster after cluster out of the pockets, wrapping them up and placing them in the bags. Within about thirty minutes, I had one bag full and was working on the next one…but I`m getting ahead of myself. I had made a short walk around the trailing end of the knob pile before starting on the pockets, and then climbed up to the top of the pile above the knob. I found several pockets along the wall up there and pulled some nice crystal clusters out of those pockets too….

…enough to fill one bag…and while up there, a local guy drove up and set up an archery target on one of the gravel piles below me and sighted in his crossbow. I carried this bag back to the truck and grabbed another couple of bags and then climbed up to the face wall of the knob to start exploring the new pockets there…

…after pulling out what I could find, I dropped a few boulders down out of the way and found even more pockets behind them….in the photo above, you can see where I have done just that…

…and after pulling a couple of nice twins, joined at the hips, out of the large hole that resulted in this maneuver, I started pulling some uniquely shaped black poker chips out as well….

…at any rate, I quickly started filling one bag after another because at times, these things were rolling down the hill out of this large pocket, like chips from a slot machine…

…I was trying to find the source of the black poker chips and clusters, but was unable to pinpoint where exactly they were coming from. Within the hour, though, I had filled two bags with wrapped poker chip beauties and then I decided to trigger a slide or two to get some heavy boulders hanging above me, down and out of the way….

…and within a few minutes, I was able to safely trigger the slide and get the large boulder down and out of my way…

…and bringing down quite a few more above and to the side as well….

…and after filling two more bags full of goodies, I decided to take a break and get some food and water down, then go check for more goodies elsewhere…I wanted to scout out a couple of other locations while there as well…noon was fast approaching and the cloudy skies were beginning to clear off…the rain never did materialize…. and I knew as soon as the clouds cleared, the humidity and heat would return. After a short break, Missy and I drove over to the new blast wall area to check it out some more too.

I climbed back up to the top of the pile to check the area I had found a crystal or two the weekend before, and only found a short shelf of crystals, so I climbed back down and walked along the wall looking for pockets. I rounded a small corner in the wall and came upon a likely looking spot and pretty soon, I had exposed about ten pockets. I could feel the heat coming on strong, so I began to pull crystals out of the pockets and wrap them and place them in bags as fast as I could…Missy had decided to stay in the air conditioned cab and within a few minutes, I couldn`t blame her a bit….

…in one section of this area, I found ten pockets, small and shallow, but lined with some of the most gorgeous druse I have ever seen and some very nice poker chips as well….

…I cleaned them out as well as I could, requiring the use of my hammer and chisel, which only served to completely wear me out with the heat really building up by this time. I changed clothes and decided to head for home, stopping briefly to snap this photo of the wall I had just worked….

MFQ Again Mid August

Posted on August 27, 2013 by jwj

This has been an unusual month of August for us, because it is normally a very hot month, temperature wise daily, and last year we had temps averaging from 102 to 108 daily, but this year, we are quite the opposite. Most of the first three weeks, the temps were in the 80`s, and then as we progressed past the middle of the month, the temps began to slowly climb, and now, the last week, we are in the high 90`s, and while still cooler than last year, the humidity makes one think our temps are much higher. Plus we haven`t had any rain for two weeks and are hoping for some relief soon.

I took off the 18th so I could return to MFQ and see what could be found….my supervisor had returned from her vacation and I had more overtime built up, so took the day off to do some collecting…Missy and I arrived mid morning to a beautiful cloudy day. I grabbed my tools and bags and made a fairly quick walk around to see if I could find any pretties laying loose in the gravel or dirt, then dug around at the base of the cove wall to see if I could locate another pocket…

….not finding any, I then scraped around on the wall to see if I could locate any there. I found a few shallow pockets and pulled out a few nice crystals, then took a short break for water. The temps were climbing into the low nineties and I then grabbed another bag and headed to the knob to see if I could locate another pocket there….

I first climbed up to the pocket that Ray had found a few weeks back that was chock full of nestles chocolate colored dogtooth crystals…this was no easy task this time because there was a lot of loose gravel and dirt on the way up on the left side next to the rock knob….

….so I had to find a different way up that was more solid and not prone to sliding down on me as I climbed up. I climbed up on the bigger rocks to the right of the knob, they are firmly entrenched and not going anywhere anytime soon, although some of the smaller ones moved a bit on me under my feet as I moved over to the knob pocket. I decided to dig around in the original pocket to see if I could locate anymore missed crystals…the last time there, I had found a few that were either overlooked or left behind….someone had worked the pocket a bit more extensively after Ray had worked it initially. However, whoever was there after Ray, had left behind about a half dozen really nice dogtooths, laying in the loose dirt when I found them. Here is how the pocket looks now…kind of L shaped in the rock wall….

I found a couple more while up there, and then decided to scratch around the pocket as well…and while digging around in the loose dirt at the front of the pocket, I started finding some dark gray colored poker chips, then a small cluster popped up…and the next thing I knew, a few dogtooths surfaced as well….after wrapping the few up and placing them in my bag, I decided to take a short break, go grab another bag with more wrapping cloths, and headed back to the pocket. I climbed back up and within a few minutes, some larger dogtooths were uncovered, leading me to believe there was yet another pocket under the original one that Ray found…and soon enough, I was pulling this one out next….

