MAGS Missouri Field Trips 2014

Posted on April 15, 2014 by jwj

I was really looking forward to the visit by members of MAGS the weekend of April 5th and 6th, their members are some of the best people you would ever want to meet and rock hunt with, one of the best clubs I have ever had the pleasure of joining. My scouting trip the last week of March turned up a couple of new locations, one which needed further exploration and one that sounded too good to be true. I was able to contact the property owner of the quarry and it turned out he was into metal detecting, so we shared a common interest and he gave me permission to check out the quarry on his property. I then contacted my good friend Virgil Richards, who lives in the Tulsa area, to let him know what I had found out and he indicated that he would be back up on Friday night to go with me to the new druse spot and check out the other location for the first time as well. He also wanted to rejoin the MAGS Club in order to get in on some other field trips throughout the rest of the year, too. I also updated my friend Ray from St Louis County and he indicated he would be out early Saturday morning as well. I had all my grab bag material separated and ready to hand over to MAGS Club for grab bag material at their end of April Show and I coordinated with WC on when and where to meet up with them Saturday late morning.

After a late supper with Virgil at Cracker Barrel, soon after he arrived in my town, I retired early to bed on Friday night, but then woke up around 4 am for some reason, so when the fire department was paged for a house fire about six blocks from my house at 5:30 am, I quickly dressed and headed that way to photograph it for the local paper. I was on the scene until nearly 7 am, when I headed home so I would be ready when Virgil and Ray showed up at my place at 7:30. Virgil arrived soon after and I gave him the grand tour, heading out soon after Ray showed up. We stopped at Steelville to gas up, where Virgil grabbed some ice and goodies for later, and then headed on south to check out the abandoned quarry.

We arrived there around 9 am and after changing to my boots and grabbing a bag and my mini mattox, we started climbing up to the rock walls to check for pockets….

…it was obvious, once we got close enough to inspect the walls, that we were in a quarry that had been abandoned for years, the walls were heavily discolored and weathered….

….and it was a steep climb to get up to those walls as well, slippery slope as it were. We found some beautiful druse quartz on the way up there as well, some intense sparkles and colors….

…and I was working a small pocket near the entrance, while Virgil and Ray were taking a short break down below me…I was pulling some wild looking clusters out of the pocket that had some druse that was def wired differently and poker chips attached to them, looked like a knarly mess to me, but they were def different than anything I had seen, so I pulled about a dozen out and then decided to turn the pocket over to Virgil, since he had made a five hour drive up there and hadn`t found anything good yet. I had already filled another bag on a pocket I had found up above, where I pulled this pretty druse plate out that had this poker chip attached to it….

We began to get a bit worried that we hadn`t seen the MAGS members drive up on our location when 11 am rolled around, so we decided to load up and head toward their Washington County location that they were slated to go to early that morning. We drove down to where I had been told they would be located and found no one there except some workers preparing a cemetery plot for a service, and after they told us that no one else had been down there in that area, we turned around and headed to Viburnum, to see if they had gone on to the site without us. We kept trying to call but as it is in most of those valleys in south central Missouri, there are few times you can pick up a signal. Not until we were deep within the heart of Viburnum did we finally get a signal and make contact with WC, and then as it turned out, they were about half a mile behind us and followed us to the druse spot from there. It seems they had gone to a different location than where they originally thought they were going to, and we had prob driven by the turn off to that location and missed them by mere minutes. I was just glad that we were able to meet up and that everyone was okay, and that they had good luck finding some big pieces of druse at the other location.

After directing them into the parking area and helping them get situated, I noticed one of the trucks had Blue Springs Marina on the side of it as well as a KC phone number, and pleasantly discovered there were now a few more members from Missouri in the club now. I knew most of the member from the year before and it was great seeing Bebe again, as I met her the first time down at Marion, Kentucky at a fluorite dig. I talk to WC and Matthew online all the time, WC is the Field Trip Director and Matthew is the Newsletter Editor, both very accomplished in their respective duties and great to talk to. After getting to visit with everyone and explaining to them that I had left Missy at home so she wouldn`t get so muddy, I pointed out the boundaries of the druse spot and what they could expect to find, and soon after everyone spread out in search of beautiful druse. Some had been there the year before and were looking forward to this spot once again, its a great place to bring kids, too.

