Spring Fling in Kentucky 2016

Posted on March 30, 2016 by jwj

After my recent trip to Kentucky, I might have to make this an annual trip and decided to come up with a name for it, so it will be easy to categorize and refer back to. For the past twelve years I have driven down to western Kentucky to perform a machine dig to help out the folks at the Clement Mineral Museum in Marion, as they provide great opportunities for rockhounds across the US and around the world as well. We rockhounds know that it is becoming increasingly difficult each year to find good places to go and spend a day or two digging for beautiful crystals, and this is one of those places worth going to visit and dig at. A small group of us get together each year and pool our resources to hire an excavation company and operator to come in, dig at our direction and move alot of dirt and mud out of the way, opening up new areas where beautiful purple and yellow cubes of fluorite can be found, sometimes with other minerals present, including calcite, sphalerite, galena, and occasionally greenockite. We dig into the Eureka Mine, that dates back to the early 1900`s, which as always been a fluorite mine, likely called a fluorospar mine back then, or simply ” spar ” as the locals referred to it. Much of the spar they were mining was massive and solid, whereas we look for the cubes of fluorite, in the form of small plates, clusters, and large plates and cubes associated with the other minerals present. By opening up additional areas of opportunity, we enable all rockhounds who visit the rest of the year, to more easily access those areas and an easier dig as well.

This year I was joined by rockhound friends Jim Ericson from the Minneapolis area, Chuck Reed from the St Louis County area, and David Sorrells from the Paducah area. Jim had quite a trip down there, leaving last Thursday morning early and driving through a foot of snow on the ground and roads, dumped there the night before from that storm that barreled across Colorado the day before, which stranded motorists all the way across the state under 17 inches of snow. Jim made it thru southern Minnesota and then Iowa as well, snowing on him the entire time until he safely reached Missouri, where the snow finally stopped clinging to everything and he was able to make much better time on the roads. He sent me some images of his harrowing, white knuckle drive down there….

…luckily for him, his suv has all wheel drive, which combined with his common sense, steady nerves and rock solid determination, brought him through the snow and ice unscathed. The rest of us had uneventful drives, Onyx and I arriving by 2 pm in Marion…I had Onyx shaved down the day before by the groomer at my local vet office, but forgot to pick up some flea and tick prevention tablets for him, so after a quick call to Tina, who recommended a local vet, we drove over there to pick one up for him. That is when I spotted these gorgeous sunbeams near their rural fire station….

…the night before, while packing, I noticed the clouds lining up for what appeared to be a good colorful sky as the sun dipped down, and as I made my way over to my neighbor Glen`s house to let him know we were leaving the next morning, I stopped in the street in front of my house to capture this stunning sunset….

…Onyx chewed up his tablet and was set for the next thirty days…I had heard from several that the ticks in Kentucky can get quite bad and I didn`t want to take any chances with him especially. We then headed back to the hotel in Kuttawa to wait for Chuck and Jim to arrive, before going to supper. We were staying at the Days Inn there, next to the well known and liked, Oasis Southwest Grill, one of the best steakhouses in the country, bar none. Chuck was set to arrive around 8 pm and Jimmy figured he would be there soon after, but told us not to wait on him as he had munched on sandwiches all the way down there. Chuck and I walked on over to the steakhouse after he arrived, and ordered our food, and true to his word, Jimmy showed up about 45 min later to join us. We caught up on old times and then I explained the layout of the Eureka to them, as well as explained what our mission was the next day. Chuck had never been there and it has been several years since Jimmy was there. We had a great meal and conversation and then headed back to the hotel to get some rest for the next day.

David drove down early the next morning from Paducah, and was at the mine when Chuck, Jimmy and I arrived…we passed the trackhoe and operator as we drove down the hill to the mine. He followed us down to get instruction and directions on how to get the trackhoe down to the mine, and we found out his name is Marlon….he had never dug there and was unfamiliar with that particular area, but knew as we did, that the sixty thousand pound machine would not be able to cross the little metal bridge over the creek at the foot of the hill. I showed him how to drive down the hill through the fields on the other side of the road and the cattle crossing in the creek, offered to walk him down and assist with the gates, but he said he would be fine, and so we set about getting things ready while he returned to do just that. The new pit that we had dug out last year over the course of two separate machine digs, had weathered the winter pretty good, yet was full of water on one end while high and dry, so to speak, on the other….

…I say so to speak, because it was as dry as could be expected after a half inch of rainfall the day before…dryer than we have found it in past years anyway. I can remember the early days when you stepped off in the old pit…that area filled in behind that water hole above….and sunk down to your knees easily, and wondered if you were going to be able to pull your feet out and keep your boots on. Many boots and waders have been lost to that Kentucky mud over the years, let me tell ya.

Last year, at the second machine dig, we brought the end of the new pit right up to the old logging road that runs along the mine on the west side….

…..and stopped digging there, even though we could see a vein of purple at the base of it. Bill Frazer, the landowner and President of the Museum Board, discovered that there was an offshoot vein traveling off the original vein that we had followed for the first ten years, this one seemed to come off at a forty five degree angle…Bill came to this conclusion after looking at some of the old maps of the mine, then dug an exploratory trench two years ago and struck fluorite. We followed his lead last year with both of our machine digs and found more fluorite each time we dug, and we also exposed a large bench, or saddle, at the bottom that also produced alot of pockets of deep dark purple cubes and plates of fluorite…

This year, I consulted with one of my geologist friends Mike Streeter, who knows the area well and Bill as well, and we decided to explore under the logging road to see if the vein continued in that direction. Bill also asked if we could fill in the deep water hole on the east side of the new pit, so we had Marlon take care of that job first…here you see the new pit below and the deep water hole in the upper part of the image, as well as the pocket producing saddle in the lower part of the image…

…when he finished that job, he had covered that entire deep water hole and bridged across the hole at the end of the saddle…which is still accessible to the serious hard rock diggers who will come there to dig. He then moved around to the other side to move the huge tailing pile around for us….

…..and when he did that, David climbed up on top to see if he was stirring anything up….

Marlon then came back to the logging road on the south side and began extending the trench in the direction of the forest behind him….at the start I went down into the pit to direct Marlon on where to begin digging….

…after that, Jimmy or Chuck stayed down in the pit at all times with me, to check his progress. Jimmy took the first turn and everytime we spotted purple, we would stop Marlon and then climb into the freshly dug dirt and check for cubes. David took some photos while Jimmy and I were down there, and after Chuck and Jimmy exchanged places, Jimmy took some photos of Chuck and I checking out the progress of the trackhoe…

…and here is Chuck in the pit while I was getting my perspective again on the progress…hard to do when you are down in the pit and looking up, trying to figure out where you are at in relation to the logging road above…..

…and you can`t tell from the angle I shot this, but Chuck is a good thirty to forty feet from the new area that Marlon is dropping that bucket into…Marlon turned out to be an excellent operator and excavator…kept a watchful eye on us all the time and made eye contact each time he emptied the bucket and brought it back around. We were very impressed with his skills and methods…we had worked with Wayne Crider for many years and Wayne was excellent to work with as well…we found out that he had recently sold his business and retired, now in his 80`s…we wish him only the best of luck and health.

In the meantime, Jimmy and David were on top keeping an eye on us and on the goodies in the bucket each time Marlon would bring a load up from below….

..and here is another view of Chuck down in the pit, while Marlon was working over the tailings, as the new pit expands into the old logging road….

…we were finding a lot of little plates and cubes along the way…much of it mud covered and hard to tell what all we had…here is one of David`s little plates all cleaned up….

We took the trench cut across that logging road, finding two veins of purple fluorite about two feet apart down the middle of the trench cut from near the top to the bottom of the cut. We were pulling a few small plates out…at one time, Chuck called me over, he found an opening in the matrix, and after retrieving my flashlight from my truck, I shined it inside and we saw one inch cubes on both sides of the opening, at least a couple of plates inside….David was able to take a nice photo of it…and then I proceeded to chip three plates out of it…

While the guys continued to dig out what they could find in the trench, I had Marlon cut a new temporary road thru the edge of the forest and back over to the main north side…he first piled some dirt and rocks up on both sides of the road cut, and we also staked a line across with some fence posts….

…I had never seen large limestone/dolomite boulders like the ones he pulled out of the pit and piled up on the road, they were water worn and smooth with rounded corners where once I am sure, they had hard sharp edges. Tina drove down later and was immediately both drawn and taken with them, she wanted to take a couple of them home with her…one was even big enough to serve as a small picnic table. Once finished with that, I had Marlon dig a trench on the north side of the old pit to see if we could locate the old horizontal tunnel that we had followed in the first ten years of our machine digs, when we found quite a bit of good to great specimens along the way. Jimmy photographed me standing at the edge of the trench cut that Marlon is making for us, again it looks as though I am in the pit from the angle taken, but rest assured I am standing up on the bank and a couple of feet from the edge….