…and then I pulled several more out, many of them smaller dogtooths, but very pretty and frosted over. Following are some images of the crystals I found there…took me about an hour to clean out the bottom pocket completely….

Afterwards, I took Missy to a spring fed creek nearby and she was able to get a few drinks of good cold water, too….then we headed home.

MFQ First of August

Posted on August 19, 2013 by jwj

Ray returned from vacation the first week of August and rode down to MFQ again with Missy and I on the tenth, recharged and ready to again see what we could find there. We ran into some full and running creeks….no water was over the highway, but they had definitely had some heavy rainfall there the night before. I found out later, about seven or eight inches of rain had fallen throughout the night time hours and had ended just before our arrival.

As we entered the main river valley from the west, we stopped at a scenic overlook to check out the heavy fog rolling across the valley below….

…s

…since we had gotten up early to arrive early, the sun was coming up over the higher layer of the fog as we were about to head on down the road….

…we arrived a few minutes later to a pretty blue sky filled with fluffy white clouds….sure was a nice cool temp when we started there, too….

…prob largely due to the storms that had cleared out just prior to our arrival….this quarry always drains real well…I have never seen more than a few water puddles there…and only water puddles, no mud…which suits Missy just fine for when she gets thirsty and hot….

…well the knob was still there, looking much the same as last week. Ray poked around it for a bit, climbing up on the other side to see if he could locate any pockets up there, but didn`t find much and so then he grabbed his hammer and chisel and headed east down to the other end in search of boulders to cob down…..

…and pretty soon, I could hear him working on some boulders. I began working on finding more pockets in the cove wall…and by the time he had finished cobbing down some boulders filled with pockets of…get this…ivory snow colored druse quartz….I had found and cleaned out two pockets…he let me know that he was ready to head to the new druse spot anytime…I had just taken a water bottle break and was walking back to the cove wall, wanting to take another look at one area before calling it quits…I put my mini mattox into the dirt and pulled back one swath of dirt and rock…and OILA !!!….. there was a beautiful chocolate brown dogtooth crystal sitting there in the dirt mixture….if I recall, the first words out of my mouth were HOLIE COW…loud enough that Ray, who was walking back to the pile on the east side…heard me and turned around. Then a second later, I found yet another and said it again, loudly, and he came to see what I was finding…and by the time he got there, I had found a pocket of them and they were rolling out of the pocket into my hands…literally….he decided to stay and help me dig it out and one turned into at least two or three….enough to fill two bags….THEN we headed to the new druse spot.

We arrived about a couple of hours later, and although they hadn`t had the same amount of rain up there…the clay mud on top, at least, was a bit soft and gooey. Luckily the construction crews that had been working there the past few months, had likely experienced the same thing and brought some white rock in for traction…

….it was obvious they were no longer excavating the clay dirt now and I drove up the hill to search the south side since we had searched the north side the last time there.

I didn`t get the camera out but suffice to say, we found a ton of bubbles in all different sizes in all colors…my favorites there are the citrine yellow and the smokey colors…Ray even found a lot of pink colored bubble pieces. After collecting for a couple of hours, we headed home with lots of pretty goodies.

MFQ End of July

Posted on August 13, 2013 by jwj

Missy and I loaded up the truck and headed down to MFQ again on the 27th…Ray was on vacation out east and we had nothing better to do…it turned out to be a very pretty day on our arrival down there….

…I mainly drove down to take a look because some friends from up north were traveling down to Marion, Kentucky for a public dig and wanted to swing by on their way home, so went down to scout it out again to give them a better idea of what could be found there…I was going to have to work the weekend they were gonna be there. It was a bit cloudy when we arrived but that helped keep the heat away as well and all in all, it wasn`t a bad day to collect at all…Missy took off on her forays and adventures to check the place out as is her norm these days…

…the knob that Ray and I had been working lately, was still there, but I didn`t venture over to look at it cause it was much the same and still had a lot of rock hanging up on top that could be tricky to work around, so I headed over to the cove wall that we had been finding some beautiful pockets in, instead….

…the last time there, I had found some beautiful stuff, so I decided to nose around and see if I could locate another pocket of beauties…within minutes I had located yet another great pocket and this pocket, much like the last few, really kept going and going and going and….

…and was located just a little higher up on the wall….

…it took about three hours to clean it out, and I filled about six bags full of wrapped goodies, including quite a few dogtooth crystals again. As we left, I snapped a photo of the new blast pile, which they have cut down to size quite a bit in the past week…

,,,having cut it back to the wall almost, and they pulled a bunch of boulders out into the middle of the floor area and were cobbing them down with that big hydraulic jackhammer attachment, doing a fine job of it I might add, and I found some beautiful beach ball pieces of pretty stuff there as well, and loaded them up too…here are a few of my finds from today and the week before as well, as I finally found some time to photograph them….

the next couple of photos show small curved plates of dolomite druse with chips on them…very pretty and sparkle immensely beautifully in the sunlight….