After I saw that everyone was finding some nice stuff, I started looking specifically for some more smokey colored druse bubbles for my own collection.

Virgil had run up to the Caseys Store at a nearby town, to get some more goodies and when he returned, he started checking out the ditches and gullies on the north side while most of the rest of us were on the south side.

We had been there about 90 minutes when a guy pulled up in the road and stopped to check us out…he wasn`t sure what we were collecting and his curiousity got the best of him, so he stopped and started asking questions…turned out he was Cindy`s husband Bob, and he invited us on up to his property to look for druse there. We continued on down the road to their farm about an hour later…they have fifty acres there of mostly cleared forest land, but as it turned out, the only druse we found there were contained in very small vugs, not the type of stuff we were looking for and used to finding. From here, everyone was pretty tired and decided to head back to Park Hills to get some supper and rest up for the dig tomorrow, so I pointed out a shortcut to make the return trip. I told WC that Missy and I would meet them at the quarry entrance the next morning at My Favorite Quarry. Ray, Virgil, and I headed to the Caseys to get a few slices of pizza and decided the day had been long enough for us as well. Virgil decided to head on home from there, since we hadn`t gotten the word about any new blasting at MFQ, so we all split up and headed home.

The next morning, Missy and I headed south by 7 am, arriving a little early and on pulling into the entrance to the quarry, discovered we were the first ones there. I had enough time to get out and make some needed adjustments to one side of my tonneau cover to make it more secure when closed…I honestly think the wind has slapped it around enough this year to make it hard to open and shut. Soon after changing to my boots, we saw the convoy of vehicles headed down the hill toward us, with WC leading the way….

…and as soon as everyone was in the lot off the highway, we drove on down to the newer cove area and parked. Missy jumped out and everyone wanted to say hi to her…she was a bit easier to pet this year, easier to catch up to I should say…she is getting older and doesn`t run around as much these days, comes back to where I am hunting at and lays down to watch and rest, so it`s easier to catch up to her and pet her these days. She has been a very good and constant travel companion in my life these past fourteen years and a great buddy girl to have around….she absolutely loves to go rock collecting with me.

On driving in, I had noticed a couple of new areas of activity, and pointed them out to everyone, and soon after, most headed to those new areas to check them out. Even though I grabbed my tools and bags, I mainly helped everyone get started finding stuff, specially the two kids there, Bentley and ” D ” who were part of the Kansas City group.

I checked out a pile to the east for a bit and then returned to the west side of the coved wall, after Matthew`s wife Carolyn called me over to check out some finds. I began picking up dark colored poker chips all over and we all began digging in and finding even more laying around all over the place. Soon after, my buddy Jim Bay drove down to visit with us and I introduced him to everyone there too. We continued to look around and even though we didn`t find any major pockets, I`m pretty sure everyone went home happy with what they found there. We had hoped they would blast before they arrived, cause then there would be even more material laying around to go thru, but alas for some reason that didn`t happen. By 2 pm, it was just Missy and me, and we looked around in another area before heading home an hour later. I look forward to seeing everyone at some of the other field trips later this year.

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

Last Week of March Vacation

Posted on April 15, 2014 by jwj

I took the last week of March off for some vacation time to get ready for the MAGS visit here the first weekend in April, they had asked me to take them druse quartz hunting on Saturday April 5th and then to My Favorite Quarry on Sunday, April 6th. I wanted to do some additional scouting the weekend before they arrived to make sure the sites we were planning to visit were still producing great material and still accessible. Therefore I made another trip to both of the major locations and did some collecting as well as the scouting….hey if I`m making the drive down , I might as well have fun and collect too. I also took the time to separate my finds from the prior year into several buckets to give them some good grab bag material for the upcoming show at Memphis, April 26th and 27th, The Earth Wide Open…if anyone is going to be in that area during that weekend, make plans to visit the show, it`s one of the best and largest gem and mineral shows across the United States.