We didn`t locate much of anything on this side, following some hunches, and the water table is very high here too, we were down maybe ten feet when Marlon punched thru some base rock and water started gushing into the trench cut…that alone would have made it extremely difficult to dig in even if we had found anything worthwhile there. It was noon by then and we decided to break for lunch. Bill had kept in contact with us all morning by phone, checking on our progress, so I called him once again to let him know where we were at. He was in Paducah but on his way back and said he would come by to discuss another place to dig at. Jimmy drove Marlon back up the hill to his truck so he wouldn`t have to hoof it up there, and he drove back down in his truck after his lunch break.

Bill arrived soon after and told us there was a location close by where a drill core several years before, had turned up some purple fluorite as well as some blue fluorite, calcite, and some other trace minerals, and if interested, we could have Marlon work a trench cut up the hill to see if we could find it. We all agreed to that, everyone likes blue fluorite afterall so we moved Marlon down to a likely spot, cut the fence, and had him commence trenching. He was having some difficulty in the spot we started him out at, so Bill relocated him to the hill above and had him begin again, eventually working his way up the hill behind him….

…as you can see, we were near the old Davis shaft tailings close to the old Columbia Mine, which is located down the hill to the left in the photo above, the Davis shaft tailings in the foreground above….and below…..

…the next image shows the old generator building for the Columbia Mine which was back behind us and just down over the hill with the cattle grazing down in the valley near the creek….

…and since this was taking a bit of time for Marlon to complete, Chuck stretched out on the tailing piles to get a little shut eye time in….

…as Marlon continued to dig, Jimmy watched and hoped for a glimmer of blue or purple….

…however, we reached the top of the hill with only a handful of chert and some sandstone found and Bill decided to stop the dig at that point. We had Marlon fill in the trench cut and he even went so far as to smooth it out as best he could for the sake of the cows that frequently graze that area….

…I stayed up on top of the hill with Marlon as he completed this work, and sent Jimmy, David, and Chuck down to divide up the finds….and when I returned forty minutes later, found that they were still picking and choosing. We cleaned up shortly after and headed back to the hotel to get cleaned up and then over to the Oasis for another great dinner. The next morning, we slept in an hour extra and then drove over to meet Tina at the Clement Mineral Museum to get a tour of it…Chuck had never seen it and it had been some time that Jimmy had seen it as well, both of them were interested in seeing the rocks and minerals on display that glow under the blacklight lamps as well…here are some photos that Jimmy took there….

…the Clement Mineral Museum is always worth a visit to see the gorgeous crystals and minerals there…no matter how many times I have been there, I love to go back inside and look around again…bout like a kid in a candy store there, can never get enough or see enough.

From there, we drove on over to Danville, Kentucky, in the central part of the state, where we would be rockhunting the next few days for mainly geodes, or so we thought. I had made contact with a buddy of mine who likes fluorite, too…I met Phil and his wife Shirley at the Eureka Mine a few years ago, two very nice people that were hosting the Eureka for a few years, and one day Phil gave me a piece of white fluorite with a hint of purple on the edges, that was simply beautiful. I had no clue until this year that he lived close to Danville…for whatever reason, I thought all those years that he lived further south and east in Kentucky. I emailed him a couple of weeks ago when I had a better idea of my trip schedule and he invited us out to his place on our arrival, to show us his collection and offered to take us to a few places. I gladly accepted his offer on behalf of my friends.

I had also made contact with the manager of a nearby quarry and he texted to ask me to contact him on our arrival in town, so he could show us the quarry that afternoon, so I called him when we arrived at our hotel and arranged to meet him there 45 minutes later. I let Phil know that we would be out there as soon as we cleared the quarry, then Jim and Chuck joined me and Onyx as we drove to the quarry…I should prob say that we would be joined the next morning by a couple more people.

This quarry is known for Limestone, Fluorite, Barite, Calcite, Sphalerite, and some fossils, in that order…here are a few photos of what has been found there before…

We met the manager, Clay, at the front gate and loaded up into his truck and drove thru the gate…I left Onxy in my truck at the front gate with the ac running…knowing no one would mess with my truck because Clay said so and also because anyone that looked inside and saw a dog that looked like a lion would be a fool to try and break into it. Clay showed us the highlights and the lowlights both, areas to check out and areas to avoid, and explained why as well. He asked and we assured him that we had indeed brought our hard hats, safety glasses, gloves, and steeltoed boots with us and would be wearing them the next day.

He wished us good luck and we headed down to Phil`s residence, which is south of Danville, about a ten minute drive. We drove by several black colored barns…

….painted black down there either because black paint is and was cheap, or because many farmers grew tobacco leaves down there and those leaves were harvested and placed in the black barns to cure properly. I had always heard it was due to the tobacco farmers. We also drove up and over a steep knob to get to his house…knobs down there are what they call hills up here, they are shaped like doorknobs down there, tradional shaped doorknobs, that is, so they refer to them as knobs…..

We arrived to find Phil waiting for us outside his tool shed, which is a large outbuilding and holds much of his rock and mineral collection. He gave us the grand tour, and let me tell ya, he has some spectacular stuff there, plus he has his 16 inch rock saw in there, faceting machine, grinding/polishing wheels, everything needed to make jewelry and he had some of that as well….

…he is a retired machinist and knows how to make and repair many things, he can wreak havoc or create stunning art. a master craftsman. Phil showed us some nice crystals of fluorite that he had been collecting the last few years, similar to the piece he gave me a couple of years ago, and told us he could take us to one of those mines to see what we could find. Since Chuck had been planning to leave Sunday evening for home, I asked Phil if he could take us to the mine on Monday morning and he said that would be no problem….luckily Chuck was able to get an extension on his departure. After checking out the rest of Phil`s collection, Phil took us back into Danville and had supper with us at Giovanni`s Pizzaria, where they have great pizza buffet style, as well as salad and pasta, all you can eat for about ten bucks each. We then retired to the hotel for the night and Phil said he would see us the next morning at 9 am. After a good nights rest, Onyx and I drove over to McDonalds the next morning for a good hotcakes and sausage breakfast, about the only meal that will stick with me all day long and hold me til supper…Mark Bishop was the first to arrive a few minutes later, and then Travis Tracey showed up, both drove up from Georgia and Tennessee early that morning, to join us for the next couple of days. We waited a few more minutes to see if anyone else might join us for the day, I had told several friends about my trip and some had indicated they might be available to go with us, however no one else showed up except Phil and so we ambled on over to the quarry from there. Clay had warned us that we might find the gate locked and if so, just give him a quick call and he would have an employee close by to come unlock it for us…and that is exactly what we found on our arrival there, so we prepared for their arrival….

..one of their dispatchers arrived shortly after and unlocked the gate for us…and we followed Phil into the quarry as he has been there before….starting at the lower level so he could show us the fault line…

We all donned our hard hats, boots, grabbed buckets, bags, and tools, and then listened as Phil explained the mechanics of the quarry and showed us the fault….which is that slanted white line on the right in the third photo down from here….

We went to several levels while there and found very little at the top, so we then relocated to the lower levels where more rock was laying around and then started to find some nice stuff….

I think I was the first one to find something substantial, and just happened upon it by accident, big chunk of heavy rock with a beautiful face of white calcite, with small purple cubes on the calcite, and some barite mixed in….

Little was found as there was little fresh rock down, but we did manage to find a few nice ones…from there we drove out to Phil`s house to look for some geodes in his backyard creek….first we made sure to show Travis and Mark the beautiful collection that we had seen the day before, and soon after, Jim and Chuck ambled on down to the creek and began checking out the geodes there. Mark stayed behind to talk to Phil some more….

….and then came down and took some photos of everyone in the creekbed……

Phil had a couple of gravel bars we could search, however we never strayed from the one main one for the most part. As far as I could tell, everyone found as many geodes as they wanted to…Jimmy loaded up several buckets and then had to take them up to his suv, luckily he also brought a wagon that carried two buckets at a time….

We left here and drove over to a few roadcuts on Highway 150 near Stanford, a couple of them Phil knew about and then we went to a few that I had been told about. We found some dolomite crystal pockets in some of them, and Travis found a nice calcite crystal in the bottom of one of the pockets, yet no one could figure out how to extract it from the pocket without damaging it…..

After checking and digging into five roadcuts, we were tiring quickly and it was soon apparent that our breakfast had worn off long ago…so we soon loaded up and headed back to Stanford. As we approached the city limits, I looked to the north and spotted what appeared to be rain clouds coming in from southwest, rain had been predicted that day earlier, however we had not seen any yet…these slid on by without dropping any rainfall as well….

The restaurant there that Phil wanted to go to was closed due to Easter so we headed on to Danville and returned to Giovanni`s for more pizza. Phil said he could take us to an old fluorite mine the next morning where we could also find barite and calcite crystals, so we decided to meet again at McDonalds the next morning. Onyx and I drove down to Stanford to my friend John`s house, where we would spend the next couple of nights. I didn`t get a chance to visit with John as much as I would have liked to, between his schedule and mine, we only got to visit between supper and bedtime.

