Geodefest is held in Hamilton, Illinois each year, which is across the river from Keokuk, Iowa and Northeast Missouri, on the third weekend of September. This year there were about nine locations where rockhounds could sign up to go and collect at, some in each of the three states where geodes abound. Rockhounds who like to collect geodes, come from all over the USA to collect on this weekend at Geodefest, this year there were more than 2500 rockhounds there for the three day weekend. Chuck Reed and I drove up on Thursday to join up with friends John Ootenryk from northwest Illinois and Abigail Evans from Nashville. Robert, our mine owner friend in Hot Springs, was up there this year as a vendor selling Arkansas Quartz and he did real well in sales over the weekend. We were able to go to a sand and gravel pit on the last day with members of an Iowa Club, where we found not only geodes, but some great agates and horned coral heads too. Here are a few photos of my trip up there, can see the entire story at my rockhunting blogsite, www.jwjrocks.com 

…this was an Amish owned farm where we hunted for geodes in the Fox River…this young Amish family makes their farm river access available to rockhounds each year on this weekend, his wife bakes pies, breads, cookies, and other food items to sell at the parking lot, and let me tell you, she is a very good baker…I purchased a couple of loaves of bananna nut bread from her and they were very tasty..I took one loaf home to Mom and she liked it too. Her husband and son helped us rockhounds with our heavy buckets full of geodes, hauling them from the river to our vehicles with his cart and beautiful blonde Belgium horses…

Sure was a great weekend and we all had a great time up there, brought home lots of goodies !!  jwjphoto7@gmail.com