Eventually, after the hours had past and the beer had flowed, it was time to go. This was when I was offered the extra bed, I hooed and hawed a bit and then I took him up on his offer and followed him back to his place. I felt thrilled to be in a warm home and not in the back of my truck or another forsaken hotel room and had the best nights sleep I've had since I left home fifteen days ago. I slept like a rock.

In the morning, I was the only one around when I finally woke. I took a shower and cleaned up after myself and then hit the road, another day of adventuring before me. I'd be exploring an area called Spar Canyon today and had several areas I planned on prospecting. With a name like Spar Canyon, I was hoping to find treasure and I'd not driven very far when I spotted several large veins racing up the hill just opposite of me which appeared quite vuggy. Being this close to the road, I didn't have much hope of tapping into new treasure, still, open cavities are always enticing! After ascending the hill, I found a pockety vein of white to cream colored onyx-like calcite. Not too impressive but heck, I still grabbed a loose specimen and figured I'd hit it with the fluorescent lamps when I got home (I did this and found this specimen and another I'd gathered up from a different vein in the same area to both fluoresce and phosphoresce, though neither reaction was pronounced enough to warrant further collecting).

Back on the road again, I figured I was getting close to a rumored outcrop of barite crystals I'd heard of while talking with one of the locals. If you're in the area, it's relatively easy to find. Just follow the Spar Canyon road in for a couple miles and look for a big sharp obvious corner that swings the road to the right around a large 7121 foot unnamed peak. Take the first small obscure track heading off to the left into the brush. Proceed to the left (the right goes to an old spring/trough for cattle) and pull up into the old workings. Scars from mechanized equipment mark this area and are quite obvious. I found the best specimens, barites with white phantoms in crystals up to nearly four inches, lying on the ground around an open barite vein that had been partially hand excavated. There were dozens of loose crystals lying about and many more exposed in the trench. I grabbed up a nice example and then headed out. A large washout cut the road soon after this, though the road continued around the back side of the previously mentioned peak. I started walking into this area and found several spots where agates were weathering out, nothing special seemingly, though ya never know. After about a mile or so another spur shot off to the left ascending the peak towards what appeared to be two other cuts. I hiked up to this spot and found another area with barite crystals, this time overgrown by sparkling drusy quartz. There was material about, but considering the wealth of larger specimens below, to me, this appeared the least desirable of the two localities. This concluded my explorations as I again noticed the weather closing in. By the time I made it back to the truck, it'd started to snow.

(For those of you who may be interested, Lanny Ream has written a great field book which features many specimen producing localities in this area titled Idaho Minerals. For more information consider visiting the following web site, I own and am thankful for my copy. http://www.lrream.com/LRRpub.html#idaho ).

I fired up the S-10 and hit the road and made my way back to town for some hot chicken and gas and then headed back into the hills and up to the claim. It was and had continued to snow and as I watched another storm coming in I marveled at how beautiful everything was. It was getting darker as the sun was setting and its light was making the white snow clouds a glorious kind of purply-pink color. It'd be a cold one tonight, especially come morning tomorrow!

Sure enough, it had froze that night, but with my cocoa warming the cup held in my hands, and my throat and belly warming with each yummy swallow, the day was starting out wonderfully. And what a day, frost twinkled on everything and the sun was high and bright with hardly a cloud in the sky. Needing to get out of my claustrophobic camp, I headed up top and into the cut to further enhance my morning by taking in the monstrous panoramic view of the valley spread out before me. My timing was good too as I was able to watch my operator coming in with his D5H Dozer, the first of two pieces of equipment we'd be bringing up the hill this year. With that unloaded he was off for another load.

Later, with the Excavator also off loaded and staged below, I was starting to get excited, we were getting closer to actually beginning this year's mining operation! I'd been busy during the day, starting and finishing several little projects, the biggest of which was marking an approximate 400 foot area below my workings where we'd be digging a monster trench. This year would be the first where we'd be able to dump our waste rock rather then having to stock pile it above our workings for later reclamation and this was a great thing! The trench would catch any of the bigger rocks excessively traveling from above and would be the first project we'd complete with equipment.

The evening continued as the day had begun and was absolutely beautiful, I hoped and wished that things would continue like this into the days upcoming! It'd been a tad breezy and chilly at times, but the sun was out and it'd been a fine day. That evening, I dined like a king on Cup-O-Noodles and cold chicken. Tomorrow things would change, another thing to get excited about, for the first time ever, Gloria (and her sister) would arrive to participate in the mining adventure and I was thrilled and so very much looking forward to her safe arrival.

Sunday dawned bright and sunny and Gloria's arrival was all I could think about. I cleaned camp and then partially striped the truck in anticipation of meeting her down below at the storage shed. Our van would not make the trip in and I'd have to transfer everything over from her rig to mine and then transport it all up the hill. With several hours still remaining prior to her anticipated arrival, I headed back out on the trail and hiked back to my little treasure field and searched about for more goodies. Until finally, it was time to head back to camp and make the trip off the hill to go meet my girl.

