Early November I was up on the hill at 15 teebox when I came around the corner from 14 and out in front of me were these wild looking clouds in the sky, with a big orange maple tree in full bloom competing for my attention on the right side of the cart path…I am a sucker for beautiful fall maple colors but let me tell you, that sky had me hook, line, and sinker on my attention….I was like…bedazzled big time !!
My neighbor Glenn, who is a retired St Louis City Police Officer, often borrows some of my rocks for his watergarden projects that he builds in his front yard…talk about a guy with many talents…a few years ago he went down to the river and brought back some water plants for his water pond and gold fish in that pond…as well as some big flat rocks to help his fish hide from predators like Barn Owls that would sit up in the tree overhead and watch for the fish to come out from under those rocks and into the open water. A couple of years ago he added a waterfall to the goldfish pond and it sits about 3 feet high and runs all the time, day and night, all four seasons.
This summer, he was out there late one night when I was off, and it looked like he was starting a new project…so I went over to check it out and he told me he had the good fortune of meeting the manager at Havin Material here in town, and the guy let him load up as many concrete chunks as he wanted to haul off for them, get them out of their way, and then he returned for some of the old concrete powder, which is a huge nuisance for them due to the dust it creates, and he combined those two ingredients to make a huge waterfall in his yard, next to his house, that joins up with another new water pond that sits back behind the other water pond and smaller waterfall. The new one is prob about 12 to 15 feet wide and stairsteps down…
I took this one back in the fall when he was still working on it…here it is today in the snow…he is still working on it, will prob finish it this summer…..
..below he is wading in the original water pond with galoshes on…I told him he looked like Bill Murray in the movie Caddyshack. 🙂
Most of my sunrises were taken where I work, at Wolf Hollow Golf Course near Washington, Missouri…
….and a majority of the sunsets were taken on my way home from rockhunting locations……
…here lately I have been napping during some really nice ones…gonna have to change my napping schedule. 🙂
I heard Cuba and Bourbon Fire Departments toned out for a House Fire on Hwy P north of Cuba one morning and shortly after Cuba`s arrival, a second alarm was dispatched, bringing Sullivan, Steelville, and Beaufort-Leslie Fire Districts to the scene as well. I arrived shortly behind Sullivan`s Pumper 854.
I didn`t know it at the time, but found out soon after walking up, that there was an Animal Control Officer there because several dogs were running loose on the property…
….and then I learned that firefighters making initial entry, discovered several dogs inside the residence in heavy smoke, all of them were rescued…several law enforcement officers were on scene assisting as well.
Firefighters encountered heavy fire and smoke near the back wall of the residence on arrival, and initially it was believed a handicapped resident might be inside….
…but luckily it turned out no one was inside the house except the dogs, and fortunately they were rescued by firefighters shortly after their arrival….one of the medics had a couple of puppies in her arms even…
the fire was called in by a neighbor who lives down the road, talked to him briefly on the scene. Firefighters had their hands full on this one but did a great job in bringing the fire under control and dealing with the number of dogs on scene.
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. 🙂
I picked up trash and took it to the dumpster one warm morning in August and checked inside to make sure no visitors were in there before I dumped two huge barrels full of trash inside the dumpster. Sure enough, I spotted a pretty good size raccoon near the back of the dumpster…
he wasn`t moving at all, looked like he might have been a little intoxicated, so I put the five foot long log inside so he could easily climb out when he sobered up and then dumped the barrels into the other dumpster. I checked back before leaving for the day and discovered that he had been able to get out. I was glad, don`t even like the idea of them getting scooped up into the trash trucks for an unpleasant ride.
