The All New Adventures of Dances With Snakes

Lincoln, MO, Hamilton, IL, and Canton, MO

May 5th - 7th, 2006

Another McRocks Field Trip Perspective

Continued from Page Three

    Back at Hickory Haven Campground we found Carol, Donna, and Jim grillin' away. Our timing was pretty good, cause the pork steaks were waiting, along with baked potatoes, grilled fish fillets (with a butter and herb sauce), brats, corn on the cob, green beans... Wow! Thanks Carol, Donna, and Jim for preparing such a  great spread! We promise, we'll take you to a great place tomorrow to collect geodes! Later on that evening, Everett hauled out the heavy equipment to crack geodes. It's amazing what can be done with the right kind of tool! I'd seen this before in Kentucky, when Harry Polly and his late friend Ernie were cracking Kentucky geodes by the bucket full with a soil pipe cutter. What a great tool to have around! Incidentally, as of this writing, I have one on the way I found on Ebay and managed to finally win a bid on. This is one tool I gotta' add to my growing selection of "must-haves".

    The next morning we all met at the All American again for breakfast. By 8:00am some of us were headed for Area C-61. The second group would follow soon. We had decided it would be less conspicuous to go in two groups as we didn't want to alert any suspicious travelers to our activities at Area C-61 (just kidding, Everett slept in and Cori was running late). Back at Area C-61, I went to work on The Black Hole pocket again, Bill went to work on the remnants of the pocket he had previously been working, Rich had located a similar one, as had Jim, and Floyd. Floyd alternated between his big geode , and helping with The Black Hole Pocket. You could hear hammer and chisel ringing off the hillside, and could tell when someone hit a quartz seam, or inadvertently smacked their geode by their exclamations...

Inside The Black Hole Pocket

Like a little fantasy world in here....

Forced to open it up as the deeper I went, the more I discovered that it wasn't a good solid rind, but interlaced quartz veins and brown shaley clay.

I really wanted to get this monster out in one piece, but it wasn't meant to be. Maybe with another day or two and a backhoe...

Floyd worked diligently at getting his monster geode out in one piece. Eventually all his hard work paid off.

This was a second monster geode that Floyd worked on and eventually with a little assistance from Everett prying in the right spot, this one came clean out of it's nest in the tan shaley clay. This one has some nice 4" poker-chip calcite in it. I gave Floyd such a  hard time about getting TWO large perfect geodes out, that he eventually let me have this one to shut me up... seriously, just wait till the end of the report...

This was Jim Ericson's big one still in the ground. When he located this puppy, he was pulling fist-sized formations of 4" poker-chip calcites out of it that were loose in the bottom. This one ended up being nearly 18" across the long axis.

Jim cradles an armload of "pocket treasure"    A view of the large staging area where we found most of the large "pockets" buried just below the surface.

I wonder if those tires will fit the DWS rock-hound wagon?

    Everybody enjoyed digging in the dirt here. By the time we were all ready to go around 1:00pm, all of the vehicles were heavy with new found treasure boxes waiting to be opened. Carol had a load of yard rocks and geodes equal to just about any of my Jasper, TX trips. This was a most enjoyable field trip, and a relatively easy drive. I could do this on a two day weekend and still get in a good eight hours of collecting, and maybe even an hour or two of sleep! When the rest of us hit the road, Bill and Rich were still digging away! Making the most of the time considering they probably had the longest drive back to MA and CT. Just a note to the wary, there were some dangerous and very unstable areas where recent blasting had moved a two-hundred foot section of the hillside and opened a very deep and unstable thirty foot deep pit nearby. NEVER tread on unstable ground. Always use caution and common sense whenever you are in a area where blasting has occurred, or there are ANY signs of instability. No rock, no matter how pretty, how desirable, or how collectable, is worth risking injury or death to you, your companions, or anyone trying to rescue your sorry a#$ when you forget these rules or let greed blind you. If it looks the least bit dangerous, it probably is. Always temper your judgment with a good dose of caution!

2006 Keokuk Geode Hunt Participants from left to right:

Donna Templeton, Everett Harrington, Carol Poole, Rich Ewick, Floyd Speck, Virgil Richards, Bill Clark, Cori Nelson, and Jim Ericson. Photo by Celia Harrington.