Our search for tomorrow's adventure starts today
Tomorrowland Trekkers
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Tomorrowland Trekkers
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In our foray into rock hounding, we discovered Valles Mines, MO. It lies down highway 55 south of Potosi, where developments and many signs of the city, that being Festus, come to an end. Valles Mines, the Lost History Museum is home to many activities in which one can engage from morel mushroom hunting in the spring, metal detecting around the historic buildings, and our favorite, druzy quartz hunting. You are encouraged to call first, and when you do you will reach the cell phone of a large man with a heavy drawl who showed up with his suspenders not holding his pants more than 2/3 of the way over his underside. He calls it "prospecting" which sounds suitably old-timey. When he took us in the museum which is like a frenetic pasting of articles on every wall and some American and Confederate flags commemorating who knows what, we saw one of the other staff members who I described as a cross-eyed Jesse James. He was wearing a battered felt hat, had severely crossed eyes, missing teeth, no shirt, sitting in a rocking chair with a dog at his feet like what you would see in a Norman Rockwell painting. Very Missoura... They gave us city slickers a hard time for wearing masks. The contrast between us and who thought who was more of a character was probably a toss up. The museum consists of several historic buildings and the creek on which you can hunt for Druzy Quartz. It feels like St. Louis/home because all of the buildings are in various stages of disrepair and abandoned. I heard rumors the place was haunted. It looked like they were tearing the place apart, but the upstairs still had the quaint, creepy vibe suitable for a possessed doll. Another time we went, we were told that people have found medals and old coins around the buildings with metal detectors which is one of the services they charge for. Thus far, we have searched for druzy quartz twice. The first time we brought home a bunch of crap that barely sparkled not knowing what to look for. We ended up taking a lot of that back where it came from. The second time, we went on the east side of the creek and filled two buckets and a backpack as well as hauling a huge piece that took us an hour to unearth and all of it was the real deal, lots of round knobby pieces, more sparkly than a diamond. Much of that was in plain view just barely hanging on to the creekbanks or under tree roots. Some of it, we dug and for once we found a piece or two that were pretty nice specimens. I keep telling Meg that we should start selling some, call it "Southern Fried Druzy Quartz because I greased the stones in oil to bring out the sparkle and get rid of chemical build up. When you go prospect in that creek, it is like time stands still and treasures are everywhere for you to find with minimal effort. You just need to be willing to stroll some and you will find all of the priceless beauty underneath...
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AuthorsChris, lover of food and back alley experiences. Archives
July 2020
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