The good news, we did find gold. The bad news, what we found is flour gold. It is so fine it's really hard to seperate it from the black sand. The heaver gold has filtered down either to bedrock or to a clay layer and since neither of us are able to work a shovel well enough to get to either of those we are just kind of S.O.L. I know there is larger gold there and it is really frustrating not to be able to get to it.
I did find one rock with a very small vein running through it which I'm giving to Stanley. He can sit it on his wood stove along with the one we found last time he was here. I hate to that I might have to give up prospecting after loving it for so many tears but after these two trips I might have to think about it. Between the breathing and the back there is just know way I could put in those ten to twelve hour days that it takes to get the gold out. Now it's more like I spent one hour working and eight recouperating!
Again, we still enjoyed ourselves and had lots of fun. It's easy to enjoy youself when you out in such beautiful country. We kept watching for Bigfoot. We were in perfect country for him to put in an apperence but if he was around we never saw him. The one good wildlife sighting Stanley missed. He had just left to retrive the sluce box so we could move to a different camp when a small black bear walked right by the end of the road we were on. I grabbed the camera and tried to get up to take a picture but all I saw when I got to the main road was a glimpse of his butt heading up through the trees.
Our second camp was below the Goat Rocks but as much as we stared at them we never did see there namesake. We would wade across the creek, do our panning then wade back and have to change britches and hang our shoes over the fire to dry.That water is COLD! The way we stumbled around in it looking for rocks we were really lucky neither of us fell face first into it.
The Smokey Mountains, This cliff is well over a thousand feet tall
Really pretty, It never got foggy down where we were at.
Stanley has to have breakfast before we could go anywhere
They rebuilt the old cedar bridges that used to be on this road but why they put such a BRIGHT one here is a mistery to me
Our second camp, we had to get close to the water because it was killing us to walk down to it
This is where I found the one rock with the small vein
Working the sluice, lots of really fine gold
Part of the Goat rocks
All of the gravel in back of Stanley was depoited there buy the water action of the spring floods. In front of his is the island that acks a giant sluice box causing all the heavey material to settle . We could get really strong readins here with the metal detectors. The problem was that the water in front of the island is about four feet deep and the readings come from the bottom. A dredge would be the only way to clear it out.
No panning here but it sure is pretty.
Stanley working hard to dig about two feet, we needed to go at least six
This trail felt a lot steeper than it looks
Gold in the pan but to fine to seperate from the black sand
He's either just standing in the sun or he is steaming as his shoes and pants dry out from wading the creek
Stanley really liked this cow?
The water here is about 42 degrees, it will cool you beer and your toes!
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