Never was a big fan of crack, I like gold in my vile. Not even sure if crack stills exists. All I here is strange tales that kids smoke bath salts and eat tide pods nowadays. Pretty odd behavior but that's another story. Back to this one...
These are some chunky little flakes I found prospecting a couple weeks ago. Sure looks beautiful in the container filled with water. The water and the shape of the vile helps to magnify the gold, and make it look bigger than it is. If you zoom in on the image it looks like some big "ole" nuggets. Hopefully this is the year I find myself a big nugget. All the flakes are good enough in the meantime. At least I'm finding gold most every time I go looking. Very nice to live in an area where that's possible. This came from a creek just north of the one I usually prospect at. The drive is only about forty minutes from my house. It's a pretty popular spot in the summertime so I'm gonna try to get back soon. We've had a few storms since I was there last. Nothing significant enough to wash any new gold out of the hills. Just enough to keep anyone from looking for gold in that spot. Hopefully I'll have even better luck next time. The rainy season is almost over and it's getting a bit warmer.
This device is designed to suck the gold bearing gravel out of a crevice. When your hunting for gold a crack in the bedrock "crevice" is one of the best places to find gold. The gold and heavy minerals get trapped in these pockets, until someone like me cleans them out. Most people look at gold miners as polluter's of the environment. In the past people used a lot of mecury and toxic substances to sepearate their gold. There certainly has been some abuse of the environment for profit. Sadly that abuse is projected on to recreational prospectors. We happen to be some of the only people that are cleaning up after the old timers. People with metal detectors clean up trash that is out of sight that people normally wouldn't even realise was there.
This crack is the perfect gold trap. It was also filled with about fifty pieces of lead from fishing weights and buckshot. There was even some old square nails hiding in there. That's some good trash to find though. Can't wait to get back down to the creek and finish cleaning this crevice out. Could be a nice chunk of gold just a bit deeper. Even a pocket filled with flakes would be nice. That won't cure my gold fever though, it will only make it worse. On the bright side it's good to have a hobby that rewards you in gold.
For somebody looking to get into gold prospecting the G.P.A.A. is a good place to start. There are some other clubs in the United States but I've been a member of this one. They send you a kit for gold panning when you become a member. The best part is you get access to gold claims all over the country. http://www.goldprospectors.org/Store/GPAA-Membership Here's a link for those whom are interested. I'm not currently a member or affiliated in any way but they are a great organization. Hope you guy's can all find some gold too.