***Please Note: If you click on a link or click on one of our pages, you will have to click the back button to return to this page. That includes our photo albums.
In case you have never been to a blog, you go to the end of the blog by clicking on first link in "archive" to start at the beginning. This is a work in progress as we make journal entries from our 30 years of adventures.
After The Winter Ponderings
It's been a looong winter here in Oregon. The grey skies and rainy days lend themselves to lots of armchair prospecting. As a result of one of their postings, I recently made a trip over to the coast around Brookings, Oregon. I sampled several beaches where the black sand was showing. I actually found some very fine gold almost everywhere I panned. I got lots of panning practice in as a result of all that black sand. I must get a fine gold recovery system, maybe a blue bowl? It felt a bit strange, panning for gold on the beach but it was a real hoot to see the tiny specks of gold showing up. Any day prospecting or any day at the beach is great so being able to combine the two was a fine day indeed.
We are pulling up stakes here in Sutherlin, Oregon come June. Just like the early miners, we're looking for richer diggins. We have been house sitters for three years in a row for these folks but they have decided to sell their place. It's just as well as we had decided to move on. We have followed our inner compass over all these past 30+ years so we'll moisten our finger, stick it up in the air and see what direction the wind is blowing.
We are pulling up stakes here in Sutherlin, Oregon come June. Just like the early miners, we're looking for richer diggins. We have been house sitters for three years in a row for these folks but they have decided to sell their place. It's just as well as we had decided to move on. We have followed our inner compass over all these past 30+ years so we'll moisten our finger, stick it up in the air and see what direction the wind is blowing.
Looking for the summer
Well, I don't want to wish my life away but we are sure looking forward to the warm days of summer. We have finally gotten around to inputting our journal entries from last summer and the summer before. Last year our computer quit working and so we didn't have a way to work on this until we got back to Oregon and the year before we stayed too busy. We are determined to get this blog all caught up. We lost all of our photos from 2010 when our computer quit. Friends have retrieved some of the photos from email but alas, the others seem to be lost forever. Anyway, as we read through our notes it makes us yearn for those long, warm, summer days on the river somewhere. Oregon has long, gray winters, at least where we are. We only awoke to sun 4 days during the month of February. We are having a great time going through 30+ years of journals.
Early Days on the American River
Here is a story from one of our early adventures: Ever hear of the old adage, "Gold is where you find it?" Charlotte and I had been mining up and down the river and up and down Shirttail Creek in 1980 thru 1983 or so. We had found some decent gold, occasionally, extravagant gold. We had one and two ounce days. During those years, we had noticed several parties dredging around an enormous boulder at the mouth of Shirttail Creek. We had been having our success by using a grip hoist, a winch, that could pull 6 tons straight. We had lots of chain and cable chokers and had learned to tie onto boulders and either tow them out of our hole or at the very least, roll them out. We left the American River for a creek in the high country for three dredging seasons. Then we took an 18 month housesit in the Applegate area up near Colfax. We had kept in touch with our old friend Ron and had a little free time on our hands so we teamed up to take on the boulder project that you can watch below.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Sutherlin, Oregon
It is pouring down rain here today. My mind is dreaming of warm days on the river somewhere. We are headed to Port Townsend, Washington tomorrow to visit Jay and Mary Ann. Should I take my new Fisher Gold Bug Pro metal detector with us so that we can do some treasure hunting? I was dreaming of beach combing in southern California this morning..... warm sandy beaches..... ahhhhhhhhh. I've been reading the History of Placer County and it always gets me going. I believe one could fiind some good gold up on the wild & scenic North Fork of the American. We used to find easy gold at the foot of the Booth Trail out of Iowa Hill.
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