Dar's gold in dem dar Hills!

We spent the morning of Memorial Day prospecting for gold in the Black Hills. A friend of ours is a geological engineer and a member of the BH prospecting club, and he and his wife took us to a spot where only members are allowed to prospect along a creek. 'A' had a great time "treasure hunting" and walking through the creek in his rubber boots.Here's M helping A pan for gold - we actually found some gold flakes and some garnets. It sprinkled on us a little, but it wasn't too chilly.'A' again panning - with help. He seemed to know what to do with it instinctively. Maybe it's a boy thing - maybe it's because he's seen Stinky Pete the Prospector in Toy Story 2.And Daddy gave it a try too. He was sidelined from the creek because I accidentally bought him two Right-footed boots at Wally World and we didn't figure it out till we got to the middle of the forest.

Here's me putting mud through the sluice box. It filters out everything (mud, rocks, etc.) using the running creek water and traps the gold somehow...Mud (hopefully containing gold) going into the sluice box.Mud and water coming out of the sluice box. The gold is heavier than everything else, so it drops down and gets trapped in the bottom. If you look closely you can see my eyes peeking through the woods. Being 7 months pregnant out in the middle of the cold, damp forest is not exactly ideal, so I had to take a few trips to nature's toilet. T couldn't help himself apparently and had to document the trip.M is digging mud out of the creek bank where the gold flakes are found, in the soil near the bedrock.

It appears we were not alone in the forest. We saw some pretty fresh mountain lion tracks in the mud along the creek. I think the smell of my pee kept us safe, we were all glad for that.