Trip #2: it just keeps more fun!

So, we went back out yesterday. We talked to the guy there, Mike, again for a while. We found out that a local news story or something has apparently started a chain reaction of interest, and so he had recently been interviewed and is going to be on a show on the Discovery channel! As chance would have it, the local news was out there too, where a reporter was making notes for a story he's apparently writing about the place. He stopped and chatted with each of us for a while and took down some info. Heeee, maybe I'll be "famous" soon. I really, REALLY hope I don't miss the article, or the TV show with Mike.

Anyway.. we rented a 4" dredge this time for 1/2 a day. This is a thing that floats and has a vaccum at one end that throw the rocks out the back, and catches the good stuff in a tray thing.

Omg, it was so cool! I dove & dredged a bit too.

Thanks to the dredge, we extracted an even larger quantity of garnets this time, along with more quartz for fun.

 

And "Reed" (again with the anonymous-ness, hehe) brought out a nice quantity of flakes. He's not done panning it yet, either. Mike knew just where to park the thing, so we went with his extroidinary intuitive knowledge.

I have rocks in the tumbler (vibration) and we'll see how those shinies look soon =)
I have "roughed" the previous rocks. Aside from the garnets, it looks like I should pretty much have just quarts of various colors. I'll eventually get it all polished up nice too. I'm more interested in the gems for now. Understandably, right? LOL
Oh yes, we will be going back to repeat this trip again soon, maybe in a couple of weeks. He has confirmed by this trip that he really wants to eventually buy a dredge. A bit of working with this one, rented, will give us good practice for a considerably less cost for now.