So for the last few years I've been making an annual trip to visit my friend and fellow gold prospector Mike(aka Unknown Colorado on Youtube). Like 7 or 8 years ago I met Mike prospecting up on the East Fork of the San Gabriel river here in SoCal and we made friends right away and I have been in contact with him ever since. I let him dig my spots on the East fork and although they aren't that great Mike started inviting me to join him digging one of his favorite gold prospecting spot in Colorado... Cache creek! This was my third time prospecting Cache creek with Mike and this time we were joined by his girlfriend Maya. We didn't get as much gold as last summer due to weather, water access issues, and competitive prospectors. But we did find some beautiful gold and of course we had a really great time just camping and digging!

After leaving Cache creek we headed back towards Mikes house in Parachute, but on the way there we stopped to check out some old time mining ruins. The most impressive thing was that this huge ghost town is somehow unknown and kept relatively secret. Which is crazy because according to Mike it is by far the largest ghost town in Colorado. And since it was a relatively recent(1950's era) operation it is actually still quite intact. So there were many neat buildings to explore and interesting artifacts to see. It really is incredible what a large operation it was in its day. Hundreds of people worked and lived in this town at one point. And exploring all the ruins was like taking a trip back in time!

We got back to Mikes house and the next day we spent the day cleaning all the gold out of our concentrated material from Cache creek. As I said before it wasn't as much as before, but it was definitely still a beautiful little jar of gold!

For the final part of this trip we switch it up a bit and head out to the Gunnison river for an exciting river rafting trip! I didn't have much rafting experience before this so it was a new experience for me, but luckily this part of the river is relatively mild and so it's a good choice for beginner rafters. We spent 3 days floating through beautiful scenery, navigating quite a few small yet exciting rapids. We camped out for two nights... got attacked by mosquitos the first night, but the second night was not so bad. Despite the bugs, and getting sunburned, I definitely enjoyed the trip a lot and am hoping to get to go on more rafting trips like this one in the future.