Well it was a good week out at the claim even if it was a tireing one. I've been feeling like road kill
on the highway of life since we got back but I am starting to feel better now....
We got a late start getting out of the house on Saturday so we didn't make it to the claim until
about noon. We had just started to unload the equipment when Keith showed up. It's nice to be
able to put a face to the name and voice now. He came bearing gifts too! Keith was kind enough to
loan us one of his vacuum units which worked like a champ! That thing sucked up everything but
the camp stove! I think Robi is in love with it because of how well it works. I can see on in our near
future. He also brought out a couple dozen buckets as well as seven 15gal barrels of water. After
getting the water unloaded and shooting the breeze for a bit, he had to take off. Next time he comes
out I'm going ot make sure he gets a chance to do some digging!
After Keith departed, we finished getting the camp setup and set up the sluice. As soon as we
could run materials, Robi and I took the vacuum out for a test drive. We went down to the area that we
had been working on the south end of the wash that goes through the claim. We vacuumed up a
couple of buckets worth of materials and took them back to camp to process. Sure enough there
was gold! In fact we got almost as much gold in those two buckets as we had gotten from the area
doing it by hand. We still have plenty of stuff to suck up in that area but it was late and we needed
to get dinner fixed before dark set in.
The next day we decided to try the vac in a different area of the wash. We found an area where the
materials were not real thick, but there were lots of cracks. Once again Keiths "Viper Vac" did a
great job! We were leaving that bedrock almost clean enough to eat off of and when we ran the
materials we got some nice gold out of it. Granted it wasn't ounces and ounces, but it was nice
and chunky. After running the materials and seeing the take, Robi took off back to the homestead
so she could get some things done for work. I set to doing some work on improvements around
the camp and after dinner started laying plans on how to attack the wash during the week.
After I came back to life on Monday morning (St. Patricks' Day) I got out the MineLab X-terra and
set off to follow my plan of shooting the wash to find an area to work. I headed down to the area that
Robi and I had cleared out with the vac the day before, thinking that it would be a good place to
ground balance the detector. As I was doing a quick sweep to make sure that there were not
any targets, I kept picking something up. As the sun wasn't hitting the bottom of the wash yet,
I switched over to pinpointer mode and narrowed down the location of the target. After going 90
degrees out I knew where I had to look. Stooping down I could see what looked like a small rock
wedged in one of the cracks. As I picked it up I could tell just by the weight that this wasn't "just
a rock". As soon as I got it up high enough for the sun to hit it, all I could see was the warm glow
of gold! It was a nice nugget just a little smaller than my little fingernail. Since I had just planned
to get locations to work, I hadn't brought a vial with me so I beat feet back to camp to get one for
this little beauty. The picture below doesn't do it justice since it was taken with my phone. I
"quesstimated" it at about 1.25 to 1.50 grams and I sure didn't want to have to explain to Robi
how I lost it. The rest of the day I spent working some areas of the wash and thinking about my
"Luck O' the Irish" find of the morning.
The next day, Chris and his dog Earl showed up bright and early. It wasn't long before Garrett
also showed up along with his "work force" of three sons and a daughter. I spent a good
portion of the day helping get everyone situated and didn't move nearly a much dirt as I wanted to.
Considering what I'd found so far for the trip, I can't help but wonder how much more I would have
found if I'd moved more dirt.
We also had Shane from Scottsdale show up. Great guy and it was a real pleasure meeting him.
It had been ten years since Shane had done any prospecting and we were glad to help him get
back in the groove. He wasn't having much luck but when he was leaving we gave him directions
to Kentucky Camp. He stopped and grabbed 4 buckets of materials and he sent me a text saying
that he had found some color in them already.
Ted from Tucson stopped by to say howdy and see the claim. We'd met on my outing to Kentucky
Camp and he's one of the few people I know that can out talk me!
On the second Saturday we had another "Texas Chris" show up. He and the other Chris had been
talking on e-mails and he stopped by to see the claim and meet us in person. Nice guy, but what
is it about Texans and big 5th wheeler campers?
One of the highlights of the entire trip was the guy Robi and I met that I will refer to as "T". This guy
was great! He came riding up to camp on a horse with a pack horse and two dogs in tow. He saw
all the drums of water and asked us if we was makin some whiskey. We explained that we were
mining and asked him if he'd like to see the operation we had going. "T" ended up spending an
hour or so with us and we learned that he had set out on the trail from Colorado on Feb 20!!!! Talk
about a long time in the saddle! He was bound for Utah on the trail and then back home. He said
he had to get away from all the "Fracking" going on in his area and wanted to let his eyes slow down
from doing 65 mph all the time. He was one very cool guy and I wish him well on his journey.
There were so many hikers stopping in to see what was going on that I can't remember all of them.
One guy that stood out was Jean-Paul from New York. He was really interested in the mining and
surprised that we could even mine like that in a National Forest. He dubbed Chris and I as his
new heroes, took lots of pictures of us and the gold and explained that his friends back in the city
wouldn't believe him without photos to back him up.
All in all it was a great week out there. I didn't get as much digging done as I would have liked, but
I did manage to get some improvements done, and measurements taken for future improvement projects.
Am I tired? You bet I am! Am I sore? Like I've been beat on with a 2X4. Was it worth it? How can
spending time with friends doing what we all love not be worth it
?
I've still got six buckets of materials to run before I can give a final total for the trip. Robi and I
stopped and bought a nice scale on the way home. First thing we weight was the St. Patricks Day
nugget which came out at 1.26 grams. That's going to help the total for the trip a lot.
I'd also like to say I'm sorry for the delay in getting this posted. I've been having some major computer SNAFUs lately and I've really got to consider getting a new computer soon. Once I do... This thing is going to the claim for a little bit of target practice!!!!!
Congrats Jeff! Late starts seem to be required in our profession. I'M certain the fever is to blame. Something you didn't mention was breakdowns/forgot something...another plus. 