After another good nights rest, we were up and on the road to Danville`s McDonalds again to meet up with the guys on Monday morning. Phil was running a little late that morning, I think we wore him out the day before, but we had a beautiful drive over to the location for the morning dig. This old mine dates back to the early 1800`s and was always a fluorite mine, producing predominantly white colored fluorite cubes, some with yellow barite attached, sometimes attached in balls of barite, and sometimes in the company of calcite as well. Phil had dug there for a few years after befriending the owner of the privately owned mines and we had seen some of his collected crystals that were stunning, to say the least. We were all looking very forward to getting over there to see what we could dig up and take home as well. The morning dawned cool and cloudy, but it sure was pretty along the way, we drove down through some impressive canyons and saw a few waterfalls along the way too, finally arriving at the old tailing piles, which were pretty also….Phil led us up to the top of the piles and we began there, however a few of us throughout the day wandered around and checked other areas to see what could be found as well….

We discovered as Phil had told us, that you didn`t have to dig down very far to find some great stuff, many of the calcite crystals we were finding were just under the grass line even, like this one that Mark found….

Chuck found several alongside us and then had to hit the road headed home around noon…soon after he left, I dug into his spot and pulled out some nice small clusters of fluorite cubes and some calcite crystals too…then a few of us decided to take a break and grab some water and something to snack on. Mark and I made our way to the bottom of the hill as some folks were walking down the road, out getting their daily hike in…they stopped to chat with us and were very pleasant to talk to…the man`s name was Mark also and he was retired from Lipton…told him I sure did like their sweet teas and he said he worked in their spaghetti sauce branch for many years…I had no clue Lipton produced that. They were walking four miles a day so we saw them three more times as they passed by while we were there. I let Onyx out of the truck then as the sun was now out and the temps were beginning to climb, and he promptly went over and found a sunny spot in the grass and lay down to catch some rays….

Mark and I wandered down the road a ways to stretch our legs after sitting up on top for a few hours, and came upon some pretty wildflowers and trees along the way…

…and afterwards, Jim and Mark returned to the top of the hill while Travis and I puttered around the base of the tailings pile….

I decided to dig into an area a few feet up the hill from the bottom that looked to be a seam or opening across the pile about thirty feet long…I had my small extendable potato rake with me and started raking a few rocks out and on the second try, I pulled two chunks of fluorite out about the size of a loaf of bread…was beginning to think I might be on to a pocket and said as much to Travis, so he came down and joined me on the right side of that seam. I reached in and pulled out yet another one and then called out to Jim and Mark…Mark soon came down to see what I had found and decided to join us there as well…eventually Jim came down and joined us on the left side too….

…and we stayed there til about 6 pm, pulling several nice pieces of fluorite and calcite out of there. The landowner came by to check and see how we were doing and remarked that it was a good spot to dig into, and I have to agree with that. He asked about Phil and we let him know that he had to leave earlier in the day to take delivery of a truck…we thanked him for allowing us the opportunity to dig there that day and he wished us well, seemed like a very nice guy. Jim and Mark returned to the top of the pile for another thirty minutes, and then we decided to call it a day. There were some scenic areas about ten miles to the north that we wanted to check out and photograph, so we left with just enough daylight left to do so…..

…we got back to Danville just before dark and stopped to change into cleaner jeans, then headed over to Cheddars for supper. Everyone was going to head home the next day after our morning location…I had tried to contact Mr. Flynn to set up an agate hunt, but was told he was under the weather, so we opted to go to the horse farm instead…I had been in contact with Sharon and Richard, and they said we were welcome to come down and take as many geodes off their farm as we wanted to. Jim, Mark, and Travis decided to meet Onyx and I at the Stanford McDonalds the next morning about 8:30 am. I had to take three alleves in order to get to sleep that night, I was sore in every square inch of my shoulders, back, and legs from nine hours of digging that day, but woke up the next morning free of pain and just a little bit sore in places. After repacking my truck so I could get everything in, Onyx and I took off to meet the crew, arriving just ahead of them. On the way out, I noticed a bright and shiny Ladder Truck pull into the parking lot, so I drove over to talk to the driver as he was getting out…I was surprised the little town of Stanford had one, and he told me they were a fire district too and could afford nicer trucks due to that and they had quite a few tall churches and three story buildings. Turned out he was a paid firefighter in Danville and a volunteer firefighter in Stanford, and lived just a few houses down from my buddy John. Small world.

We headed on down to Eubank and then turned east and drove over to the horse farm, and Sharon came out to meet and greet us. Jimmy and I had been there a few years before while Mark and Travis had never been there, so she explained where we could walk to collect, they have several pastures there for their horses and had moved them around for us prior to our arrival.

Sharon and Richard had moved down there several years ago from the state of Montana, to be closer to their horse buyers…they have nearly twenty acres of mostly pasture and the geodes come up each year with the thawing of the ground and cause them problems for their brush hog blades, so they welcome individual and small groups of rockhounds, they just ask for a little notice so they can move their horses around to accomodate rockhounds. If you are interested in going there, email me at jwjphoto7@gmail.com and I can put you in touch with them. Soon we were scattered across their pastures looking for geodes…Travis followed Mark and I up into the main pasture and soon found out that many of them were down in the ground and all you could see of them initially were the tops of them….

Jimmy started out in the wooded area behind the main barn, but then wandered over to a drainage area where he found some large geodes….and the rest of us soon found ourselves over there as well….

…and soon we all had as many as we could pack into our vehicles and headed for homes in all different directions…Jimmy had the longest drive home, fifteen hours or more, he arrived home about 2 am central time. Onyx and I arrived home about 7 pm. Everyone got home safe and sound, a little on the exhausted side, but also very happy. All in all, it was a very nice trip with great weather, great finds, and great friends !! Thanks to my friends for making my Spring Fling 2016 a good one !!

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

Took My Buddy Mark Bishop to MFQ

Posted on March 1, 2016 by jwj

A few weeks ago my buddy Mark Bishop from northern Georgia, emailed me and told me he heard that MAGS, the Memphis based club I am a member of, was going to be coming up to Missouri to do some rockhounding, and taking some other trips in the southeast as they often do throughout each year, so he decided to join MAGS to reap the benefits. I told him, as I have told him and countless others in the past, MAGS is by far one of the best clubs I have joined, their members are some of the nicest people I have met in the rockhunting hobby and many are good friends now as well. Mark said he and one of my other buddies in northern Georgia, Jeff Deere, wanted to come up and rockhunt with me at MFQ that weekend as well….Jeff has been talking about getting up here for a while now to hunt with me…he is affectionately known as Jeffadilla to a close circle of friends of ours… named that by Mike Streeter, a good rockhound friend from North Carolina and geologist as well….if you ever saw Jeff digging, you would know why we call him that.

Mark was going to be driving up to KC to see his sister and Mom, wanted to check and see if I had the weekend off to take him to MFQ as well. I checked my calendar and just happened to be off that weekend, so I told him that Onyx and I would meet him there about mid morning on Saturday the 20th. I contacted my buddy Jim, who recommended lodging there, that Mark could stay at on Friday night, and then Jim called me a few days later to tell me that a blast had occurred so we would have fresh material to comb thru, plus the weather was going to be about 75 degrees down there that day…a win win for us. Onyx and I got up early and were on the road soon after stopping by the donut shop. Mark called before I was 40 miles down the road, to say he had finished breakfast, checked out of the cabin there and asked if I minded him ambling over to the quarry to start looking…I just chuckled, figured he wouldn`t be able to wait on me.

We made good time getting down there, despite a little fog on the drive down, arriving a little after 8 am. This is the view from the east side looking west…the last time I was down there, the ramp from the east side to the coved wall was completely blocked and covered in rock scattered all over the floor from the prior blast, which was centered on the east side of the nose rock sticking out there…

…and this time the blast was just east of that one…..

Mark was already working over some small boulders near the wall at the back of the blast pile when we arrived…..after changing into my boots, I grabbed my tools and bags and started walking the pile to see what I could find as well. We found a few spots where there were obvious signs of a pocket at some point, possibly one that had landed intact for the most part with some damage resulting in the fall from above, but several crystals intact and beautiful…and many of them were green poker chip crystals…which we find alot of on that side of the quarry, yet most of the time, we have found that the green crystals shatter more easily. One has be extremely careful when chipping the green crystals out of the pockets, placing your chisel way back from it in order not to break it while chipping it out. I rarely am able to get one out intact with no blemishes. After a couple of hours, I had filled two bags with crystals already, and had a few bigger ones as well…the day was heating up into the 70`s. I stopped for a water break, grabbed another bag, and Mark joined me in walking the wall to look for pockets. We found some nice ones on the east side of the pile and I was able to chip some nice combos out of them to give to Mark….

…and while we were over next to that pocket, Mark found another plate with two or three large green poker chips nestled in some pretty druse as well….he took the photos of me above working the pocket I found, and I took these pics of him holding the plate that he found….

