We met up with Steve at 7:30 outside the motel and had some breakfast ( biscuits and gravy YUM! ). We finally got to the location around 9am. The day started of below freezing, but before to long I was down to just a teeshirt. I can honestly say that I have never seen so many geodes in one spot before, didn't believe it was possible! The land that we were searching has many picturesque opportunities.
Most of them were in the 1 to 3 inch range but some were close to 2 foot across! In places you could even see were they are weathering out of the rock under the creek bed.
We spent a couple of hours collecting at this creek and then took a break and headed down to the main river were all the geodes have spilled out onto.
We then headed to the wash at the river and collected there for awhile, then Steve wanted to check a gravel bar for some agate that he had previously seen there. Unfortunatly the river had taken that bar and left a different one minus what he was looking for! The kids and I then headed back to the wash and did some more collecting there. I found the high spots had a better concentration of hollows? Anyways, we stayed there for a little while longer then left for the smallest creek there. I did'nt have my camera with me so sorry, no pictures of it! We did find the best Botroidal Chalcedony lined geodes on this waterway though.
I also cracked open one here that did have a nice Barite crystal but it broke along the crack and ruined it! Here is a couple of Quartz crystal geodes.
Steve then led us to Rt 37 to collect geodes at the famous Harrodsburg road cut.
The temperature was still holding around 50 degrees so collecting was really enjoyable. We only collected at the bottom, but there was plenty of geodes already poking out! I was peeling back some easily removed layers when I noticed a double pocket on the back of one. One pocket had drusy quartz with nice iron stained saddle dolomite clusters.
Then I noticed the other pocket was lined with real nice gemmy orange/yellow barite crystals! YIPPEEE!! Thats when I had to check the wall to see what was left! Holy Cow! There was sitting in front of me, in a 5 inch pocket, utter perfection to my eyes! It was also a double pocket but even better than the one that was already in my hand! The larger one had a perfect three inch calcite crystal going right across the middle of a drusy quartz bed. What made it even better was that on one side was a couple 1/2 inch flowers of iron stained saddle dolomite crystals and on the other side was a nice cluster of those same gemmy 1/2 inch barite crystals!
Wow! Really hit paydirt on that crack of the hammer! And to top it off, the other pocket also had a nice 2 inch Calcite in it. Now all I had to do was to be able to extract that sucker in one piece. For those of you that have been there you know how hard it is. I was told recently that these kinds of pockets arent to uncommon but only about 1 in a thousand survive intact. Well, it took me an hour but I did it! I started about 2 feet on one side and worked my way in till I was 6 inches away. Then I started on the other side and eventually the bottom side. I was than able to crack the back side loose and gently lift it out. And to top it off there was even a couple of drusy quartz pockets on the back!
I was about to take a breather when Chris came over and asked for some help getting a geode out. He was in a nonmineralized zone and figured he had a dude, even though it was 8 x 4 in size. So I made short work of extracting it, about 5 minutes total. He then wanted me to crack it open for him. Figuring it was a dude, I gave it a pretty good blow and about 1/3 of the way back it cleanly broke! WOW! It was only full of quartz crystals but boy was it beautiful! They were all water clear and around 1/2 inches in length!
Hope you all enjoyed my story! Trying to get some spaces filled in between Mike's Adventures!
Later All!
Jay
