More Prospecting!

Whew! Well, we went for another 1/2 day of dredging yesterday. Hurricane be darned!!! Yes, there was a bit of storm weather passing by GA but we checked the forecast and decided it wouldn't affect us. Thankfully, we were right. It rained off and on, but who cares when you're already wet in a creek, right!? After we'd left and had eaten and were on the road back towards home, the windy part came through, but we were safely and drly in the car by then.

So anyway, yeah. He dredged for a few hours, and I did a bit of panning for more garnets in a backheap left from someone's previous dredge. Not sure yet how much gold we brought out of there (at least one decent fleck, but not what we got last time), til he finishes going through the concentrate slowly, but we sure got a nice heap of sparklies.

Now that we know how they look tumbled and polished, he wants to see if he can track down a jeweler to see about having some of them cut, or even getting some equipment to do cutting with. We would really love to see the insides of some of them! Polished on the outside just doesn't get to the beautiful gem center that some of them clearly (haha, no pun was necessarily intended) have.

Weather was a bit cooler, in the 70's, and our spot of the river wasn't quite deep enough to really snorkle in this time, so it was definitely more laborious work for us both (I didn't realize how much back strain you can get panning, lol!) this trip. But, all in all, it still sure was nice to get out there! Next time we plan to camp and do a full day of it. And after that, perhaps he will be ready to buy a dredge! Weeee!