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| North Fork American River looking downstream from the bridge |
Tofte Ranch - Sunny, Clear, 68 degrees
Larry: Coffee on the deck. Two days with no gold, except for a few fines in the black sand. The jury rigged shaft for my detector worked great. We dug lots of targets - lead, shell casings, aluminum can fragments, etc. This might be a steep learning curve. I'm learning the sounds of each target as well as their number. Now, all I need to practice on is the sounds and numbers for GOLD! We'll put in a day on the farm - it's going to be a warm one! Our bodies are sore. I must remember that the first couple of weeks were always hard on us. Aches and pains were the part of starting a new season.
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| Yankee Jim Bridge in the distance |
We found out right away that we don't have our mountain goat legs yet - climbing over boulders and up and over rocks had my legs feeling shaky by the time we reached our destination. Did we really hike miles up and down this river? We ARE getting in good shape.
There were impressive rock walls above the trail, built by the 49ers, as they cleared the bedrock in search of gold. Larry even found some old drill holes. The gold continues to elude us. Actually, I did find some very fine gold in a small crevice. My little detector really sings in pockets of black sand but since gold likes to hide in black sand I panned it out. We both found a goodly amount of metal yesterday - bullets, lead, old tin cans, wire - which means that we are finally figuring out how to use our detectors. Larry's will discriminate - mine will not so I figure out the sounds.
We spent a goodly portion of the day prospecting up and down the river even though there was virtually no shade where we were working. There was a slight breeze. We finally had to give it up because we both felt baked and we were out of drinking water. The trail out was blistering. We found 3 small areas of shade to rest in on the way back to the car. All I could think of was ice cold beer. As most of you know, I am not a big beer drinker. We stopped at the little market in Colfax and then found some shade at the Bear River on our way back to Chicago Park. Ice cold, wet, fizzy beer - maybe the best I've ever had.
Next week we head to the high country claims. There will be far less garbage at the claims, cooler temperatures, no poison oak or snakes but there will be peace, quiet, solitude and mosquitoes and maybe bears. For all of the years we mined up there, we never found any fine (extra small gold called colors). It was all pretty chunky. This week of shake down trips has been very helpful. We both feel we are ready to head to the woods for a full week now. We've worked out most of the details for our expeditions to the high country.
Today is for weeding, rototilling, moving water and mowing. It's supposed to be even hotter so we hope to be done before the heat of the day, which comes around 4 or 5 PM. Tomorrow is for shopping, packing and loading for our trip. Over the last 3 days there have been huge thunderheads in the mountains so we must go prepared for summer mountain thunderstorms.
