Well, for those of you looking for a great place to do some prospecting on your vacation - Have I got a place for you!
We went to North Carolina, for a week long vacation. We did some trout fishing, and I caught the biggest trout I have ever caught. Not just 1,,, but 8 of them over 18 inches!!! Wow, that was so exciting.
But, to top that off, I spent a couple of days prospecting as well. That was my main reason for going... my wife had other plans though :-(
So, I had to take what I could get, and only had 2 days to prospect.
I went to Thermal city mine just south of Marion NC, and did a day of sluicing. I bought one of their loads of dirt from their mine, and went to town. On my own, I couldn't finish the whole pile, but did get about 3/4th of it. At least in my pile, the gold was lowsy. I only found a handful of specs. However, in all fairness,, the people just beside me using a high banker, found a beutifull 1 penny weight nugget, and a lot of smaller gold.
This leads me to believe that although I am usually pretty good with my sluice, I rushed too much and allowed too much water flow to flush my gold out the end of my sluice.
Second day Much Better!
Ok, I was headed to heather grove mine to spend my second day with the sluice. I have been told how good their gold is by others on line, and saw some pictures to back it up. I called them up and they told me I couldn't run a tractor load of their material through my sluice... water regs in that county... I didnt' feel like renting their high banker at that time, so I went on towards thermal city mine. I was going to rent their tromle and do 2 loads just to have fun.
On the way, I passed the Lucky Strike Mine. Thought for a moment... and the first wide spot in the road was where I made my U-Turn.
I wanted to check out their prices and went on in. I found a nice camp, with a small cafe that was actually open. Yeah, I wouldn't have to run back to town for micky D's for lunch.
I could have sluiced my load of dirt with them, but with my
GPAA/LDMA discount, renting a high banker and running a load was quite reasonable. So, I rented one. I used a Gold King high banker.
I ran my full load of dirt with a lunch break, and finished at about 5pm. I started at about 11am or so. Note, this was almost completely by myself... my son Brian just wasn't in a shoveling mood.
I did a partial clean up and panned my black mat off at lunch time. To my suprise, there was a lot of nice
large pieces of gold!
Did I mention they have a cafe' on site? Great prices and their food was real good too!
After the full day, I did another clean up and WOW...
More big gold!!! I will put pictures of it on the site now that I have got all the cons panned.
You will defenately want to put the Lucky Strike mine on your agenda if you are headed to NC for some real good prospecting!
Here is a link to their site:
http://www.luckystrikegoldandgem.com Please browse our site and thank you again.
TN Gold Co.
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