I also wanted to check on an abandoned quarry that I had been given information on, that was closeby as well. On Sunday afternoon on the 30th, after breakfast with my parents and some friends, Missy and I drove down to Iron and Washington Counties and after locating the abandoned quarry with the information given to me, I then set about trying to find the property owner. I spotted a guy working outside at a nearby farm, and stopped to ask him if he might know the owner, and had some great luck, It turned out he was an assistant to the Assessor for that part of the county and was able to point out the house where the property owner lived, even though he didn`t know the guy`s name. He also told me that he had been collecting rocks and minerals since he was a kid, too, and told me of a few other locations nearby that were on National Forest Land and accessible for druse quartz. I thanked him for his information and drove down to the residence near the quarry to see if I could locate the owner there. While I didn`t find him there, I was able to copy some information that would enable me to locate him later in the week and obtain a phone number and name for him. From there we drove over to one of the roads that the Assistant Assessor had pointed out and slowly drove down the road looking for druse…I spotted a large chunk of pink druse halfway down the ridge road and stopped to check it out. I liked it so well that I placed it in the bed of my truck and as I started to get back into my truck, I noticed many aluminum cans laying all over the place on both sides of the road right there, many within fifty feet of my truck. I grabbed a small bucket in my truck and within five minutes, had it filled with cans. As I drove on back to the highway, I thought of how any of my friends that collect cans, would literally have a field day collecting down that road and could likely fill a few large plastic trash bags on cans alone there.

I then drove up to the druse spot…as I was driving down the road on approach to the spot, Missy and I came upon a nice lady that was collecting cans…she was walking along with a walking stick and accompanied by a big beautiful and fluffy Golden Retriever…I stopped alongside her and struck up a conversation and asked her if she needed some more cans. She said she would gladly take donations and I opened the tonneau cover and gave her about a dozen cans. I found out her name was Cindy and she is a nurse with her own business in town, and Cindy introduced us to Ed, her dog as well. She and Ed walk about three to four miles a day picking up cans, she said. I told her I was out scouting druse quartz locations for a gem club trip the following weekend and she offered her property which is a few miles on down the road. I thanked her for her hospitality and continued to the druse spot….

Missy and I hunted the druse spot for about an hour and I filled one bag completely with beautiful smokey colored druse, which is my favorite color from there, and then we loaded up and headed to the secret spot. We stopped briefly to visit with Cindy again, who was then on her way back to her house and nearly in the same spot as we saw her an hour before. I told her it was very possible that we would be visiting with her and her husband and Ed the next weekend. We arrived at the secret spot about an hour later and found a pocket fairly quickly this time….

…and within minutes, it seemed to be going deep….

…here is one of the top plates I pulled out of the entrance to the pocket, with a poker chip attached….

…and a pile of goodies growing, which contained alot of twins and triples….

…and on the way home, I spotted these nice sunbeams….always a good sign of a good day….

Protected: Oklahoma Visitors

Posted on March 26, 2014 by jwj

Nice Combo Pocket Found

Posted on March 17, 2014 by jwj

Missy and I returned to the new secret spot this past weekend and found yet another nice pocket, one that apparently the weather had been working over this winter. I didn`t find it for a few hours though, in the meantime I found a few smaller pockets and worked them, starting with this one….

…after finding a few indicators laying around in the general area of this pocket, including these plates and chips….

…this pocket was very shallow, didn`t even form a hole or indentation into the muck, so I pulled a few poker chips from the loose fill and moved on to the next pocket, which I found near a water hole…hoping that it would not fill with water as the pocket the week before did….I really didn`t want to spend two hours bailing water once again…that really cuts into your digging time…..

…this one didn`t amount to much at all, a few druse plates hanging upside down as seen above and a few poker chips underneath them and that was all there was. I figured the rest of it must have been excavated and this was all that was left. The next pocket I found was about ten feet away, again near the water hole and again, luckily for me, it didn`t require any bailing either….

…after pulling several poker chips out of it…

….all of a sudden, I heard a loud roar…I quickly turned around and looked up in time to see a low flying, fast moving jet…and it was a little lower in the sky than normal, I thought….

…and then I remembered the days when I was much younger and down at my grandfather`s farm in western Arkansas and you could first hear the jets coming up the valley toward his farm, moving fast and low, almost as if they were racing each other, from the Arkansas National Guard Base in Fort Smith…they always flew their maneuvers over his farm up and down that valley near the Oklahoma state line.

I figured these jets must have been from either Whiteman AFB, Scott AFB, or the Missouri National Air Guard at Lambert…and possibly from Fort Leonard Wood which wasn`t too far off either….within moments I noticed one more jet and they were circling my position quite a bit….pretty neat to watch….

