Finally Found it!!
Saturday, (05/03/14), at about 9:20am, I met with JHAtwater in Coulterville, where after being introduced to his daughter and son, we decided to take both his and my vehicles into the hills to search for the old mine and mill I had found on GoogleEarth/MineCache.
Lucky decision, as we were later to find out. (lol) Remember, I had already been in with Rik, searching for the place. At least, this time I remembered to bring the GoogleEarth print-outs of the road going in, (which I forgot when I went in with Rik), so, this time, we didn’t end up 2 miles off course. (lol) But, we still had to search for the right road to the mill/mine after we were about a mile into the area. I found that what was confusing me was that the USFS had been busy changing the numbers of the several roads that we had to choose from, but the old numbers were still showing on GoogleEarth.
The first road we checked led down into a beautiful area where we found ourselves surrounded by huge old growth oak trees. Someone had been there, apparently 2 or 3 years before from the condition of a couple of large camping coolers they left behind. We saw a pole with a glass jar containing a claim paper in it and took it out of the jar to read it. Who ever put it there must have decided not to continue with the claim, because the claim paper had never been filled out. (lol) (I might have to consider filing a claim there, as all of the area looked like it should have gold). In any case, when it dries up enough, I WILL take the drywasher in and run some samples.
But, this wasn’t what we were looking for, so I turned around and drove back to the intersection where we chose this road. The next road, we decided that JHAtwater and his youngsters would wait for me, while I drove down and checked it out. So, the first thing that happened was that about 40ft down the road, I got “high-centered” in the ruts, where even my 4wheel drive couldn’t get me off of it. Fortunately, JHA had a winch on his truck. He ran the cable out and hooked it to my rear bumper and after a few minutes of maneuvering around, we managed to get to the point where my rear wheels were touching the ground. Then I was able to back out and take another shot at it. I won’t bore you with the details of this one, since the final outcome was much the same as the first. Other than the fact that a half mile in, I met a white pickup coming out. The road was so narrow that we spent about 15 minutes jockeying around before we could pass one another. Anyway, I continued on down to the end before I could find a spot large enough to turn around.
So, I make it back up to the top, and directly across the intersection from me is another road heading off into the brush. We loaded everyone into my truck and struck out down this (the only one left) road to see if it was the one. We drove down it for about a mile and guess what we found? (Besides the old mill/mine). Yep, there’s the white pickup sitting, blocking the road. But, no problem, since his front bumper is within a few feet of this gate. We couldn’t get the gate open so, there was no way to turn around without backing up the road for a couple hundred yards. (lol)
To be continued:
