Hey All, just got back from a week in Arkansas near Hot Springs…drove down for the July 4th weekend for a family reunion and some hiking with my dog Missy, and took my family quartz crystal hunting as well. I had a few shoots along the way at some pretty waterfall…one of which was Grand Falls, seen here at sunset Friday the 2nd of July….the widest waterfall in the midwest and very pretty at anytime of year, fed by Shoal Creek on the west side of Joplin, Missouri.

I left Joplin the next morning and drove southeast to Jolly Mill, just west of Pierce City and south of Highway 60, and photographed the old building which has been restored by community members and the millrace dam and stream, which is now a trout stream popular with flyfishing enthusiasts. I like old mills too.

 

This mill is hard to photograph from the mill side of the stream, one almost would need to don waders and wade out to the middle of the stream or the far bank to get a really good shot of it, as the land on the opposite side of the stream is posted and private. There are also two old steel bridges on each side of the mill, one is part of the Jolly Mill Park and open to walk across and the other is privately owned and upstream from the mill. I decided to try to do some rockhunting on the way down Hwy 71 south of Neosho, stopping along the roadcuts near the Pineville exit to confirm reports of dolomite and calcite but I couldn`t locate anything on the west side of the cuts just south of the exit. I didn`t have time to turn around and check the east side cuts on the northbound side at the time, figured I would catch it on the way back, but that idea didn`t work out for me at all. I arrived in Arkadelphia, where I spent the week and drove over to meet some friends in Hot Springs for supper and they showed me a new waterfall south of town called the Cool Pool Falls…..

  ….and then I drove back to Hot Springs and prepared to photograph the fireworks over Lake Hamilton there. After checking the area, I decided to photograph the show from the Hwy 7 bridge on the south side by the Clarion Hotel, who had graciously given me permission to shoot the show from their parking lot and boy was it a nice and colorful show over the water.  I set up on the side of the bridge among many tourists from all over the country, there for their first time and while it wasn`t my first time to visit Hot Springs, it was def my first time to photograph the fireworks there, as I usually photograph the fireworks at the St Louis VP Fair by the Arch. I set up my camera and tripod around 8 pm and waited with everyone else for darkness, and several people showed up on both sides of the bridge for the best seat in the house, in their boats.

….and eventually even more boaters showed up, and as darkness fell, it became apparent that there were hundreds of boats on either side of the bridge, lit up by their parking lights.

….and right before the show began, it became downright crowded on the water….

…...but as I said, they had the best seat in the house, as the fireworks were fired from the peninsula on the right side of my first photo showing the boats gathering, at the Power Boats of Lake Hamilton`s boat docks. I wasn`t really sure what to expect of this show, but I can tell you one thing, I was sure not disappointed at all, a very nice show to behold and observe and photograph. For more photos, take a look at the next blog post. 

 

Sunday morning, Missy and I headed over to Miller Mountain Mine to scout it out and find some quartz crystals.

 

I paid my ten dollar fee and started digging in one of the fifteen new piles that the bucket driver brought up from the mines that morning and right away, started finding smokey colored crystals. I also found a couple of clusters nicely sized…

….and…

A couple next to me introduced themselves as Mark and Carol and turned out to be from the Joplin area. Mark took me over to his truck and showed me a nice large cluster he found in the clay in one of the piles that morning before I arrived, that had several large points sticking out of the clay…

….and a closer view of it…

They were pulling several nice single points and small clusters out of their pile all day long.

I originally intended to stay til about 2 pm, but had so much fun and found so much material, I stayed and dug til 5 pm. Finally around 4 pm, I got up and took my second walk around and found so much more small clusters and single points up on top of the pile than I had found digging in the pile all day. While there, a few families came up that had started their morning off digging at Ron Coleman`s mine and found only a few crystals after four hours of digging. Three people told us that in three days time, not one new load of dirt had been brought up out of that mine for anyone to dig through and one guy had been there all three days. He said he had found more in three afternoons at Miller Mountain and would return the next time to it instead. I filled four bags on Sunday,  with high hopes for Tuesday. As I headed back to the hotel, and crossed De Gray Lake over the dam, I saw some very interesting looking clouds and a rainshower…it looked like an approaching storm, so I turned around to shoot it as it was coming in across the lake from the west….

I then put a filter on my lens to make the clouds stand out more….

On Monday, we took family reunion photos at the rear of the De Gray Lake State Park Lodge, which provides a very scenic area in which to shoot from and around in as you can tell from the following photos…..

this is most of my mom`s side of the family, with relatives from both her mother`s and father`s side there for a few days of visiting. The island in the background is where the fire departments there, shoot the fireworks display from on July 4th. All of the larger lakes down there host their own large fireworks display each year, shooting them on different nights so folks can travel around and enjoy them all. While we were out there shooting, we had to take a few breaks for speedboats and water surfers whizzing by….

This is my Mom with her sisters and brothers….

…and my Mom with my cousin Vanessa, and the reunion cake….

