Here and there… everywhere!
Hot weather arrived with our company… friends and relatives from the Washington D.C. area and also from Texas. We experienced our first 100 degree days, and the nights didn’t cool as usual!
Our Texas company, Randy and Steve (that’s as good as it gets Randy; your name is first!) essentially made the trip to spend time on the claims. It’s been about 10 years ago that we introduced these guys to prospecting. Randy tells the story that he was “dragged” here by our daughter on vacation to prospect. He was not so enthusiastic at the idea of spending his vacation “digging in the dirt.” You’d never be able to tell that now, knee deep in a mud hole or sweating it out in the sun on the quest for that pay zone!
We spent some time on Two Bit Creek, exploring an area we don’t usually have access and water at the same time. There are still pools of water, which allowed for some good test pans and a welcomed retreat from the heat of the day.
The next day we ventured to Iron Creek, having picked up our twin granddaughters for the day. The kids always enjoy an outing. They played in the creek for a bit while we consulted on our company’s prospecting efforts. We then packed up the grandkids and went to Iron Creek Lake for a swim.
The twins left for home that weekend, so we were happy to get to spend some time with them before they left.
With a little steering in the right direction, Randy and Steve found a really good location and started a new hole. We enjoyed another couple of days just sitting in the shade and “supervising.” They were going for the “big nugget” as usual, but were pretty content to find one of the larger nuggets we’ve seen recovered on that claim.
We’ve got too many directions to go and too little time! The price of gold is hovering around $1600 an ounce, which makes all our placer and/or lode properties a good paying prospect!
The guys want to see our lode properties, and maybe do some prospecting on our Rapid Creek claim before they leave.
We’re working on revisions for the permit, but that’s okay because the wet spring and early summer has delayed any active mining we could have been doing. We do not want to “muck out” gold!