goldpaninut
Senior Member
Last week I had the privilege of visiting my son in California in the gold rush country. We don't get to see each other that often, but when we do we always grab our gold detectors and head for the creeks. This time was no exception, but we were confronted by swollen, flooding streams & rivers this year. We finally located a small stream running mostly on bedrock that wasn't entirely flooded and we put rain gear on our detectors and ourselves and headed up stream. We both use the Whites GMT and have made slip on clear plastic covers for the control box for wet weather hunting. During the summer months there is a lot of picnicking & swimming at this location. After an hour of swinging our detectors in a driving rain we still hadn't found anything except fishing sinkers and bottle caps. Heading farther upstream we encountered less trash but it was raining even harder. I got a loud signal above a crevice in the bedrock and started digging, not knowing how deep it was, as the GMT does not have a depth indicator. After digging about 8" I probed the hole with my Bullseye TRX pinpointer and got a signal. Digging about 3" deeper I saw a glint of gold, and unearthed this 1/4 oz. beauty. We detected for another hour without finding anything else and headed back to the car pretty soggy. We always detect on the return trip, and I got another signal near the parking area. Thinking it was another pull tab or bottle cap, I almost didn't dig it. But something told me to dig, and only 4" down was this 1918 Mercury dime in good condition. I'll take a hunt in the rain like this any day! My son looked at me and said "Well Dad, looks like you lived up to your name again....Goldpaninut!