On Tuesday, twenty of my cousins loaded up with my parents and we caravanned to Miller Mountain Mine for a day of crystal collecting…Bill and Faith, the caretakers there, gave us a group discount on the adult price, with several from California and Wisconsin along this year that had traveled down for the reunion.

 

One of my California cousins is a water specialist for his city and he brought his Honda truck so he could load it down with quartz for the trip home. I helped him locate a few yard rocks for his rock gardens and he actually found some nice specimens as well while there.

The weather down there all week was hot and steamy, and Tuesday was no exception, it got hot real fast and several of our group tired of the heat and left by noon. One of my uncles is a retired geophysicist, who taught at Washington University in St Louis, he and his wife went with us and I helped him locate a few bigger boulders so he could trim a few crystal corners off to take home. Bill was a little more prepared for the heat and dug alittle and walked a little all day like I did, and found a bag full of crystals. Here he is seen putting on suntan lotion and wearing a big straw hat…

Joann, his wife, also found several nice crystals and clusters and filled half a bag herself. A lot of my cousins were first timers to quartz, having traveled down to the diamond mine state park three years ago on our reunion trip at DeGray Lake Park for the first time, and wasted their time, finding very little of anything there that day. They sure didnt waste their time on Tuesday and left very happy with their finds. After helping everyone find some nice goodies, making sure no one went home unhappy, I was able to find a few gems myself. While I was walking around on top, the dozer guy came up on top and started moving some piles around, so we backed off and let him rework the piles and then sifted thru afterwards. Thats when I found these nice ones…

and….

…and…

I then walked to the west end and turned a large rock over, as Docia has reminded me several times, turn the flat ugly side over to see whats on the dirt side, and this is what I found…

so now I have my hands full, digging tool and bag of rocks in one hand, scoop this baby up and start walking to the truck and then I look down and see this beauty sitting on the floor of the pile in just a little bit of clay dust….

and anyone that knows me, and knows that all I look for is pretty stuff, knows that I just couldn`t pass this one up either…so I stopped and re-positioned everything so that nothing got mashed, including my fingers…and toiled on toward the truck. Luckily I made it without any damage to anything or me. Before leaving, I purchased two baskets of uncleaned quartz crystals, one for me and one for my cousin from California…Bill helped me load the baskets and as we walked out of the cool office hut into the heat, we were both amazed to see a full size Chevy Suburban drive up the steep gravel road pulling a 35 foot long Holiday Rambler camping trailer…loaded down with a kayak on top of it and occupied by six rockhounds from Georgia no less…and no easy feat in itself at all…the road up Miller Mountain, for anyone who hasn`t been there, is up a very steep angle and no room to pass another vehicle, nor any place to turn around until you reach the top. I`m still wondering where he turned that rig around when they left. Wow…

On the way back to De Gray Lake, I came across this beautiful scene along Hwy 7 south of Hot Springs and stopped to photograph it…

Wednesday was a shopping day for those who wanted to go and Thursday was a free day for those that stayed that long. My California cousin John, went shopping with some of the others and visited a flea market in Hot Springs. John is also a collector of old fishing lures it turns out and he found several at one of the booths there. He also spotted a nice old cluster of large quartz crystals on the seller`s desk and was able to purchase it from the guy for thirty five bucks ! After he showed it to me that evening before dinner, he asked me what I thought it cost him and I estimated its worth at about one hundred fifty to two hundred, rock shop pricing wise, and then he told me what he bought it for. What a buy ! John and several of my cousins left early Thursday morning and about mid morning I stopped to visit a quartz crystal hunter and dealer friend of mine who lives in the area. I met Mike there three years ago when I was at the first family reunion at De Gray Lake and we became good friends..he gave me some great information on mines to visit and dig at in Mt Ida and some to avoid, and was able to steer me to come great locations to dig Arkansas Herkimers and green chloride quartz as well. Seems Mike had been digging and finding some very nice clusters of quartz crystals on Wednesday at one of the Mt Ida mines and showed me just a few of the eight, five gallon buckets of material he had found in one pocket. I was totally floored by the color and clarity of the crystals, and most of the clusters were medium to large in size, with a few smaller pristine clusters as well. While there, Mike told me he had a little problem…. he had too many crystals and asked me if I would help him by taking some home…..it only took me about five seconds to decide that I could make enough room in my pickup bed to accommodate his request. I was able to help him create some new room for his new conquests by clearing off one complete rack for him, about five buckets worth, and yes, Virgil, I wrapped them very carefully before I loaded them up in my truck. Mike even helped me wrap them.

 

Here is a sunset I shot from near the park Lodge Wed evening on my way to supper there….

I came home Friday evening… long drive from down there… with a few hundred pounds of quartz crystals, including one enhydro crystal that Mike gave me, and plans to return to a certain mine in the Mt Ida area in October and possibly even November when I return for my fall trips. If anyone is planning a trip down to the Hot Springs/Mount Ida areas for quartz crystal hunting, give me a shout and I`ll let you know some areas to go to for great material. I`m planning to photograph my finds tomorrow and post more pics here…so stay tuned…