HurtHawk

In 2007 my girlfriend and I had been spending some time gold hunting in the mother lode country... It was a long drive from our home in Monterey.

We had moved a lot of dirt but been rewarded for our efforts. Now the problem...what to do with the gold? I thought I found a unique solution....I married her and had rings made with the
gold we found last year....thought you might like a peek. We have now retired and are living in the mother lode country.

A couple of days ago I got a call from my friend Scott indicating that he and his lovely wife would be coming to my neck of the woods. He wanted to do some prospecting in this area and he suggested we get together. I should note at this point that I am in the middle of moving to a new home and doing the move one pick-up load at a time. Naturally, faced with a choice of moving furniture or playing in the dirt....I chose the dirt alternative.

I had noticed a possible prospecting site about 15 minutes from my house and was told by a friend that he had seen people searching for gold in the area. Scott and I decided to give the area a try despite the lack of water in the creek bed. There were pools of standing water left after the last rain and at least we would have somewhere to pan.

We found some promising bedrock and started cleaning holes and cracks. Scott was thrilled with the results of his first pan...two nice, chunky bits of gold were gleaming at him from the bottom of the pan. My first spot at the edge of the bank yielded only some fly specks of gold so we moved to the center of the creekbed and started breaking bedrock. The results were encouraging. Instead of flakes and fines, we were getting slightly larger pieces of gold that were thick and chunky.

We only dug for about three hours. Scott had a nice showing of gold in his snuffer bottle and was a happy camper.

I did a clean-up at home and was pleased with the gold from only 4 or 5 half buckets of material. When I re-ran my dirt a nice little picker showed up.