…and after working the coved wall and other areas along the wall, he showed me his finds…he was one happy camper….and glad he had made the drive and stopped off to hunt with me…..

…and from there, we drove over to visit with a friend of mine who sells Viburnum Trend minerals…he always has great material for sale and doesn`t charge an arm and a leg like some dealers will do. Mark picked out a few nice selections, getting a variety of minerals and crystals for his collection, including some of the greenish yellow double terminated calcite crystals encased in pyrite that came from pillar pockets at one of the mines and may never been seen again. I have several of those in my collection as well….

…from there, Mark headed north to I-70 and then west to KC….while Onyx and I headed home…shooting these beautiful sunbeams on the way….

All in all, another great day of rockhounding with good friends and great weather….jwjphoto7@gmail.com if you would like to chat.

Druse Spot on the 24th

Posted on January 25, 2016 by jwj

I cleaned up the basement all day Saturday, putting things back into place, after finishing up the hydraulic cement work down there the past few weeks, strengthening the walls and hopefully sealing off the leaks…prob wont have a true test of that til we get another soaking rain. I cleaned up the floor on Friday afternoon and decided to straighten up the rest of the basement on Saturday…it took me all morning and all afternoon, didn`t even get a nap in, and by the time supper rolled around, I was exhausted. Needless to say, bedtime came early. Onyx and I decided to go to the druse spot yesterday and see what we could find druse quartz wise. We arrived early afternoon and spotted a trackhoe sitting up the hill on the north side, something we had never seen there before, at least not on that side of the hillside….

…a few years ago they had dug into the hillside on the south side of that spot, digging out clay for a project…..

This is an area where they have had problems with erosion so I wasn`t sure til closer inspection of it, and that`s what it appeared to be, was some type of erosion control up there…they had dug out two small pits and then there was a shallow ditch dug out leading to the pond in the middle….

…one thing is for sure tho, no matter what they do, it sure did ensure that one can find some great druse quartz there…I filled one bag within an hour and then another bag in the next hour…I made it all the way up to the top of the hill in the photo above and found several pockets of smokey colored druse quartz, pieces with bubbles and knobs of it as well, great stuff…this is also a good place to find bubbles of snow white quartz as well as citrine yellow. Up above the trackhoe, I found a couple of small plates of rainbow quartz druse too, would have loved to find some bigger plates of it, or even bubbles of it. We hiked around and collected for three hours and then headed home. I`m going to let the rain today clean them off and then I will photograph them and include some photos here.

I stopped off for a small pizza on the way home, they make some really good pizzas there…and caught this phenomenal sunset, shot this one on the railroad crossing downtown Cuba…..

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

MFQ Again on the 16th

Posted on January 25, 2016 by jwj

After a few weeks of bad weather, flooding, then snow and ice, I decided to take Saturday the 16th off, so I could return to MFQ and do some rockhounding again. Nathaniel was out of the country with his chef activities and Chuck was tied up with his college classes and flooring work, so as soon as I got home from a long night at work and caught a three hour nap, Onyx and I headed out. We took the scenic route this time and saw a few deer and turkey and a few people outside their homes burning leaves and that was about it.

We arrived with enough daylight left that I had four hours to collect in….

…so we didn`t waste any time getting started…above is the view to the east from the coved wall….my buddy Jim had told me Friday that there was no material on the ground that he could see, so no new blasting had taken place in a while…the last time we were there, they had material on the ground in three different areas to clean up and it was apparent that they had cleaned up that huge blast pile and the one to the right of it, both of which would have been visible in the photo above if they had still been there. In the middle of the coved wall tho, there were the remains of a small blast pile….

…and very little to the right of it….

…so I decided to check the remains of that pile for crystals first and then make my way to the right…altho now, in retrospect, I wish I had started on the wall to the right first, and made my way to the left, cause I found some really nice dogtooth pockets along that wall to the right by the end of the day. When we arrived, there were also some folks on the far left side with a trailer, and some four wheelers, told Jim I thought they were four wheeling up at the top, but as it turned out, they were actually cutting trees up there and using the four wheelers to drag them down to the truck and trailer. They were up there all day too. When I reached the center of that pile, I found a huge boulder set into the loose stuff and a large opening in the boulder, where it appeared someone had found some nice stuff and pulled it out, leaving this huge opening in it….you can see it behind my truck over the top center below….

…and closer up in the photo below….

…I began checking the pocket and on the sides and top of the pocket, I found some beautiful poker chips with matrix encrusting and enveloping them, inseparable from the matrix, and soon I was pulling several out that had big and gorgeous dogtooth crystals sticking out from the ends of them as well, some were a bright orange color and some were a bright chocolate brown with some irridescent razzle dazzle to them. It took a couple of hours just to clean that pocket out, let me tell ya, and then I was able to move over to that wall to the right, and when I did, I found four pockets in a row in a seam a few inches wide at the entrance, that looked very promising. By that time, the sun was beginning to set, and I had to work fast….

…the pockets were along the bottom third of the wall and are only faintly visible in the photo below, right in the middle and above that white line across the bottom of the wall….

..in short order tho, I was able to remove several small plates of orange dogtooth crystals and some larger brown ones as well, one pocket even had some green and brown mixed colors of calcite…I filled two bags of wrapped crystals pretty quickly and then Onyx and I got out of there, but not before snapping a few photos of my truck with the new Cooper tires on them that a friend had requested on the Tacoma website…Onyx decided to pose for me from the passenger seat so I snapped a few extras….in one photo he was licking his chops as if to say…” come on dad, lets get out of here, I`m hungry “…..

Life After Arkansas

Posted on December 14, 2015 by jwj

Took all of two weeks after my return from Arkansas before I was driving down to MFQ once again, this time it was just Onyx and I making the trip. We arrived about 10 am and discovered one large blast pile right in the middle of the quarry, and two smaller piles remaining from prior blasts, one to the right and one over to the left in the coved wall area. This one was spread out extensively and covered the back road going around the crusher to the coved wall. It was huge and I photographed it from right to left in 3 photos….

Onyx and I got out and stretched our legs a bit and then as I was getting ready to hunt, he got in a couple of wind sprints and then returned to walk up the right side of the new pile with me…within fifty feet I started finding crystals and clusters laying all over the place….I was finding so many initially that I decided to drive my truck over to that side as well…

…and took this photo looking back at the front side of the pile and how scattered the rocks were toward the entrance….

…within a few minutes, I had two bags full of loose crystals and small clusters, many appeared to have a white sugar frosting poured all over them…and I started finding several yard rocks toward the middle of the pile as well…some I carried over to the far side and stacked them up on the edge of the pile so I could simply drive over and pick them up later. I didn`t take my camera up there with me, and just got them cleaned up this weekend so will snap some photos of them once the soggy rains stop in the next day or two and post them on here. I can safely tell you that I was afraid I wasn`t going to have enough room in the bed of my truck nor enough wrapping cloths to protect them either. As it was tho, I had just enough room in the truck, utilizing the front and back floorboards for many of the yard rocks. Afterwards, I drove over to the coved wall area….

…where there was a small pile remaining…very steep tho, so wasn`t gonna be climbing it up the middle. I was able to scramble up the sides tho and check the wall for pockets, and near the top discovered a few small pockets with some beautiful red colored calcite crystals that resembled hexagonal nuts rather than poker chip formations. There were also some pockets with the calcite that resembles cavelike formations, most of those I left there due to damage to them.

…I filled another bag here, giving me a total of six bags, five at the new blast pile…and many yard rocks…by this time I was ready to leave and head home to get a nap in and grab some dinner. First I had to drive back over to the western side of the new pile to load up the crystals I stacked up on the edge….

I was a bit soaked from the light rain that had begun to fall shortly after we arrived, and Onyx had stayed in the truck when I got over the coved wall area…by the time we were leaving, he was nearly all dry once again. I changed shirts and into my street shoes before leaving, planning to stop off and see a new miner friend on my return, not wanting to track mud into his house….he had some interesting pieces that I had not seen before, and I was able to pick up a few of them from him, one was a very small set of twin calcite crystals with malachite color at the base of the crystals. I`ll get a photo of it posted soon as well.