…I couldn`t even tell you what types of jets they were, but they were pretty neat to watch…one of them might have spotted me down there and turned his jet up in a tight turn, I just looked up at the right time to see it and waved at the pilot…don`t know if he saw me or not…just to say hey and thanks for all you do….thanks to all of our great military for their service and sacrifices that have enabled all of us to enjoy our freedoms and our relatively peaceful lives and hobbies….

I cleaned out that pocket after it came to an abrupt stop with a very deep and narrow hole, that I was not able to see down into, nor could I even begin to chip it out to widen it, so I looked up and around, and my eyes settled on a mound of rock and dirt, that had a calcite chunk of a face…I wandered over to check it out as I had looked it over other times, and thought it had great potential….

….after scraping around on it with my mini mattox, I soon discovered there was a pocket behind a few deteriorating shelves of rock….probably loosened up alot by the constant freeze and thaw we had experienced the past few weeks….the first plate I pulled out of this pocket was a bubbly pretty gray druse plate….

…followed by several poker chips of a slightly pale reddish color, some were a couple of colors even…alot of small clusters and triples and twins more so than the normal singles that we tend to pull out of pockets, and quite a few more druse plates hanging upside down in the photo above came out as well, some with poker chips attached to them. The pocket continued back into the hillside, and then split into three different directions…I pursued to the left and straight back as much as I could, pounding the top shelves back as far as I could before I ran out of steam….

…the entire time I was working on this pocket, Missy was about ten feet up the slope above me just chilling out….

When I ran out of steam, I wrapped up the clusters and bagged them, and then we headed for the barn and a good nap.

Another Dogtooth Pocket Found

Posted on March 17, 2014 by jwj

Figured I had better write this before I get too far behind and forget the details of it, found a very pretty dogtooth pocket at the new secret spot a few weeks ago, bright orange dogtooths attached to some very pretty colored druse. Missy and I didnt arrive til noon and it was the start of daylight savings time, so I knew we had at least six hours of daylight in case we needed it and it was going to be a nice warm day as well, reaching nearly 75 degrees that day. Here is one of the nicer ones I found, just to whet your appetite….

…it`s not in very good focus, but is very appealing looking and you can see some of the colors I was enjoying as well. I actually found it by doing some raking around a few likely looking bumps at the base of the wall and soon spotted some calcite indicators at the bottom of a ledge, as well as water filling the hole I was digging, which I really didnt like, but sometimes you have to take the bad with the good…..

…as I dug into the pocket, I started seeing twins and triples of poker chips…very few singles except those attached to clusters attached to the base rock on the sides as the pocket expanded into a trench that was about fifteen inches wide and started expanding to my left and deepening down…..

…the water in the pocket was cold….very cold…spring fed type cold….and kept filling in every ten minutes with whatever amount I took out by bailing….pretty soon it was evident that I needed something bigger to bail with, the little water bowl for Missy that I had wasnt getting the job done, so I went back to my truck and pulled out the 3.5 gallon square bucket that I keep my tools in, and began bailing water much more efficiently after that. I was taking seven to ten gallons out of that pocket every fifteen minutes and digging out crystals in between bailing times….here you see crystals just waiting to be pulled out of the loose fill and muck as the pocket kept expanding to my left….

…and here is a group of crystals already found so far….

…some attached to some pretty plates of bubbly druse too….

…and after about four hours of continuously expanding to the left, pulling out twins and triples and small clusters, including some I was able to chisel from the sides of the trench pocket, I came to the end of the pocket….

…after clearing away more loose fill and muck above, it turned into a cavelike opening, capped with a dome of ten inch thick dolomite rock, the pocket contained even more cold water and was filled with about twenty dogtooth crystals and clusters….

most of them just hanging out loose in the water waiting to be found…the one at the beginning of this post is the first one I pulled out, and one of the larger ones as well, here is a closer up and sharper view of it and another of the other ones as well….

…after removing these and wrapping them up with three cloths as opposed to the normal one cloth, I sat back and rested a bit, then gathered up my bags of goodies, tools, and buckets, and Missy and I headed for the barn. Sure was a nice productive day.

