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Date Posted: 22:42:46 08/24/02 Sat
Author: Majuba Tom
Subject: 8/23/02 Gold Adventure

Written by my good friend Tin Can Pat.

Hi There,

Tom and I both had the 23rd off from work so we decided to go back to our new
area and see if we could squeeze just a few more bits of gold from
our favorite hunting grounds, the now famous " Road of Gold". We were just
there the previous Friday and, between the two of us, we mananged to pull out
seven nuggets weighing in at around two DWT. To say the least, our luck there
has been awesome, but how much longer could it continue to produce was
weighing heavily on Tom and I. The plan that day was to hit some unexplored
areas, work the road for a nugget or two, then do still more exploring. On
the ride out, Tom remarked on how he hoped to find his first large gold
nugget today. I replied that when he did, it would be a " big ol' rock with
gold running through it" more like a door-stop than anything else. That drew
a chuckle from Tom as we both knew that our happy hunting grounds days were
numbered.
Once we arrived, we stuck to our game plan. We hunted a few tailing piles
that were probably unexplored but we were unable to squeeze any gold from
them. It was now time to try and coax at least a couple of nuggets from the
road site. Tom got to work sooner than I and right away he found a large,
quartz rock, about the size of a woman's hand, which was giving him a good
signal from his V-Sat. He went back to the truck to do some rock washing and
got very excited when he saw a yellow streak running through one end of the
stone. I shambled up the hill to see what Tom had found, and after some
examination with a loupe, decided that Tom's "yellow streak" was not gold.
"Probably copper" was the second prognosis as there were numerous green
blotches on the stone and we had been fooled by copper before. Disappointed,
Tom decided to crack the stone open and after I dug out a rock hammer from my
gear, I left Tom to take out his frustrations on the devious rock. I could
hear Tom pounding away on the tailgate of his truck and before I reached my
abandoned detector, Tom called down to me, "GOLD!"
Sure enough, running through a shard was a pretty golden streak which was
undoubtably gold. Tom was able to find still more veins running through other
fragments and was very happy. Tom has crushed a great many stones over the
years hoping for just such an occurance and it finally paid off for him. We
both went down to the road to continue the search with a new found respect
for signal coming from large stones! Hunting the road is not an easy thing to
do. The ground is very rocky, hard packed, and, in places riddled with trash.
I was digging away at the upteenth bit of iron when I looked over at Tom who
was digging a bombshelter in the middle of the roadway. " Holy sh*t Pat, look
at this one!" he said, holding up a stone as big as a shoe! Once again, Tom
went up the hill to do some washing and once again, there were gold streaks
running though the stone. Tom had found his door-stop! At this point, it was
difficult to say just how much gold Tom had found between his two large
stones but they were certainly very impressive and Tom was a very happy
camper! Back to work!

While Tom was busy washing and scoping his finds, I went to work on
finding my first good target of the day.A few minutes of seaching and "bam!"
I rolled a real nice nugget out of the concrete-like earth. It was a small
pebble, nothing like the boulders Tom was unearthing, but heavy and gold
laden. I was now happy that I would be coming home with something to show for
my efforts. A while later, Tom found a third large stone, about the size of a
lemon, lying right on the surface in an area already well hunted by all of
us. Once again, there was more visible gold showing. How many times had we
kicked that stone out of the way while hunting??? Tom now had three large
gold specimens in about two and half hours of searching. He took this last
find back to truck for washing and more careful examination. I remained down
on the road determined to squeeze out one more nugget when my GM3 squealed on
a target just off the road on a small hillside. Among three pieces of iron
trash, I popped out another nice nugget about the size of an almond. I was
lucky to have found the gold first amoung the trash bits as I may have left
it behind! Content with my second nice nugget, I shut off my machine and
joined Tom up at the truck.

After eating lunch and examining our finds of the day we decided that we
would leave the road site to do some exploring even though we knew that there
was still gold to be found there. We had no way of knowing how much gold we
had found this day but we knew that we had done very well indeed. The road
still has much to give but we were thankful for what we had and we realized
that our nugget patch was actually getting larger as we move further and
further away from the original finds and were still finding good gold.
Explorations of other sites for another couple of hours did not yield any
more gold for the day so we packed up out gear and headed for home. On the
way, we stopped at a rock shop to see if the owners would be willing to cut
open some of Tom's golden boulders. The rock saw revealed some beautiful gold
within the stone and exposed still more pockets of the precious metal. Only
then did we realize just how well we had done!
We arrived first at Tom's place and out came the ultra-sonic cleaner and
the scale. After cleaning up my smaller nuggets, Tom weighed them out.
Because there is "Mother Rock" still attached to the gold, it is difficult to
accurately say exactly how much any given nugget's gold weight is for sure.
My small nugget weighed out to 50 grains almost exactly. With so much gold
showing, it probably contains at least 25 grains of gold but maybe
considerably more. A penny weighter at least! My first find was larger and it
weighed out to 129 grains total. Once again, with so much gold showing, Tom
and I guess the weight conservatively at three DWT giving me 4 DWT's for the
day, my best showing ever!!!
Tom's finds would be much more difficult to figure. His best find turned
out to be his last and smallest find. It was this piece that Tom had cut into
two halves. The first weighed out to and incredible 19 DWT ! The other half
was almost as impressive, coming in at 15 DWT. Yes, there is much host rock
but between those two stones, and Tom's other , larger stones, it would be
safe to say that Tom came home with between 10 and maybe 20 DWT!!!! An
ounce!! Amazing! Each of us had had our best showings ever! What is
incredible to Tom and I is that each time we go to work our road site, we
wonder when our golden streak will end but, so far, we have actually found
more gold and the area we need to hunt expands with each trip. Are we nervous
that someone else will find our spot and clean it out? Not really, the area
is seldom frequented by other hunters and our little spot is out of the way
from the more popular hunting areas. Furthermore, there is enough trash in
the road to scare away any casual, less determined detectorists. Besides, who
hunts the road anyway????

Take it Easy,

-Pat

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