Thru the week, I received emails from Nathaniel and Chuck, both asking if I intended to drive down there again the next weekend…I had a couple of holidays to burn before the end of the year, so I took Sunday off to make the return trip. Nathaniel rode down with Onyx and I, while Chuck and his daughter Mackenzie, took the scenic route to arrive shortly after Nathaniel and I did. It was Mackenzie`s first time there and I think she was pretty impressed with the place. Nathaniel and I had only been there a short while before they pulled in, enough time for me to scout out some floor pockets for her to check out, with some nice looking loose crystals and small clusters laying on the surface. She and Chuck started digging in when I pointed it out to them…while Nathaniel took off to check out the coved wall pile, which looked much the same as it did the weekend before when I was there. He climbed up the right side of the pile and was checking out wall pockets when I glanced over there about an hour later. For whatever reason, probably because I simply forgot, I did not take any photos at all that day, but I can tell you that we all did well…I only filled one bag with crystals that I found, but they were very nice crystals and plates from a few pockets that I discovered down the east wall…and after picking up a few plates, I called Chuck over and let him work the rest of the plates out of it. There were a lot of druse pockets along the wall as well and I pulled a few nice plates of those out as well as some druse pieces with poker chips attached to them….those always make beautiful sparkly plates to display…I have about four shelves of them at home…they glitter in the light like you would not believe, and are second to dogtooths in my book. By 1:30 pm, we were tired and happy, and headed up the road to see one of my miner friends to see some new material…both Nathaniel and Chuck wanted to get some nice Viburnum Trend minerals and we were able to do just that. I`ll get some of those posted soon as well. This weekend I took advantage of the beautiful unseasonably warm weather for December to move some rocks around in the backyard and made room for more. Today while it was raining outside, I high graded my crystals on the inside and made room for more that I have collected recently, including my Arkansas quartz crystals.

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

Arkansas Fall Trip 2015

Posted on November 18, 2015 by jwj

After weeks of planning and researching many locations for quartz crystals that I had not been to before, including talking to many former mine owners in the Mt Ida area by email and gathering information on past and present sites, my vacation finally began on Monday morning November 9th. After packing all day, Onyx and I got up early on Tuesday morning and headed to the great state of Arkansas, home of Arkansas Quartz Crystals. I had a call the night before, my buddy Jim letting me know that another blast would take place at the quarry in Eminence later that week, but as I told him I would be gone all week, so I did the next best thing, let some of my rockhunting friends know in case they might want to make the drive down to check things out. I had taken new rockhunting friend Chuck Reed down there the weekend before and we found several bags full of crystals in the blast pile that day, even brought a few yard rocks home with me and he had a great time as well. I wasn`t able to take any photos that day due to a dead battery in my camera.

Onxy and I arrived at Fort Smith a little after 10 am and I texted my buddy Adam Lageveen, who lives in Sallisaw, about 20 min west of there, to let him know I was close…he texted back that it was a great time to come by and visit so we continued west on Hwy 40. Adam had some more quartz crystals in his collection that he wanted to get rid of so he could make more room for his collection of Native American arrowheads and knives…Adam creates them from various minerals that Native Americans used long ago…novaculite, obsidian in many colors, chert, quartz, and glass…and he is quite talented with it as well. He had put some of his quartz aside for me to look thru and had some smokies for me as well.

We visited for about an hour and then Onyx and I headed on south toward Hot Springs, where we would be staying in a condo on Lake Hamilton for the next five days. We arrived around 3:30 pm and after getting unpacked, we stepped outside to shoot the sunset over the lake…

I received a call from Ray Roth, who had driven up there from New Orleans the day before, and we decided to meet at Hibachi Sushi Buffet for supper. I had ate there back in July when I was there last and found it to have the best buffet I had experienced, great food including Chinese and American cuisines both. Like I told Ray tho, I was not there for the sushi, and as it turned out, he wasn`t either. We had a great meal there and talked about our plans on where to hunt the next few days, and I told him that we would be joined by good rockhunting friend Virgil Richards from Tulsa, and a friend of his as well, on Thursday morning. I drove over to the homemade ice cream shop called Scoops, and found them closed already at 8 pm…I was shocked, but found out later they were now operating under their winter time hours, decided to catch them the next day hopefully.

After a good breakfast of hotcakes and sausage at Mikky D`s the next morning, Onyx and I drove over to the Valero Station by the 270 Bypass, where Ray filled up his gas tank and I got a bag of ice for my cooler, and then we headed west toward Mt Ida, destination Twin Creek Mine. We arrived shortly after 9 am and after paying hostess Lisa our dig fees, we began digging along the wall hoping to find a pocket of crystals.

This mine is owned by a couple in Switzerland and leased out to Dixie and Bobby Fecho…Bobby used to operate the mine at Bear Mountain when his parents owned it a few years back, another good mine that produced some nice crystals in all shapes and sizes…it`s now privately owned and operated commercially. When we arrived we saw that Bobby had his trackhoe sitting partially in the public dig area and it appeared that he had dug into a sandstone rock area and may have hit a pocket or two there. About an hour after we started digging, Bobby showed up and confirmed that he had indeed found a few pockets of nice crystals in that sandstone area. I told him that Ray and I were interested in digging in a confirmed pocket area if possible, so he took me to a couple of pockets previously dug out and showed me both locations, one near the entrance that had several pockets and crystals very visible in the walls, and one at the top of the hill above the public dig area, where I could see some large crystal points laying all over a cleared area as well as crystals attached to the walls and one large point sticking out of the base of one wall, at least three pockets were visible and Bobby pointed out three other potential pockets while we were standing there in the rain. There was also a large yard rock in the middle of the cleared area that had large points sticking out of the top of it…needless to say I was drooling just standing there taking it all in. Bobby explained the process and cost of getting into each area. I told him there would be four of us but we wouldn`t be able to come back til Friday or Saturday morning. He said he would hold the pockets for us. Soon after we returned to the public dig area, it began pouring rain…I stayed along the wall for about 30 min, then got under the tarp that Lisa had put up as a rain shelter…Ray got back into his suv…I had put Onyx into my truck as he became soaked soon after and I didn`t want him to become a mud ball. I dried him off a bit before putting him in there with the fan on so he would dry out as well. Soon after the rain slacked off, and Ray and I returned to the tailing piles…this went on back and forth til about 2 pm, when he and I decided we had had enough. We drove back to Hot Springs and decided to meet at the Hibachi Buffet again that evening for another great supper. After stopping off at Scoops and picking up some home made ice cream, Onyx and I returned to the condo….it was apparent that the rain had set in for the day, which had been forecast, so we just sat it out inside the condo, which has a great view over Lake Hamilton, watching one storm after another roll across the lake.

Despite heavy rains and storms passing through, there was no dangerous lightning and as the storms cleared the lake by 5 pm, the skies cleared to reveal a beautiful setting sun…

At supper that evening, I told Ray we would need to be on the road toward Mt Ida by 7:45 am the next morning, as we needed to meet up with Virgil and his friend on the west side of Mt Ida and then drive on out to the privately owned Southfork Mine where we would be digging all day at. After a pretty sunrise and another good breakfast…..

…..we got on the road on time and luckily didn`t hit much traffic, stopping off at the Phillips 66 in Mt Ida so I could fill my gas tank. I had heard from Virgil prior to leaving Hot Springs and he said he was at Waldron, an hour from Mt Ida. Shortly after we arrived at the intersection of Hwy 270 and 27 North, Virgil was just a few miles away and we headed to the mine to meet up with owner Tony Thacker. I had contacted Tony several weeks prior and let him know that we were interested in digging at his mine, which he said would be fine with him, letting me know that the tailings there had not been touched by anyone in over a year, so I figured they would be prime for finding crystals in. We arrived a few minutes before he did and waited for him at the gated entrance at the foot of the hill. Virgil introduced his friend Doug Cunningham to Ray and I, and after a few minutes of explaining the history of this mine to them, Tony soon arrived in his Toyota pickup and introduced us to his red heeler dog.

After a bit of small talk, we headed on up the road to the mine, after crossing a creek and driving thru a few mudholes…

…..I didn`t know how Ray would do, since he drives a Jeep suv with front wheel drive only, Virgil and I both drive Toyota pickups with four wheel drive, but I looked back a few times and saw Ray gunning thru the mudholes just fine….they felt like solid bottom holes to me. In the middle photo above, we came upon that tree across the road, and Tony had to pull it back out of the way with his chain hooked to the tow hook on the front of his pickup…he said it appeared to have come down the night before when they had some wind with the rain. Luckily that was the only obstruction in the road going up, soon we were at the top with a great view not only of the mine, but the surrounding area as well….

….and after each one of us paid Tony our dig fee, we grabbed our tools, buckets, bags, and gloves and headed out in different directions to find quartz crystals, and let me tell you, they were laying all over the place. Tony decided to fire up his trackhoe and walk it down to the lower area and stir up the tailing piles for us.

Ray and Doug and I worked on some plates and pockets on the old wall below where we parked, and found some nice stuff there, I hit a couple of old pockets and came away with about ten nice plates and some nice clear crystal points, giving a few to Doug and Ray. Doug and Ray had found some nice crystals just walking around the slope below where we parked initially as well, and there were yard rocks laying all over the place as well. After the first hour we all took a break and then decided to drive down to the piles and check them to see what Tony was stirring up.

We no sooner walked up into the piles and we started seeing crystals laying all over the place. Here is a yard rock I found, that had yellow golden healer crystals attached to the base of it…Doug look a liking to it so I let him have it….

…and here is one of the nicer crystal clusters I found up in the wall pockets….

Virgil liked it a lot and used one of his bottles of water to wash it off….

