"My eyes would not close.....
... because they too wanted to know what had hit them!!!"
I am sore, exhausted, and have to keep this short for now because my hands are so chapped that I can hardly move them. It was a great trip and I learned quite a few things. Most importantly, that Robi and I make a great team out there and how much easier she makes my job on this effort. Trying to do everything on your own is tough!
I was up before sunrise every day out there and on some nights worked as late as 10:30 before calling it quits. I still didn't get quite as much dirt moved as I wanted to because of my hands pretty much becoming unusable on me towards the end of the trip. Woke a couple of morning to frozen water on the tops of buckets as well as frozen canteens. I did manage to get about 2/3 of a bucket filled with cons as well as another 4 buckets of classified brought home. I had wanted to bring home 65 gallons worth but the hands made that impossible.
Made some new friends while I was out there this trip as well. Fred and Elenore who are the caretakers out there this month were great and allowed me to charge my batteries so I could keep running almost non-stop. Fred is very interested in prospecting and was down at the camp several times to learn and help all he could. I also met up with Chris H. out of the Houston area who turned out to be one of the best guys you could ever want on a dig site in several ways. For a "Tenderfoot" to this style of mining he did a great job and when he found that first little nugget in his sluice he did his "Happy Dance". This got him some strange looks from his dog Earl Skruggs but he knew his dad was nutz before this anyway.

Also out of Texas was Mickey and his crew. They showed me their Gold Cube as I had never seen one in person and were happy to explain how it worked to me. I'm not sure it was the wisest choice of equipment to be using in that area but I still wish them luck in their efforts. Seemed like a LOT of classifying required (down to 1/8") as well as water to run it. There were also a couple of "locals" that stopped by, Ted and Troy out of Tucson. They provided me more info on the area as well as a much needed diversion from all this back breaking work!
I'll post a much more detailed accounting of the trip after I've recovered and my hands start working like they're are supposed to..