Vacation!

I took a vacation from blogging.  Didn't really think I would be gone that long, but alas, I was.

But I'm back, again!

One of the wonderful tings that hubby and I did while I was taking my blogging vacation, was to actually go on vacation.

We went to South Carolina to visit family.

We had a wonderful time.

What did we do on this vacation?

Well, we did lots of things, but one of the things that we did was to go gold digging.

Hubby loves to go gold prospecting (we once lived in CA, where it's quite popular).  So, we did a little of that.  We went to a pay-to-dig site in North Carolina for the day.  We had a lot of fun.  The sun was out and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  Wanna see what it looked like?

Laurie Gold Digging with a Keene High Banker

What's a Keene High Banker?  That's this pictured contraption.  See the pilings of dirt behind the high banker.  Well, you scoop a shovel full of dirt into the top bucket of the high banker, then the dirt breaks up and flows through the sluice (the long arm under the bucket).  The whole thing is operated by water that is pumped into the bucket.  There are sprays of high powered water that criss-cross inside the bucket, which is how the dirt gets broken up.  Then the water carries the dirt, gravel, and rocks through the sluice underneath.  Gold is a very heavy metal, so it gets trapped within the sluice's rivulets, carpeting, and mesh.  When you're all done shoveling the dirt into the high banker, you literally take it apart.  Wash up the carpeting and mesh.  Throw it all into a bucket, then you can pan out the little gold pieces.

Okay, I know what you're all thinking, what?  What are you doing on vacation 'working' so hard?  Well, hubby likes doing it, and I don't mind, so we spent a day just digging in the dirt.  I think it paid off as hubby has cleaned and panned some of the dirt that we brought home - let's just say it was worth it!  It was a beautiful, warm day!  We did have fun!  We went to a real, live working gold mine to do this, so we got to see a whole lot of operations going on!  It was interesting! 

This particular mine was called Thermal City Mine.  It was nestled between two mountains.  We were in the valley between the two mountains.  There was all other kinds of gold prospecting equipment lying around here and there.

For instance, this here contraption is called a trommel. 

Gold Prospecting Trommel

A trommel was used back in the olden, golden days of prospecting, but they are still used today.  This is only a picture of a partial trommel from the 1800's.  This is the back side of it pictured above.  Trommels move a lot more dirt, sand, and gravel than a high banker can.  It looks like a huge cement mixer with rolling tub (which isn't pictured here).  The tub rotates to turn the dirt over and over and breaks it up, then it moves down into the sluice type area (which looks very much like the arm of the high banker which I posted in the first picture).  That's what catches the gold.

Well, now that I've thoroughly bored you with a little gold prospecting history, I'll leave it at that.

I plan to post some other pictures of our trip at a later date.  So stay tuned!