Geode Fest 2021 was a huge success this year after a two year absence…and after being held for the last several years across the Mississippi River in Hamilton, Illinois, it has been moved back to Keokuk, Iowa, where it originated many years ago. The event is now organized and managed by Kirk Brandenberger, who is the Director of Tourism for the City of Keokuk, and his staff, who have done a great job since they took over the operations a few years ago. This year it was held on the grounds of the First Christian Church, on the west side of town and their parking area provided alot of extra room for the vendors, registration area, the Amish folks to set up their food booths, and restrooms, as well as alot of parking spaces for rockhounds and made getting in and out of the venue much easier as well. Kirk and his staff put a lot of thought into this and came up with an outstanding plan of action that worked out well for everyone.
It really cut down on the amount of driving I had to do for one thing, and prob many others as well. For instance, I have always stayed at the Super 8 and made many trips back and forth from the venue on the Illinois side to the hotel, as did others because most of the hotels are on the west side of Keokuk, close together, in the immediate area of the new venue. They were even able to create a route to the Illinois side collecting locations that avoided many of the stoplights and the Keokuk City Police officers assisted at some lights in order to get everyone through them safely and efficiently. Keokuk Fire Department provided a reserve aerial truck all day on site to provide an onboard generator for power to the trailer that has air conditioned bathrooms built in.
My friends Greg Coleman and Johnboy from Haunted Ridge Druse Farm, brought a trailer load of druse quartz and barite pieces up there and set up shop for their first mineral show….
…a three day show and let me tell you, they did so well they sold everything they brought in two days flat !! I believe they had a great time and learned some things along the way as well.
it`s a great opportunity for me to visit with a lot of rockhound friends up there as well as get some great geode hunting in as well. This year I was able to rockhound with a female rockhound friend that I met a few years ago up there, Shell is her name…. I was introduced to Shell by another good female rockhound friend of mine, Abigail from Nashville. Shell is much like Abigail, passionate about minerals and crystals and not afraid to get dirty when digging and collecting them. This is Shell….
This was the first location we selected to go to the first day…mainly because it is on land owned by good friends and their creek is known as a good location for snowball geodes. It didn`t take anyone long to fill as many buckets as they wanted to take and pay for that day. I didn`t do much collecting during the afternoons because of the heat during the day, mornings were much better. In the afternoons, I visited with vendor friends and had taken some of them some material to sell as well. It also gave me time to sample the fine baked goods the Amish were selling as well as thei home made ice cream they made each day…let me tell you, those women know how to bake and cook. 🙂
There was a dealer up there with some of the newer Sweetwater Mine Calcites, from the Viburnum Trend Mines in Missouri, and he had some large clusters of them like this one…
…and I also had a lot of time to visit with my rockhound buddy John Oostenryk, who has his own vendor booth, where he cracks open geodes for rockhounds, like many other vendors there do, but John goes a bit further and explains to folks in great detail, what is inside their geodes and can explain to them how the extra minerals or crystals inside, got there and put it into plain English that anyone, even a child, can understand. I get to see some amazing geodes there….
…these two halves above and below, are some that John purchased from a dealer on site…
…and the two halves below are a geode I found at my friend`s farm in the creekbank….
Sure was a fun three day weekend, even got to try out an Italian Restaurant in downtown Keokuk that I had only heard good things about for years. 🙂
