We decided to go on a journey, rather than fly somewhere, because airport security is now so vain, my wife hates boats, so the cruises came out, so the car was our chosen means of transportation. We have a large luxury car, and fuel consumption exceeds 23 miles per gallon and is really comfortable on long drives. We have relatives in Louisiana, and we decided that we would go there from the state of New York and make as many stops as we like. No schedules, no appointments, flight schedules just do not move until we are tired, and then select a place to view.
We left home early in the morning in early June and headed west via Pennsylvania on route 84. This should be the most boring road to ride on Earth. Miles and miles of bumpy concrete where nothing is visible except trees. I love trees, but after six hours or so, looking at them, they can get pretty boring. Turning south on route 81, the landscape began to change for the better. Villages of different types, mountain landscapes and less movement made the movement much better. Before leaving for our trip, we explored the sites of each gold mine we could find in the Southern and Southeastern states. They are much more than you think. North and South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee have many places to visit. In many places, there are rock quarries where, for a fee, you can dig up your dirt or make them do it for you. Then you can take a seat on the water gateway to throw the gems out of your dirt.
Panning seems so simple, but in fact you need to practice it many times to learn how to do it right. Pots are supplied in both metal and plastic, and some have more ridges or riffles than others, but any type is suitable for your taste and budget. You forts collect a small amount of dirt in a saucepan, and then take clean water to the saucepan. Using both hands, you twist the pan in a circular motion so that water and dirt mix and stick around the pan. Then you can choose any large stones that are not gold or another collection stone (opal, emerald, etc.), and then continue to wobble the material in the pan. As you work, larger materials will separate and can be washed out of the pot with cleaner water.
Always try not to flush the sand sand, which is the best indicator of the presence of gold. Little by little you will get rid of everything, anything, from large pieces of gold (you hope), called clinkers, assemblers, etc., and black sand contains smaller golden pieces. Very carefully you spin black sand with water, and gold flakes or flowering gold will separate from the sand when it is heavier and falls to the bottom of the pan. The sand will be on the side of the pot, and the gold on the other. Using a small tip sniffer bottle, you carefully suck the flower into the bottle. Then again, carefully pour the contents of the bottle to wrap in a gold bottle or bottle. Gold will sink to the bottom along with any sand that you accidentally sucked. After you reach a large amount of a mixture of gold and sand, you can roll again if there is excess sand or take it to the gemologist or analyte office for processing and weighing. If you have a mail scale, find one that weighs exactly one ounce. See how small and light it is? One golden ounce of gold costs about $ 1,400. Of course, it takes a lot of work to collect an ounce of colored gold, but one or two “collectors” can bring weight very quickly.
You can find during panning, opals, grenades, emeralds, tourmaline plus many other precious and semi-precious stones. We have one emerald cluster that weighs over a pound. I found it on the Emerald Void in the Hiddenite, North Carolina. One day he will go to a gemologist to clean and cut stones for us. Many of the other stones that we found were made into bracelets or necklaces and are now gifts. Smoky quartz, Yellow citrine, Aquamarines and sapphires can be found on most of the mines in this area.
The best prey for me was for gold itself. Yes, real yellow gold. Nuggets, cereal and flower gold are all the excitement that can be found in your pot. A pot of gold costs about 15 dollars, and all you need is a small bottle and a bottle of pushing away to pick up the gold from the flowers and store all the gold you find. The first part you find is a real hit, and then you want to find more and more and more. You will quickly understand why many people are involved in gold exploration. One of the best places where we were was the city of Delong, Georgia. Listed as a gold mining area, there is a large museum in the center of the city, on which a gold nugget with football is displayed. in fact, Delonga, Georgia was an area of the gold rush in the United States before the rain of California occurred in 1848. They claim that there are still millions of dollars in gold in Delonga, and I managed to find myself before I left. If you are lucky enough to go there, there are plenty of places to go or just sit at the gateway and the pot that they dig for you. We spent a few pleasant hours collecting our loot, and even if you don’t turn it into jewelery later, just by looking at the stones, you will get good memories. Make sure you have a camera. There is a fantastic shop through the square at the corner of the museum, and I can’t remember my life, this name, but they have a huge selection of memorabilia and other great antiques. I bought some Octagon soap bars that I haven’t seen in the last 50 years. Plan to spend at least a full day in and around Delonga.
Do not forget to bring along some kind of old clothes that you do not mind dirty and probably some kind of comfortable shoes. We found local hotels more comfortable and affordable. Every day we will search the Internet to find the next nearest place to mine, and then go there. We have seen some of the most magnificent, from abandoned landscapes, small towns and mountain landscapes that you can imagine. At each site of the mine was something else. Some of them were slippery operations, which we are not quite sure, did not “thrust” the soil, and others, who had mountain roads, old wooden benches and an old timer who wanted to tell about their adventures of finding gold. We had a bit of gold for almost everyone, and the pay was almost the same as that of $ 10 for a full five gallon buckets of dirt. It takes some time to pan that much dirt, so don't go crazy and immediately get fifty five gallons.
It will take you eight hours to pan with so much soil. If you could hold your hands in the cold cold mountain stream so that it was so long. In the three-week trip, we visited more than twenty gold mining sites. As I said, some are good, some are bad, but these were all adventures. I take two small bottles from the jewel box once in a while, just to look at my raw gold. We also did Nashville Hockey Tonk Scene, Luray Caverns in Luray, VA and The Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. The gardens and grounds at Biltmore are awesome and well worth the trip. Not having a fixed schedule every day, the trip was very enjoyable. We delayed an extra day in Nashville to see, and then to Memphis, to see Elvis, and then to Tunica, Mississippi, to try their luck at their casino. (My wife won all our money). This summer we are planning a trip to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to the Crater of Diamonds State Park to mine diamonds. We have no idea where we will end, but you can be sure that we will see more of the great things America has to offer, and be our own little package of incentives while traveling.
Pete Eckerson
