Well I had a chance to drive down to the Hot Springs area and do some more quartz collecting last weekend, was contacted by members of the MAGS Rock Club in Memphis who wanted some advice on where to collect quartz in the Mt Ida and Hot Springs area…some members wanted to go to a quartz mine and the diamond mine too…while I dont care to sit out in the open dirt field and bake while hunting for elusive diamonds in the rough, I do enjoy going to quartz mines where you can normally find a truck load to take home…which I consider to be a sure thing, as opposed to an iffy thing in relation to diamond hunting, but to each their own I suppose.
I contacted Jimmy E, a buddy of mine from Minnesota and asked if he wanted to go, when I found out later that MAGS intended to go to the diamond mine one day and a quartz mine the next, and he said sure, he would love to drive down before winter set in and he couldnt go for awhile…so I gave MAGS my recommendations and Jimmy and I decided to go to Bear Mountain Mine south of Mt Ida and Miller Mountain Coleman Mine as well.
We decided to stay at Mountain Harbor Resort on Lake Ouachita ten miles east of Mt Ida, this is where I normally go and stay at for my fall vacation, very pretty place to stay and dog friendly as well. They have cabins and rooms and studios to stay in, campgrounds for RV`s and all sizes of camping, rent houseboats and party barges and fishing boats as well, even have their own Subway restaurant on their main dock. They also have their own Fire Department and just last year took delivery on a retired Coast Guard Cutter that was retrofitted as a fire boat and boy does it look impressive out there on the lake.
and here it is at sunset Friday night last week…
We had great weather while there, we drove down on Thursday and discovered summer was still lingering there, first three days were mid 90`s and humid, and then a cool front went thru on Saturday evening and the bottom dropped out on Sunday, dropping the temps to the lower 50`s when we woke up to head home. We went to Bear Mtn Mine to find quartz crystals….
The rest of the story on the quartz crystal hunting is on my rockhunting site, http://www.jwjrocks.com
Jimmy started for home Saturday afternoon and I stayed an extra night to visit with friends and photograph a model as well as a stunning sunset Saturday night on the lake.
..this is what it looked like when I first saw it…
..then it became this…..while to the south the clouds looked like ….
…this…..and then it kept getting deeper and deeper….like the next one shows….
and looking the other way we saw this one below early on….
A very nice end to a nice weekend in Arkansas….more on what we found later…
