Gold Panning at the Creek

Today has been a day of well deserved rest.  We made our usual garden visit first thing this morning, but then Mountain Man and I did our own things, a little bit of this and a little bit of that. 

We decided to eat a light fruit and nut lunch while dipping our feet in the cool flowing creek water, as it was another scorcher, 96 degrees (though I have to be grateful for that because there are places over 100!), and to pan for gold, one of our favorite pastimes.    

The water was refreshing, well cold really, I had to keep pulling my feet out to warm up:), the air was cooler and with the sound of the flowing creek along with the slight breeze, it was quite comfortable.  When I looked up, I saw...

 ...when I looked around I saw...

~life is good!

We haven't panned for gold in a long time and today was a perfect day to do so.  We bought the bag of gold ore we used today at the Crisson Gold Mine (we keep a big bag in the basement).  We filled a coffee can with the gold ore and brought it along to the creek with a gold pan, tweezers, a small jar to put our gold nuggets into.

After eating our lunch and soaking our feet, we moved to sit on a couple of rocks along the creek at a spot that had a small pool...let the panning begin!

Pour some gold ore into the gold pan...

...put some water in the pan and swirled it around, which helps to move the gold (heaviest object) to the bottom of the pan...

...slowly pour the water and loose sand/stone over the side of the pan with the ridges, which eliminates the sand/stone but leaves the heavier gold...

...now you look in the pan, through the water (helps the sun reflect off the gold to see it more easily), to see if you find any gold nuggets...watch for fools gold, looks similar, and can make one think it is gold, but when you see the real gold, you know it for sure...

...there's gold in them thar hills!!!...

...we actually found 2 nuggets in one pour...

...I didn't crop this picture so you could see them in relation to the pan, they are in the center of the pic...I never said they were big nuggets, just nuggets, LOL!...

...then using tweezers, we carefully put the nuggets into a small vial with water...

...and repeat this process until the gold ore is gone...we found a total of 6 nuggets today, not bad!

Have you ever tried gold panning?  Have you found gold? 

Thanks for reading my blog, you are the best f/f/r/s/f's, see you tomorrow,
Lise