Ben E Clement Mineral Museum in Marion, Kentucky

Posted on March 4, 2014 by jwj

Hey Folks,

Tina from the Ben E. Clement Mineral Museum in Marion, Kentucky, called me this afternoon and asked me to let everyone know that the Museum suffered some flood damage earlier this year, to the roof and interior of the museum. The Museum Board of Directors has received several bids to replace the roof once again, however they are looking to construct a gable roof this time so that this hopefully will not happen again. They had the flat rubberized surface roof replaced just a few years ago by local personnel in their area that supposedly knew what they were doing, however, as it now turns out, apparently did not know what they were doing roof work wise. At any rate, the roof is failing and in the past few months of extreme winter weather, they now have multiple leaks inside the walls of the museum and are seeking financial assistance from not only local banks and tourism agencies within the state of Kentucky, but would also appreciate any donations from rockhounds nationwide. They have launched a ” Raising The Roof ” Campaign to raise funds to build a gabled roof. At this point, they have several bids and most are projecting costs up around $ 50,000 for the gabled roof.

They are also offering Museum Memberships to rockhounds nationwide for $ 20 per year, which would allow any members unlimited visits to the museum at no charge with an id issued membership card, and all membership fees will be used toward the new roof as well.

If you have any questions, feel free to give Tina a call at the Museum at 270-965-4263 and their address is 205 N. Walker Street, Marion, KY 42064

Tina can be reached at the Museum Wednesday thru Saturday 10 AM to 3 PM from Oct to May, and June to Sept Monday to Saturday at the same hours.

Their website is http://www.clementmineralmuseum.org/

MFQ in February

Posted on March 4, 2014 by jwj

Boy after the winter we have had this year, with the extremely cold temps and snow/ice, one would probably think a trip to My Favorite Quarry was impossible to pull off, but no one was more surprised than me to see about five days of beautiful warm weather and sunny skies, pop up into the calendar three weeks into the snowiest month of the year. Missy and I loaded up early Saturday morning, the 22nd and headed out to see what we could find. My buddy had called me a few days before to let me know that very little work was going on at the quarry, but they were slowly and surely removing the blast pile. I figured everywhere else the ground would remain frozen and with work going on there, we could prob find some looser material to work with. We arrived at the quarry about 8:30 am, and I pulled up on the east wall and saw what appeared to be some fractured areas in the wall that may have occurred as a result of freezing and thawing…I parked here to check them out…I soon had my bags parked next to a few pockets along the wall and began working them….

….I was working the smaller pockets when my buddy Jim showed up and stopped by to visit briefly, taking a break from working on his house. I had worked my way down from where I parked the truck and found several smaller pockets…could see the wall was fractured in several areas, although some of them were way up high too….

…my bags are about four feet up from the ground level, and footing up there was slip and slide, so those pockets higher than four feet were hard to reach, cause I was constantly sliding down in the loose gravel and dirt. I had filled my apron up with the smaller pocket goodies and then finally reached this area of the wall about thirty yards west of where I started and when I found this pocket, I knew I would need the bags, it was that nice looking up close….

…some of the first few pieces I pulled from this pocket, were these nice chunks of calcite druse…

A few minutes later, a white car entered the quarry and drove over to my truck and parked, and a guy got out and said he hoped I would be there when he arrived…came over and introduced himself as Kurt and told me that he had been reading my blog site on rockhunting for the past year. Turns out he is a teacher in Lebanon, Missouri and new to rockhunting…he had dropped his wife off at a seminar in Rolla that morning and then decided to drive down and see if he could find anything, and was hoping to find me there as well. We talked for a few minutes and then I showed him what I was finding that morning and he decided to go further east along the wall and see what he could find. About thirty minutes later I looked up and he was over in the area of the original wall, which is still a very good producing area to work….

….I continued to work the bigger pocket, which was positioned under some heavy rocks, that seemed very attached to the base rock, so one less thing to worry about…..

….I started cleaning out the pocket, pulling out several smaller pieces of druse, enough to fill a bag by itself, and then started coming across smaller poker chip crystals mixed in. Soon I was able to look down into the gaps and see some darker poker chip crystals lurking in the shadows so to speak….

…and so far, I had a pretty respectable pile of keepers….

…I kept digging in and cleaning and pretty soon the pocket started burrowing in and more crystals started showing up in the dirt at the bottom of the pocket….

…and pretty soon, it had expanded a bit more and I came upon this….