Around 9:30 pm, I was getting ready to go to bed, when I heard chatter on my scanner about a house on fire on Church Street near Elm Street, so I grabbed my camera and headed that way. As soon as I turned out of my driveway on to the street, I could see the glow in the sky. I pulled up and parked near the intersection, careful not to block the hydrant, and made my way up Church Street along the sidewalk shooting video of the heavy fire shooting thru the roof on the north side of the house. Some gal came out of the shadows and was asking me questions…you`ll hear me answering them on the video…
Fires 2021-0802 AVI 027 First Alarm Residential Church & Elm Streets
The house was completely dark except for the light from the flames, which was mostly illuminating the north side wall and rear corner of the house and yard…being as I was out in front of the home and across the street, there was no light in front to illuminate the home from the street view, until the Fire Department arrived, then the initial illumination was the glow of the red and blue strobe lights…
…the blue glow is easier on the eyes than the hideous red glow…the natural color of the walls of the home are a beautiful honey brown…those two photos I shot with my phone camera and I switched to my Nikon with my flashgun next, as the flames disappeared due to the firefighters making entry through the back door and knocking down the flames…
Bourbon and St Clair firefighters arrived soon after and helped Sullivan with overhaul work…I left soon after to get a few hours of sleep for work the next day….
Fires 2021-0802 AVI 33 First Alarm Residential Elm & Church Streets
I do know a State Fire Marshal was summoned to the scene and the investigation turned up strong evidence of arson.
I had a pleasant surprise as I was leaving work early on August 2nd…looked to my left across an open field and spotted a pretty doe feeding at the edge of the woodline….
Friday evening, July 2nd, 2021, I drove over to the Atlas Car Lot entrance, to set up and photograph the Sullivan Fireworks Display at the Fairgrounds on the south side of I-44. The City of Sullivan joined the Bank of Sullivan, each contribuing five thousand dollars to purchase the fireworks and private company to shoot the fireworks. This year`s display lasted fifteen minutes and did provide a few new bursts, some pinwheels, sidewheels, and some unusually colored bursts as well….
I havent been able to figure out how to convert my MP4 videos to AVI files yet…the AVI files I shoot with my Nikon Camera load up easily to my blog sites…whereas the MP4 files I shoot with my cellphone camera only load up easily to my FB page…so I have the two finale videos of the fireworks display open so anyone can view them on my FB page…https://www.facebook.com/jwjphoto
On Monday evening, around 5:30 pm, I was at Central Market getting a sandwich for work the next day, when I noticed a huge cloud of obnoxiously black smoke rising high in the air about two blocks south of the grocery store. Smoke like that is usually a good indicator of a structure fire, so I drove in that direction to see what was on fire…as I did so, I noticed alot of vehicles in front and behind me, other drivers with the same idea as I had. I drove south on Church Street to the Elementary School complex, and turned left on to Washington Street…. and as I did so, the smoke cloud banked down to ground level from the high wind driving it out of the south, and all I could see was the playground on fire. I turned around in a nearby driveway, returned to park next to the Sullivan Elementary School and then walked down the sidewalk to get a better idea of what was on fire…I shot a few videos with my phone camera and then shortly afterward, Brush Truck 828 arrived with Firefighters Devin Baker and Quinton Hildebrandt…Quinton had been training Devin on the operation of the brush truck and they spotted the smoke from Stanton and came to investigate. Devin put the pump into operation quickly and Quinton manned the brush hoseline…Pumper 854 was also responding to the call from Station 5….
As Quinton was preparing to attack the fire, I wondered if water alone would have any effect on this type of fire, figuring at some point that foam might be required to control and extinguish the fire…Quinton told me that he was thinking the same thing, but thought maybe he could at least cool it down til 854 and their crew arrived with the foam….
I think all of us watching, were mildly surprised that Quinton`s attack was having a good effect on the extremely hot burning fire….
…and as Pumper 854 arrived, Quinton and Devin had the fire knocked down and under control, requiring no larger lines to be deployed or operated…I left the scene as firefighters were mopping the scene up. A week later, Sullivan Police Officers completed their investigation and had three juveniles in custody for the crime of Arson….