…I don`t think any of us stopped for lunch break, we were all finding so many crystals that no one wanted to waste a single second of digging time. Tony drove into town and left us there for a few hours from mid morning to early afternoon.

Ray and I both found a couple of nice medium sized clusters, I gave one to Doug since he had never been quartz crystal collecting. Soon after Tony returned, I had three bags full of crsytals, many of the better ones wrapped up, and I was quite happy with my plates and crystal points, many of them good sized points. Doug took a couple of photos of Virgil and Ray during one of our breaks…

By 3 pm, we were all tired but happy with our finds and ready to head out…we thanked Tony and his pup once again for a great time of digging at his mine….

…and headed toward Hot Springs…I had told Virgil about a dealer that lived along the route back, who had some quartz clusters and points with green chloride and he was as interested in them as I was…so we stopped off on the way back to see Stu. I had told him a few days before by email that we would stop by on our way back from Tony`s mine, but he forgot earlier in the day that we would stop by…I had tried to call him from the top of the hill at Tony`s mine, but lost the signal apparently before I could talk to him. Luckily for us, he was there and we were able to take a look at some nice material that he had on hand there. I purchased some Jeffrey Quartz as well as some nice small clusters and singles with shale inclusions. Virgil made some purchases as well and we then headed for Hot Springs.

Virgil and Doug decided to stay at the same hotel that Ray was staying at…the Best Western just north of Oaklawn on Central Avenue…I do have to say they have the best breakfast bar I have ever seen out of all the hotels I have stayed at, bar none. Ray had stayed there before on prior trips and liked it. We got back to HS right as the sun was setting and decided to clean up and then meet at Cracker Barrel for supper. While cleaning up at the condo, I was able to photograph the sunset too…

I arrived at Cracker Barrel first and found the line into the restaurant to be about 30 people deep, so we opted for the Outback Steakhouse next door instead. All three of us had their smoked burgers and boy let me tell you, they were excellent tasting. We decided to meet in the parking lot there the next morning at 8:30 prior to driving out to our first stop. My Hot Springs rockhound friend Justin Baird was going to join us the next day on our hunts.

There was another beautiful sunrise Friday morning….

Justin`s allergies were acting up, so we got a little late start the next morning, he parked his car there and joined Onyx and I, and we drove south on Hwy 270 to the Magnet Cove Martin Marietta Quarry to see what minerals we could find there. Mindat shows a list of over one hundred minerals found there, including pyrite, purple fluorite, and quartz…I am used to quarries where you can readily find something pretty every few feet along the wall or in the blast pile, this quarry was nothing like any I have been to before. After a safety talk with the acting Quarry Manager, Jimmi Clifton, we donned our hard hats, steel toed boots, and safety glasses and drove down to the pit of the quarry, where no one was working that day. Jimmi told us the top bench of the quarry was Level A and the lowest area, the pit, was Level H, each level was forty feet high, eight levels, so the pit was about 320 feet deep. This quarry is known primarily as a micro mounters paradise, however I was hoping we would find something bigger to take home. The first photo below is looking north toward the entrance and the second photo is the south wall of the quarry.

…we parked about middle of the pit floor and then started looking in that pile of rock in front of our trucks…

Doug, Virgil, and Justin began finding some nice stuff right off the bat, the fluorite there was almost like powder, and the pyrite was very small as well…

….Justin found some nice sized calcite crystals and stayed to look for more in the pile…in the meantime, I decided to make a circle of the pit floor and see if I could find anything worthwhile…I have to say this quarry had some of the ugliest rock I have ever seen….leaverites for sure….

…we took a break about 11 am, Ray and Justin continued to look for minerals in the pile in the middle of the pit floor….

We decided to drive up to Level A and see if we could find anything up there…I called Jimmi to let him know we were changing areas in the quarry as he was going to come get us before they blasted a certain section above us….

…and while we didn`t see anything up there either, there were many vultures flying around above us…that got our attention for a few minutes at least…

..not having found anything substantial there, we decided to try out a location that Justin knew of for wavellite. I called Jimmi and thanked him for allowing us to collect there and then we headed north back to Hot Springs to check out this abandoned quarry….we drove down a logging road a little ways so that no one would mess with our trucks…Virgil was carrying a large generator and a power hammer as well, sure didn`t want anything happening to it. We walked in the rest of the way to the quarry….

…needless to say, after a 35 min hike into the place, we found very little worthwhile to take back home with us. We left about mid afternoon and decided to drive down and see a guy about some smokey quartz clusters that he had for sale. We arrived at his place a little after 4 pm and boy did he have some nice crystals….

…while we were there, Justin and Virgil started talking to the owner and darkness came and settled in…I didn`t think we were ever going to get out of there and back to Hot Springs for supper. The temps started dropping and I grabbed my jacket out of the truck, my allergies were starting to bother me and there I was out in the boonies without my meds, and three guys who like to talk shop, going at it non stop…Doug and I just rolled our eyes and hoped for the best, talking to the owner`s nice daughters. Eventually we did get out of there and headed back to HS…Ray called as we drove thru Mt Ida to see where we were at, said he had waited as long as he could and then ate supper when he didn`t hear back from us. We decided that we would eat at Cracker Barrel this time and since our clothing wasn`t too dirty this time, we decided to just drive there direct and eat…I had to drop off Justin at his car next door anyway, and he was going to join us, until I got him to his car and he found a note on the windshield from his girlfriend letting him know she was next door at The Border. I let him know what time we were gonna drive up to the mine the next morning and he took off. Virgil, Doug, and I had a great meal at Cracker Barrel, since it was fish night there.

Onyx and I were up early at dawn on Saturday and discovered fog covering much of Lake Hamilton….

I skipped breakfast for the most part, stopping to get a bag of ice and some cash at the corner store. We then drove over to the McDonalds on the west side of HS where we were to meet Justin at 7:15…he wasn`t there nor did he show up by the time Virgil, Doug, and Ray showed up, so we drove on up to Twin Creek Mine, paid hostess Brittany our pocket fees and then drove up the logging road to the private pocket area at the top of the hill above the public fee dig area. We parked our vehicles in the woods, and while Ray was trying to park his jeep, Virgil and I walked over to the private pocket where I intended to point out all the highlights to him, that Bobby had shown me on Thursday…as we walked up, me in front, I immediately spotted tire tracks in the soft mud that were not there on Thursday…I came to a sudden stop and quickly noticed the large yard rock was gone…looked to my right and noticed no large single point sticking out of the mud wall…no no crystals laying all over the place like they were on Thursday when there. Virgil knew right then and there what had happened, he had been thru a similar experience years ago….cause it appeared that those crystals and pockets had been highgraded…meaning crystals dug out and removed before we arrived !! We drove back down to the camper office to get our money back, and were met by Bobby…we explained to him what we found up there…he stood there and claimed someone must have snuck into the mine and stole all those crystals, claimed he was just as angry as we were, but sure didnt look angry or even upset, sure didnt sound angry or upset, his facial expression never changed nor did the tone of his voice…I have been around angry people and you normally can tell real quickly that they are upset using your hearing and sight alone…he returned to us all of our money and then after some small talk, offered the other pocket pit to us at a good price…he took us up there and showed us where the pockets were at, as well as one pocket that he asked us not to dig into…we decided to give it a try and see what we could find.

There were actually several crystal points laying all over the place so it looked pretty good. After we grabbed our tools and started looking around, this special pocket pit started looking better and better. Virgil and I dug into the small tailing pile on the right side and crystal points started rolling down right into my waiting hands, it didn`t take long to fill a bag in that one spot alone. Doug walked up to the end of the pit and Ray walked around checking out the boulders for vugs and pockets.

Ray called me over after finding a few boulders with what appeared to be smokey points all over them…he was right, they were definitely smokeys and I was able to chisel a few plates of them off the boulder, then looked around and found a few more boulders covered as well….

…which then led me to look closer at the wall, and discovered crystals lodged into heavy thick clay that were acting like glue holding them to the wall. I went to my truck and dug out my small pry tool, that resembles a big white two pronged fork and began prying crystals out of the wall…I had grabbed my screwdriver as well but the fork was working better…Virgil soon joined me along the wall and began prying some out with his screwdriver too…..

…at one point, I was even using a couple of fairly flat rocks stacked one on the other for a makeshift ladder so I could reach some real beauties higher up on the wall….

…and even climbed up on the wall at one point in order to reach some higher up than that…then went and got Virgil`s lightweight aluminum ladder from his pickup….thanks to Doug for the photos of me in action…

…after we cleaned off a couple of walls, I decided to take a break and take a flat of crystals to Brittany, to give to hostess Lisa when she returned…they were crystals with some dogtooths from the quarry at Eminence…I had found out Wednesday while there that Lisa liked dogtooth crystals. While visiting with Brittany, I found out that Onyx had been making the rounds with the public diggers and everyone up there really liked him…I wasn`t surprised by that. I returned to the special pocket pit and found Doug and Virgil up at the other end popping off some beautiful plates from the end wall….

