Posted 18 June 2012 - 08:35 PM
Alright fellers, an update for ya from my sunday visit that was s'posed to be all day, sunup to sundown, remember me sayin that? well, I made the mistake of invitin a friend who'd been beggin me to take him with me. Now don't get me wrong, he's a good friend and I love him but he's a useless, whiney-butt pot head who's had it way too easy in life. He's an electrician, he makes $30.-/hr. fingerin household wiring all day and the feller he works for has never told him to pee in a cup, so he's been spendin his evenings gettin high and watchin re-runs of gold fever fer the last 2 yrs. About 4 mo's. ago, all stoned, broke out a credit card and called the #. A week or so later in the mail he got his GPAA hat, stickers, and a mining guide and the membership cards fer a year, and thinkin he could go to any creek or stream, scoop up some gavel, pan it out, and find gold. So yesterday he got himself a big ole pile of rock, sand, and gravely" REALITY".We didn't get there till 9AM, and I told I wouldn't I see any gold till I got through my 3rd. bucket. Meanwhile he kept tellin me he's findin gold, what he kept showin me was tiny, yellowish grains of quartz, I kept sayin, no it ain't gold, but he wouldn't listen. Around noon after pannin out the last of my 3rd. bucket of classified sand, with just a thin layer of black sand in the bottom of my pan, an givin it a few swirls, and finally tappin the pan edge,(I think it's called the "blueberry bounce") I had 6 nice litttle pieces of bright, metalic yellow flour hop to the pan corner as the Fe3O4 slid down. I set the pan flat on the ground and called Jay to come over and take a look and tell me what he was lookin at. It took him him a couple seconds then he exploded! Started hootin and hollerin, then he got a little angry, grabed his little vile filled with those yellowish brown quartz grains, dumped em out, then wanted to celebrate by smokin some pot he had brought with him(what a retard).I sniffered up my little grains of flour while he smoked away. Went dug me another bucket by the boulder where I'd been diggin all along. Classified it down to sand, stratified and panned it out, got me 8 more litttle flour grains, put those in the vile and by then it was 3PM and jay was exausted, tired, beat-up, discouraged, hungry, mosquito bit, shoes and socks soakin wet, (I told him to bring rubber boots but he said he didn't have any, I had an extra pair but it was funnier to not let him know that) He admitted that findin gold was a LOT harder than they make it look on TV. All I could tell him was he needs to get off the dope, get off the couch, and do something with his life, and mostly, QUIT WATCHIN SO MUCH TV. So we packed up and headed fer the car. I'm headin back out there tomorrow, alone, by myself, no helper, no distractions. Tomorrow night or wednesday I'm gonna order a 50 mesh screen/classifier from "Black Cat Mining". I think their the cheapest so far. I really do need to get those bits of sand out of my vile, I hope 50 mesh does it, but I could end up with 60, 80, and 100 mesh screens b'fore it's all over with. Not if, but when I get good at recoverin this fine flour by hand, any and all other gold will be easy money. Oh, and finally, I'm still $100.- short of orderin my angus mac kirk, the house bills got to come first, but by the end of this month I should have that in the mail too. I will keep you fellers posted....RH
Good men learn to conquer others, Great men learn to conquer themselves!
After a good amount of research through the Mi. Geological Survey, I foud this creek cuttin right through the tallest, longest, and one of the oldest, course/rough till, glacial morains in southern MI. This morain is composed of granite and pre-cambrian basalt as well as many difff. metamophic amphibolite and gneiss boulders, rocks, and gravels, as opposed to morains composed, mostly of fine-grained silica and limestone sands.
The creek, as the crow flies is just under a mile long, but in linear length, from the road to main river, it's 2 miles.The morain is "C" shaped and it's about 30mi. long and about 4 mi. at it's widest point at about 1/2 it's length. The surrounding terrain is about 820ft. above sea-level, the creek bed is in a steep sided ravine and is at about 750ft. above sea-level. So from the car to the ravine is about 400yrds. Then one needs to climb down this steep slope about 50ft. or so b'fore you can again, walk without havin to hold onto trees and stuff to just keep yer balance. And this creek is (1) NOT a designated trout stream and (2) is smack-dab in the middle of an extremely large state game area, not a rec. area or state park where rec. panning is limmited or right-out prohibited. So I think I'm good to go, but where exactly does the DNR draw the line b'tween recreational pannin and all-out placer deposit minning? And, do I even care? anyways, on my first visit, without my MD, I dug a couple holes in the creekbed, classified a bucket of material down to sand using just a "2 mesh" and a spagetti strainer, then panned the sands out and found nothing but a couple nice little corral fossils and a golfball sized piece of rose quartz. Packed up, went home, did a little more google earth sat image lookin, and made my 2nd. visit to this creek a little further down stream than the first visit, again ariving much later than would have liked or ment, anyways.(Oh, and the pics so far, are of that 2nd. spot). Had my F-75 w/a 15in. & a 5in. coil with me. The 15in. to scan and map the higher mieralized soil areas of the creek bed,(and this should go without sayin, but on a wide, sweeping curve in this creek where the outside is kinda deep and movin fast, & the inside is a dry gravely bench right up to the bank where you can tell that at some point in the past, water levels were as much as 3ft. but today it's just a dry gravely bench).
And the 5in. to scan my gravel tailings after all the classifin.So, I have in a small vile, after diggin about a ft. down behind 2 smaller (large rocks,200-300lbs. I'm guessin) 100's of microscopic shiny yellow metal specles mixed with microscopic magnatite & quartz particles that I can't seem to get separated by just pannin. But tomorrow I will be hitttin this place hard, all freakin day, and I have started me a savings jar just fer the angus mac kirk and the 30 mesh I definitely need.(things worth havin, are worth waitin for)!! Brothers, I do believe I'm gonna have a great summer. And as soon as I have enough gold to decently photograph, ya'll will be the first to see it!...RH