…plus the bottom of the pocket started producing some very pretty poker chips, some of them quite big, some triples blended together like this one…

…and here is the bottom of the pocket, where you can see yet another nice poker chip hiding in the dirt….what you cant see here yet, are the many other crystals that were hiding in cluster form, mainly because I haven`t yet dug them out and exposed them, but believe me, they were there, and I was able to chip them out a few minutes later….

…and here is the one that was hiding on the right in the last photo…..

Kurt left about 3 pm that afternoon, he had a little longer drive home than I did…Missy and I took off about an hour later, exhausted and very happy with my finds that day….sure was a nice day, as the temps got up to about 65 that day….

Another Dogtooth Pocket Weekend

Posted on January 27, 2014 by jwj

Well folks, as you can see, I am behind again…had a great dogtooth pocket weekend, I found a great pocket each day. Saturday it was just Missy and me and we arrived at the new secret spot about mid morning…we were expecting forty degrees, but the constant wind from the northwest made it feel more like 30 degrees. Once I got started digging in with my mini mattox, though, I warmed up fast and stayed right there all day, and once I started finding pockets and crystals, the weather soon left my mind. As soon as I pulled in and parked, I looked over at this mound of solid looking rock, and decided to start raking rocks down the side of it and see if I could locate an opening to a pocket, so I started to the right of if and worked my way to the center of that mound….

…and as luck would have it, I didnt find anything except a poker chip or two here and there, until I reached the center of that mound, then I found a spot on the mound where there were a couple of nice looking poker chips just sitting there under some big rocks….

….now, its not that hole in the center above as that is one of several that range across the bottom of that mound of rock…the pocket I located is above my mini mattox above it…here it is up closer….

…see if you can locate the poker chip…I didn`t see it right away, but boy when I did, it was fantastic….I went back to my truck and came back with a bag and some wrapping cloths…I didn`t have many cloths this trip, had loaned out some and haven`t had them returned to me yet. Luckily I did have a couple of rolls of blue shop towels with me, and wound up using both rolls of the towels. Here is that poker chip closer up in case you didn`t spot it above….

…and the first few that I managed to pull out including the one above….

…here the next one shows the pocket starting to form up….

…and here are some that I pulled out from under that huge ledge of rock above in the next few minutes….

…the difference between this one and the last one, there are some druse plates in this one…and here you see the pocket going up under a small bluff of rocks….

…and here is a poker chip hiding up under the stone ledge in the pocket….

…or at least, what I thought was one poker chip in the pocket, turned out to be one of several, as I kept pulling rocks and slabs of ugly rock out of the way and revealed even more….

…with even more druse plates, as you can see in the next photo as the goodie pile continues to build….

…the next few that I pulled out of the pocket were ceiling plates, like this guy…he is a little out of focus and I`m not sure what the AF was concentrating on but obviously it wasn`t the nice combo cluster….

After pulling this nice one out, I looked inside and saw yet another one hanging upside down and decided to go after it as well, after stuffing the pocket opening with several cloths, and then attempting to chisel it out from the roof of the pocket, which was no easy feat as it was cramped and close quarters with a small opening to the pocket….

…here is the view inside the pocket that I had…..

I decided a little widening was in order, so I removed the loose stuff on the left with no problem and then tackled the big chunk of crystals on the right side of the mouth opening, which required a bit more work, chiseling it out from the far side where it was attached to the base of that mound of solid rock, but once out of the way, I had smooth sailing for removing everything else from that pocket….

….including this nice second combo cluster….

…it took me about an hour to clean out that pocket, it widened out at the back wall and I was able to remove some druse with chips there…there were some hollow sounding areas around the back of the pocket so I explored those, but they ended up being holie druse pockets, small and shallow. From here, I moved to the left and started raking and digging once again, and eventually came upon another spot that appeared to be promising….

…very promising indeed…..

…it was located at the top of that ridge of solid looking rock…I had started scraping and raking at the bottom and worked my way up, snagging a couple of poker chips with the rake end of the mattox and then just looked for an opening, this one above….I carefully cleared out the loose stuff around it and pulled some loose crystals out, eventually the mouth widened out quite a bit….

…and started opening to the right side….

…I was pulling alot of druse out initially, then some chips and druse, as well as a lot of loose crappy rock, gray dolomite shale type stuff….

…and when I got that cleared, I looked to the right and just inside the pocket, was what appeared to be a beautiful yellow-orange dogtooth crystal….