…I decided to take a water break and then popped a few plates off walls myself and then walked around picking up small clusters, yard rocks, and crystal points that were just laying on top all over the pit.

It was about this time that Ray decided to leave and apparently as he did, Onyx took off and followed him up the road and out of the mine property, then started walking down Collier Springs Road to the west. A few minutes later, as Virgil, Doug, and I were taking another break by our trucks, I received a call on my cellphone from a young man who said that he had found my dog…said he was on a gravel road near Crystal Vista…I asked how close he was to Twin Creek Mine and he said not too far away and said he would bring Onyx to me on his four wheeler. Earlier this summer, I had found some custom engraved collar tags at my vet`s office and attached it to Onyx`s collar, had a flag emblem on the front that was really pretty as well as eye catching, and engraved my name, cell number and Onyx`s name on the other side. I walked down to the parking lot entrance and a few minutes later Jordan came riding down the hill on his four wheeler with Onyx sitting in his lap appearing as if he was driving it and a big smile on his face. I thanked Jordan for finding him, as well as calling me and returning him to me, said I would have to add four wheeling to Onyx`s resume. Lucky for me Jordan was riding his four wheeler in the area, cause we normally come in from the east and leave to the east as well, and had not noticed Onyx gone since he had been back and forth to the public dig pit all day long. I felt blessed to have him back and such a nice young man to discover him and return him to me.

Shortly after that, I had walked over to the office to use the Johnny On the Spot and afterwards, heard someone call out my name and ask if it was really me…I looked over and saw Janyce Sorrells and she called her husband David over to talk to me…they are rockhound friends from the Paducah area that I met and dug with at the Eureka Fluorite Mine at Marion, Kentucky…they were camping on Lake Ouachita while there and had been digging at various mines in the Mt Ida area. They too were heading for home the next day.

Virgil, Doug, and I continued to dig for a couple more hours, until Brittany came and told us that it was near closing time and time to pack up our things and prepare to leave, after a bit of small talk as well. She was a very good hostess that day and very nice to talk to as well and I heard from other diggers in the public area that she was very helpful to many of them as well. We left shortly after 4 pm…Virgil and Doug headed to Oklahoma and I headed back to Hot Springs to clean up and have supper with Ray one last night.

As soon as Onyx and I returned to the condo, I discovered my battery on my cell was nearly dead, so I quickly cleaned up and changed clothes, then ran out to the truck to charge it up so I could call Ray about supper. We decided to meet in about 20 minutes at the Hibachi Sushi Grill for supper again, giving me some time to charge up my phone first. As soon as I returned to the condo from supper, I saw and photographed the moon in the clear spots over Lake Hamilton….

Onyx and I slept in a little bit on Sunday morning…getting up early to photograph the sunrise before returning to sleep a few more hours…..

I first thought about spending an extra day til I turned on the news and spotted the weather forecast for heavy rain and storms on Monday…I decided I really didn`t want to drive back home in that type of weather, so we got up and began packing at 9 am and headed out the door. We stopped off at Waldron on the way home, for the annual Thomas Family reunion at my grandfather`s farm…my Uncles Joe and Harley actually have the farm now, but I still refer to it as my grandfather`s farm…..we took Ross Creek Road in from Hwy 71 and approaching from that direction always affords me a great view of the farmhouse and barn up on the hill across the valley when I get close…

..and by 2 pm after a great dinner with dessert and fellowship with relatives and friends there, Onyx and I headed north toward home…arriving about 8:30 that evening. All in all, it was a great vacation and very productive rockhunting trip.

Here are some of my finds and purchases too….the first ones from Stu, smokeys and shale inclusions….the big single crystal in the upper left hand side has green chloride attached to the base of it….

…and this one from Collier Creek Mine….

…and these next crystals are smokeys from near Glenwood….

this next one shows the shale inclusions very well in this cluster….

I will add more as I get them cleaned up….give me a shout at jwjphoto7@gmail.com if you want.

Bladed Barite from Washington County

Posted on November 1, 2015 by jwj

Last weekend I drove down to Washington County to the Washington State Park to meet members of the St Louis Rock Club and hunt for barite and galena. We met at the Petroglyph site of the park and checked out the fossil footprints on the rocks, as Dr Bruce Stinchcomb told us about the history of the area rocks. We then drove a little ways over to some property that Dr Bruce owns, crossing a creek and then driving up a small mountain of a hill to several old tailing piles of ” tiff ” mines. Tiff is a term that the locals use to describe barite, which was heavily mined in that area back in the early to mid 1900`s, leaving many old tiff pits all over the countryside of Washington County. I have to stop and say one thing here…that is the first time I have ever seen anyone cross a creek in a very small Chevrolet car, and not just once, but two of them went across that ten foot wide creek with no problem at all, and I was totally amazed !! After stopping to talk to one of the neighbors up on top of that huge hill for a few minutes, we caravanned on down the road to a ” Y ” intersection where we parked and fanned out in search of goodies. I began by helping a few of the other members find some nice ones, Chuck Reed and his daughter Mackenzie, and a couple of guys named George and Darrel, weren`t sure what we were there looking for. I also had taken a few flats of calcite crystals from MFQ and let everyone know they were welcome to come over and take some home with them…even Dr Bruce liked what he saw in the flats too. After a few minutes, I took off up the road to the south and then down an embankment to a red clay looking tailing pile about 20 yards away, and after walking around a little bit, I climbed up on a small hillside and found some really nice looking bladed barite pieces just sitting there waiting on someone like me to take them home…..

…I looked around and found four or five right on top and gathered them up in my arms and headed back to the truck. This time I grabbed a bag and my mini mattox and let Onyx out on his leash to walk him around a bit. Two of the members had their dogs with them on leashes as well. We headed back to the spot where I dug around a little bit, while Darrel and George were in the area searching as well. Darrel and I found a barite shelf in the top of that pile but we didn`t find any more nice bladed pieces like I had found. I wandered on down the hill and around a corner where I spotted yet another small pile, and within a few minutes, I had found some nice druse chunks with bladed barite blended in with the druse….

…Chuck and Mackenzie joined me a few minutes later and we dug up a few more nice ones, before Dr Bruce decided to drive on down and around the area to find some more areas to dig in. While we joined them and dug around a bit more, we never did find another area that had as nice of stuff. Shortly after I ran out of time and had to head home to get a nap in before I returned to work that night once again. I had a great time while there and always enjoy looking for Missouri Bladed Barite. Thanks to Dr Bruce for a great field trip !!

Another Dandy Dogtooth Pocket Day

Posted on October 19, 2015 by jwj

Earlier this week I decided I was going to drive back down to MFQ and see if I could find anything good, after checking out both of the most recent blast piles last Sunday, and finding some nice yard rocks. I figured after they stirred up both piles a bit, if they decided to work both piles evenly that is, that more material could be uncovered…little did I know what lay in store for me.

I had talked to Nathaniel and he decided to ride down with me and on the way down, he told me that he sure would like to find one of those chocolate brown colored dogtooth crystals….little did he know what lay in store for him. I always pray for a few things before I make each trip…I pray for a safe trip for Onyx and I, pray for no flat tires, and I pray that I will find some pretty crystals and minerals. Sometimes when I get where I am going and there is some rock overhanging a pocket in front of me, I will say a quick prayer to keep me out of harms way and when I find nice stuff, I thank God for that as well. On really hot days, when the wind stirs up and brings us a nice cool breeze, I thank God for turning on the fan, too…and I usually thank him for nice weather as well….I realize he is super busy, but I believe in keeping the lines of communication open.

We didn`t get a real early start yesterday morning, but as I told Nathaniel, it wasn`t gonna get light til about 7:30 am, and it was gonna be cooler than what we were used to so far, so if we arrived around 9 am, with full sun, that would give it time to warm up a bit. We loaded up the truck as the sun was rising prettily…..

On the way down there, we spotted two bald eagles in a tree top next to the highway…..as soon as we passed them and confirmed it, I turned around and returned so we could both photograph them, pulling off the side of the highway to do so…..as I turned around, one took flight and passed overhead, leaving one in the tree for us….

…we had to approach from the side so as not to spook him, and after a few seconds of snapping images, he took flight…we just kept shooting images….

…a local farmer stopped by to make sure we were okay and told us that there were alot more eagles that could be seen along the river at Houston. Nathaniel used his phone camera and I was shooting with my Nikon D200 and zoom lens. I wasn`t sure what I had in my images until I got home last night and looked at them after loading them into my computer, sometimes my autofocus doesn`t work as well as I would like it to…needless to say, I was pretty happy with my images of the eagle. As I told Nathaniel, I have never seen two eagles in a treetop like that, so I took that as a good sign for our day ahead.

We got on the road again and when we arrived at the quarry, we found the pile on the left side to be quite a bit less than when I was there the week before. The pile was steeper so there would be no climbing to the top, and we could see stuff sliding down so we both donned our hard hats and grabbed tools and bags….