It was great seeing Gloria again, it'd been quite a while. She was full of smiles as was her sister Susan who had accompanied her. After our hello's, I unloaded their gear into my rig and then loaded my show supplies and unsold stock from the shed into their rig for them to take back home. This would leave my rig mostly empty and available to haul the specimens we'd soon be collecting. This accomplished, we all loaded in and headed up top.

Back at camp, we unloaded and then began setting up the tents. That ol' camping pad was getting real full with all our gear spread out and I made a mental note to have the pad enlarged when the Excavator came through. In celebration, all our chores done, I took the girls out to dinner for you guessed it, ribeyes! We stayed in town that night and I made the mistake of going back to the Northgate Inn, never again!

That next day, my twenty-first on the road, I woke before the girls and left them to head straight over to the claim where I anticipated finding work already begun. Unfortunately there were problems, while walking in, the Excavator had a bracket break on the battery tray causing the whole mess to slide into and rupture the hydraulic radiator. They were in the midst of repairs and had already gone back to town for the welder and were soon finishing up, back on schedule. By the time the girls arrived down below and I had to go get them, the trench had been completed and the equipment, both the Dozer and the Excavator were on the hill.

We had maybe four hours to dig that first day, plenty of time for us to get into some serious fun! We opened lots of pockets, some over two feet long. The bummer of this scenario was that a majority of them were predominantly infilled by crystallized laumontite, a mineral that readily releases the water from its structure upon exposure to the outside atmosphere eventually causing the crystals to break down from a solid soft pink prismatic thing of beauty into eventual, predictable, piles of white powder. Pocket after disappointing pocket and not a thing to collect other then a few tiny and insignificant calcite specimens associated with the laumontite which will likely cleave apart as their laumontite matrixes swell and crumble away, and more the bummer, these would be the only calcites we'd find, not one good calcite specimen was to be had in 2006 and as this reality dawned, I really appreciated all the more the wonderful calcite production we'd enjoyed while digging last year. Thankfully, once we passed through this area of heartbreak, we started finding specimens of a much more agreeable character, those luscious bright pinky-orange heulandites all blanketed in pristine white wispy sprays of soft, delicate mordenite. We even managed a few very nice pockets with stilbite, some crystals over an inch long and fantastically associated with the other minerals. While we may not have had the longest day on the hill, we sure had had a fun one!

Tuesday the 26th of September. The day dawned beautiful and sunny, a pattern I was very much enjoying, especially with Gloria here. She and her sister slept in while I got my cocoa going and was ready as our operator pulled in. This year's specimen mining was focused in a small area of ground separating my north cut from my south cut which I anticipated would be hot, hot, hot as on either side of this small unmined area, we'd found some very fine things. I wasn't disappointed too much in my enthusiastic predictions, but those gosh darn laumontite pockets had really messed with me and had eaten up too much precious ground. Add in the barren rock and as the hours past, we crept closer and closer to the extent of our crystal dig. But, before that happened, we'd be having a visitor.

I was in the trench when I was made aware that there was a rig coming up the hill. I stopped mining and immediately headed down to meet this stranger and was shocked when I finally noticed my friend Chris Tucker behind the wheel of his big blue Dodge 4x4. It seems the digging he'd planned to do in Utah after the Denver show, from which he was also returning, had been a time best left far, far behind and wanting a more enjoyable experience, he'd called it quits there and had pointed his rig north for the claim a week earlier then we'd both expected. No bother, he was more then welcome and with a big ol' smile on my face, I was soon asking Chris if he'd like to try his hand at digging some world class crystal pockets. Chris's smile more then answered my question!

We had a solid day recovering crystal treasures until eventually we punched through into the old south cut and specimen mining was essentially over for 2006. We tried to prolong the inevitable by digging into the high wall a bit and opened a last few pockets and then that was that. It's been a full day and a half of crystal collecting good time, but as far as the equipment was concerned, the curtain had been dropped for another year. Chris and I worked through twilight, well after the equipment had shut down, until the darkness finally kicked us off the hill. When we got down to camp, a miracle occurred and the girls had dinner with real food all hot and ready for us; perfect!

Wednesday would be a long busy day. We woke to the rumble of a diesel engine as our guy drove by camp on his way up the hill to start working. Chris and I were right on his heels while the girls enjoyed another leisurely morning. Today we'd swap from the Excavator over to the Dozer and we'd begin a new cut extending towards the farthest southern reaches of the claim. While this was happening, I phased into packing mode and began to softly trim the obvious bulk matrix from the pristine mordenite specimens we'd set aside and then carefully wrapped everything in aluminum foil before finally placing them into custom cut boxes for their eventual trip down off the hill later that afternoon. I'd begun this little chore the day before and had worked solidly hour after endless hour until finally, all those incredibly delicate specimens had been wrapped and were ready for transport. After that, I loaded the truck with treasure.

While all this was transpiring, Chris was having a great time burrowing into the highwall opening and collecting pocket after seemingly endless pocket. He found some great specimens and really helped to increase the amount of timely production we'd had this year by allowing me the opportunity to perform the other endless duties that constantly hinder my solo production where it's impossible to be in two places at one time.