BOOK INFO

Northern California 2007 - An Awesome 30 Days!

Total gold from 27 days of dredging.....4 troy ounces!

Nuggets from my three best days, more than ½ ounce each day.

Rattlesnake crossing the road ....for the last time!.

While dredging I found this 1850’s Minor’s pick and a steel ball from an old ball mill.

An old abandoned Grizzly from times long past.

Gold in it’s natural habitat.....on bedrock under water.

Found some awesome nuggets!

left-Ed & Luella center-Me & Mary right-Tony & Lori

We left our Indiana home at 8am on a friday and were setting up camp in Northern California before the sun set on saturday! 2300 miles in 36 hours, no time wasted on sight seeing this year. Even though I was exhausted from the drive and lack of sleep, I still managed to get an hour of dredging in before dark and got a nice little nugget the first day. It just got better and better after that, there wasn’t a single day when I didn’t get at least a few good pickers. It was hard work though, tons of rocks to be moved to get at the golden prize. After the first week of running the 4” & 5” dredges, my right hand had swelled to 50% larger than normal and the tendons felt and sounded like a squeaky door hinge. I still dredged almost every day, the gold was just too good to take a break, the swelling never really went down until after I got back home. I managed to get into a couple real “hot spots” and had several half ounce plus days, mostly chunky nuggets! Also discovered my dredge will catch quartz/gold specimens, something I’ve always dreamed of finding. They say that it’s always hot and sunny out there in July, but we had many days of storms and cold drizzling rain We even endured several days of thick, choking smoke from a lightning sparked forest fire that was within 4 miles of the claim. The forest service stopped by and suggested that we should be ready to leave because the fire could head our way. We waited it out and that night the heavy rain came again, allowing the fire fighters to contain the blaze. With that threat over, it was back to dredging and uncovering more awesome gold. Our good friends (pictured above) were dredging on their claim about a half mile down stream and they also got some nice gold. We had a great time and found a lot of the precious yellow stuff! Hope I can get back out to the claim again sometime soon........

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