….setting out to check for signs of pockets. Nathaniel went to the right from the middle…..

…..and I went to the left from the middle, stopping at a big boulder 20 feet from the middle, where it appeared that a few pockets were located, one under the boulder, and one or two on the left side of it……

…pretty soon, Nathaniel went past me to the left and set up camp about ten feet from me, finding some openings in what appeared to be a vuggy wall….

…and pretty soon after that, he was telling me that he had some nice dogtooth crystals inside…

…..I had walked back to the truck to get my flashlight to look inside my pocket at the base of the boulder, and I grabbed my camera as well. When I returned to the wall to see what he had found, he was pretty excited and I saw that he had good reason to be excited…..

JACKPOT !!! I was excited for him and told him to get his phone out and photograph them before and after, then told him how to remove the ones that were anchored in there, after carefully removing the ones that were loose, and to go ahead and wrap them up soon after removing them if possible…yes Virgil, I told him to wrap them up, just as I wrap mine up as soon as I can after removing them from the pockets…and yes I told Nathaniel all about you, Virgil….lol….

….I then returned to my pocket and said a quick prayer, that while I was glad Nathaniel had found a great pocket of dogtooth crystals, I would sure like to find something similar as well…

…..and what do you know…the next thing you know, I am pulling dogtooths out of my pocket soon after too….Nathaniel took some photos of me with my finds, every time I pulled a nice one out…

….he said I was killing him pulling one after another out…as he was chipping that huge plate of his out of his pocket….

…and in no time at all, we had been working those pockets for about three hours, opening the mouths of the pockets pretty big from the small openings we started with. Nathaniel had to open his up big time to remove that huge plate that he was chipping out, that alone took him about thirty minutes to do. When I was finally able to open mine up more, I shined my flashlight inside to see what all I had yet to pull out, turned out to be about fifteen inches deep inside and almost two feet across, with a massive base of chocolate colored calcite latched on to the top of the boulder and pointing down, those were the singles I had pulled out before, having broke off the base and were just laying there when I started reaching into the vug.

When that pocket ran out on me, I moved a few inches to the left and right and found a few more and then another pocket under the boulder on the left side of it, opened up….

…as I was checking it out, pulling a few plates of black and brown sparkly druse out, Nathaniel finally liberated that huge plate of dogtooth calcite crystals from his pocket, he turned around with it in his hands and a big smile on his face, and I snapped this photo of him holding it….

…and here is another photo of another nice one he pulled out of there as well….

….after a short water break, we loaded Onyx up and drove over to the other side and checked out the wall over there, and found some more nice pockets of dogtooth crystals once again, spending about 90 minutes before heading for home. I stopped off at Rocky Falls to see if there was any fall color there, and found some nice color and some kids there…..Nathaniel remembered swimming there as a kid growing up in the Ellington area….

…on our way home, we saw several deer including a doe and two fawns, both fawns were as big or bigger than their mama….sure was nice to see so much wildlife, made for an even better day. Here are a few of my crystals from my pockets Saturday…..

…and a closeup of Nathaniel`s huge cluster, that he photographed yesterday and sent to me……

…..it still has him pretty excited…which is always a good thing. 🙂

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

Protected: Secret Spot and MFQ With Rockhound Friends

Posted on October 3, 2015 by jwj

How I Spent My Labor Day Weekend 2015….MFQ

Posted on September 16, 2015 by jwj

That`s right…Onyx and I spent our 2015 Labor Day Weekend at MFQ on both Saturday and Sunday, after receiving word from my buddy down there that a new blast occurred on Friday afternoon. We drove down early Saturday morning, arriving about 7:30…..sure was a pretty sunrise to greet us tho along the way….

…and we saw some deer and a wild turkey on the way down, so I knew then it was going to be a good day ahead….the fog increased as we drew closer and I knew it was going to be a hot one once the fog burned off….

…and here is the before in the fog, and after the fog burned off later in the morning, images of the pile that greeted us on our arrival….

As I was lacing up my boots for the day ahead, and one snapped, I briefly thought I sure hope this isn`t a bad sign…luckily for me, within five minutes that thought went quickly out the window like a rock was attached to it. After switching to my spare boots, I started up the right side of the pile…..

…and came upon these boulders about halfway up, and circled around them to the left and then back to the right, looking carefully around each side of them, picking up a few nice loose crystals all the way around them, and then came to the right side of that one that appears to be in the middle on the right side…

…and wait til you see what was on top of the boulder to the left of this one…

whooeeee…. I was in dogtooth heaven……

…I climbed back down the pile to get my hammer and chisel and another bag of wraps as well as a bottle of water…luckily for me that nice mass of dark colored crystals above chipped out of that boulder rather nicely….while you might not be able to tell here, many of them turned out to be dogtooths, too….turned out to be alot of red druse in the pockets surrounding these beauties too….

…by 9 am, the fog was burned off and luckily for me, there was a vast area of shade remaining to work with, and stay cool inside of, since I had a lot of territory to cover ahead of me. I was only halfway up the pile and seeing poker chips laying all over the place, many of them with dogtooths sticking out the ends. I was in poker chip heaven for sure…another prayer answered….

Onyx was staying pretty close to me today…he found a bed of soft dirt about halfway down the pile in front of me, after climbing up with me and walking around the top to check things out before I got up there…he took advantage of the soft dirt and laid right down there…

he stayed there til the shade burned off…..as I got to the top of the pile, I started finding a few more chunks of crystals with the red druse prominently stamped on and around them….beautiful stuff for sure….

…I climbed down from the top into this little niche of a depression and checked the wall for pockets…not finding any, I turned around and spotted this boulder in front of me, with a small looking vug at the base, so I grabbed ahold of what looked like a loose piece at the base of that vug and pulled out and back, and a gorgeous cluster of brown dogtooth crystals came loose from the vug and boulder. Here is the boulder after I have opened up the vug some…I will post photos of the cluster a little later….

…and some of the vug itself after I had halfway emptied it…this boulder is about five feet tall, and that vug was about 2 feet deep and every bit of fifteen inches wide….about a foot high in front…..

…in the image below, the cluster on the right is what I pulled out first to reveal the vug….the cluster on the left was the next one waiting for me inside the vug, has a nice dogtooth sticking up on the right side there….looks like a blade sticking out….

…it took me the better part of an hour to clean out the vug…after that I wandered back up the middle of that depression and found some breathtaking chalcedony type chunks of what looked like red and yellow druse with poker chips embedded in them…I`m describing them after the fact of cleaning them up, but when looking at them with the dirt and dust all over them, all I could tell was that they looked like chalcedony and were red and yellow colored….I found about half a dozen of them….

…they were in the last bag I cleaned up, yesterday, so I will try and get some photos of them tomorrow to show you what they look like cleaned up. By this time it was approaching 11 am and getting hot…so I grabbed the bags and headed for the truck, having to make a couple of trips back up to get some of the chalcedony chunks, wrapping them in my t shirt as I was by then, out of wrapping cloths. By the time I got back down to the truck, and got Onyx inside in the ac, and those beauties wrapped up in bubble wrap, and changed into clean clothes, I was pretty done in, and had only covered a third of the pile. I decided to return and see if I could check the rest of the pile the next day. I had no other plans.

Onyx and I did the same thing the next morning, only getting an earlier start this time, this time finding an ever prettier sunrise on the way, near some old stockyards enveloped in layers of fog with the sun rising over the top….

…then I found it evolving some and shot the sun rising up over a small barn in front of us at the the next intersection….

…and catching some foggy sunrise scenes on down the road too….

…arriving to find the quarry enshrouded in fog once more. I climbed up to the top of the pile once again and began finding dogtooth crystals all over the place along the top of the pile, and every five to ten feet were smaller boulders with clusters of poker chips covering them…and loose ones in the dirt and loose rocks below….I didn`t take my camera up there with me this time, but I recall finding about five pockets embedded in the dirt under a few boulders. I was able to split one boulder open and found the interior of the two halves coated with sprays of brown dogtooth crystals. here are those two haves with the spray of dogtooths inside one of them…

…and some more images of the chunks of red calcite druse that I found laying all over the place as well, must have come out of huge pockets when the blast occurred, they were literally laying all over the place…and in boulder vugs too….

…and then I found a boulder up there at the top that had some beautiful clusters of crystals on the top…I wasn`t sure I would be able to chip them out, they looked like they were solid but lo and behold, they came right off the top with just a few whacks on the hammer, and I was astounded….here they are all cleaned up with just a little bit of damage to the ends of them…

…and I found this one down in a pocket in the dirt nearby….

and here are some of the many nice dogtooths that I found in those dirt pockets and vugs….the nicest one being this plate that I was able to chip out of one of the boulder vugs…

Another great day that wrapped up a great holiday weekend for me…Onyx and I packed up and headed home by 11:30 am and rested up the rest of the day. Hope everyone else had a nice holiday weekend too !!

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

JWJ Rocks

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How I Spent My Labor Day Weekend 2015….MFQ