…so I began pulling all the rocks above and around it out of the way and then, removed the dogtooth and let me tell you, there were many more inside the pocket, took me a good hour just to clear them out of there…here are a few of them…..

small ones and big ones alike….

…I stopped and took about twenty minutes to wrap them up real good using my blue shop towels….you may not be able to tell here, but those rock walls are about two and a half feet deep along the right side of the pocket…

…and as you can see, there is now an opening going to the left, which I explored for a few minutes and pulled out a few more dogtooths from…..

It then dropped down toward a deeper pocket and that`s where I stopped digging for the day, exhausted after moving all that rock and pulling all those beautiful dogtooth crystals from. I decided to return the next day and see what else I could find, and contacted Ray to see if he would like to come down and work the dogtooth pocket where I stopped.

We started down Sunday morning about 9:30 am…I had told Ray the night before, that I was not leaving until at least 9 am, wanted to sleep in a bit and rest up some from Saturday`s digging…my hands were still sore even after taking two aleve and getting a good soak in the hot tub. I told him on the way down, that he could start on the pockets I had worked the day before, where I found the dogtooths, and see if he could find more, was fairly sure there were more pockets there from what I could see when I left, the downward angle on the left side and the opening under the rock on the right side. I would leave it up to him if he wanted to work it or not.

We arrived to find the temps starting to climb already, supposed to hit at least 53, and as it was, it reached the better part of 60, and felt great. After looking the pockets over, Ray decided to give it a shot and see what he could find, he had brought along an extra hammer and pry bar, called a Gorilla Bar, and he was able to move some of that heavy rock pretty easily with it.

…in the meantime, I decided to scratch around and see if I could find some more pockets to the left, so I started down that ridge once again, trying to loosen up my fingers and hands, still somewhat stiff and sore from the day before. Pretty soon, I heard Ray yell out that he had found a pretty dogtooth pocket…so I grabbed my camera to photograph what he had found….for starters, this nice jewel…..

…and the pocket it was located in was on the right side under the heavy rock walls….

…I went back to scraping and digging, and about twenty feet to the left of him, I opened up a pocket in the loose gravels and dirt wall….

…it appeared to be one that had fallen down fairly intact from the blast wall behind and above, with alot of loose crappy rock in the front of it, some of which came away when I grabbed it with the rake end of the mattox as I was scraping and raking downward….

….but leaving some to pull away and reveal what was still inside the pocket…..

…it appeared to me that the main ceiling plate had fallen down face first into the muck at the bottom of the pocket, prob dislodged by the initial blast, so I first cleaned all the little stuff off the top of it and then tried to move it. There was also a nice cluster of poker chips still attached to the ceiling, right above it….

At first it wouldn`t budge, figured it might be frozen somewhat, so I walked back to the truck and got some water and then grabbed another bag, and when I got back, it seemed to have loosened up, was prob just frozen to the bottom of the pocket. When it finally did come out tho, it came out in pieces, five pieces to be exact. Here is a photo of some of the twins and singles that I removed from the pocket initially, as well as some druse plates….

…I had this pocket cleaned out within about 30 minutes and as I was wrapping up the goodies, I noticed Missy walking around on a big ice flow about thirty yards away….

By this time, Ray had walked up to the top of the hill looking for druse, chipping some plates and pieces of nice pretty white druse out of some boulders up there. I continued to the left for about another thirty feet, then walked back to some water holes, that we had dug out weeks before and looking down in one spot, discovered a dogtooth nestled in the gravels. I reached down and dug around a bit and started finding dogtooths all over the place, moved some rocks and found an entire pocket of dogtooths embedded in the gravel and under some rocks…

…and what appeared to be a hole in the ground, under a slab of rock, that might indicate a pocket below…by this time, late in the day, Ray was finishing up filling some flats with some druse plates he had chipped out of some more boulders, and decided to come down and see what I had found….

After filling another bag with my finds, I told him to take over if he wanted and see what he could find…as he was muscling out some of the rocks to see if there was another pocket below, he looked up and pointed out the sun setting on the trees on the far hill from us and my truck in the afterglow….

Ray was able to find one dogtooth that was nice and pretty, even after moving a few large rocks around…so we packed it in and headed home shortly after that….we did manage to find a beautiful sunset on the way home…cotton candy clouds amidst a sea of fire….

James 🙂

jwjphoto7@gmail.com

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.

JWJ Rocks

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