Gold Panning at Cache Creek

The high country is really starting to put on a wonderful show. We got some very nice pictures of the turning leaves this past Friday while we walked around Cache Creek with Gayle Gresham and her husband John.

Gayle is writing a piece about one of her relatives and 'rustling' which should be interesting, and we certainly will be looking forward to reading it when it is finished. She has several generations of miners in her 'tree', and her G.G.Granddad happened to be working at Cache Creek while they were mining the area early on. She has been to the area several times, but never up around where they had stopped the mining, so we offered to give her a tour and teach her how to pan for gold like her ancestors did.

She was a quick study and proved that gold mining is in her blood. She picked up the swishing motion to separate the black sand from the gold at the end of the process really well, and with a little practice, we are sure she will be using that gold pan as well as the rest of us.

That was what she found in her very first spade full of dirt from Cache Creek. 4 small pieces of gold, and not bad if we do say so ourselves! We panned the day away along with a home schooled group from Colorado Springs who were on a field trip with their kids. Gayle spent a few minutes with them to give them some of the history of the area and to share a couple of stories about her grandfathers. (More on them later) :>D

We spent a very pleasant day with everyone on Friday...that is until we all decided the smoke from the "camp fire" wasn't a "campfire" but had become something much bigger. We have since heard from the Chafee County Fire Dept. that it did look like it began as a camp fire, so everyone needs to be very aware of the danger of fire out there concerning your camp fires.

Gayle runs a blog on the history of her family, which includes mining, that you can see here at http://www.coloradoreflections.blogspot.com/ , and I must say it has some very interesting information on it.

I have two more posts to get in before next week. As most of you know, this weekend is the Denver Gem, Mineral and Fossil show at the Merchandise Mart along with several other hotels and, we hear, some goings on at the Coliseum. That means I will be spending 10 hour days in the emerald booth with my friend Pedro from Colombia. Come out and see some of the most amazing rocks, gems, and fossils this side of the Tucson Show. Stop by the panning troughs set up each year by the Gold Prospectors of Colorado in the N.E. corner of the Merchandise Mart.

Lots more mining to do yet this year, so get out there and find some gold!

Good Prospecting to You,

Shirley Weilnau

HookedonGold Gazette 12/12/08

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $822.00
· Spot price last Gazette: $754.30
________________

Calendar of Events
DECEMBER
· 1st Cyber Monday Don’t forget goldnstore for your prospector gifts
· 10th GPOC General Meeting and Christmas Party don’t forget those Toys for Tots!
· 21st Winter Solstice – Yeah, we start getting longer days tomorrow!!!!!
· 22nd Hanukkah begins
· 24th Christmas Eve
· 25th Christmas Day
· 26th Kwanzaa and Boxing Day
· 31st New Years Eve
JANUARY
· 1st New Years Day
· 15th Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday
· 19th MLK Day observed
· 20th Inauguration Day
_______________________________________
NEWS

Gold’s up, dollars down. Treasury to bail out the auto industry…..temporarily until the new administration can get sworn in. A nice piece to read from Dec. 10th comes from this site http://jsmineset.com/index.php/2008/12/10/hourly-action-in-gold-from-trader-dan-27 .

Everyone must be preoccupied with Christmas, just like me. We are having our family get together tomorrow, ahead of the snow storm coming in on Sunday. I have been in the kitchen all day preparing what needs to get taken to Greeley, and then making sure all the presents are wrapped and tagged. YOU have two more weeks. I get to rest next week while you do your last minute shopping. LOL! Oh, and we found out yesterday that we are going to be grandparents again in August.

Not much new news this week on gold. Even with my google alerts and what I find on the newswires, there isn’t much going on this late in the year. It seems like everyone is just waiting to see what else will happen. Mines continue to scale back and wait for the price of gold to go back up, and plans for new acquisitions are put on hold.

Gold Prospectors of Colorado had their Christmas party this last Wednesday with over 120 in attendance, including three Marines who cam for the good food, the gold draws and the Toys for Tots that members bring in every year. There were two tables full of toys of all kinds, and dinner, of course, was wonderful. We all had a chance to visit about the finds of the last year, and brag a bit about what was and wasn’t found. A very good time with good friends.

Check out www.youtube.com and search for videos on crazy Christmas house lights, or something similar, to find all those postings of houses that have wonderful displays of synchronized lights and music.

Remember, you can get your gold prospecting equipment needs HERE, Clearance HERE, and Monthly Specials HERE.

Your DIY links are below.
Plans to build your own equipment
http://49ermike.com/plans.shtml

Prospecting Equipment photo's
http://showcase.netins.net/web/1rowellpage/prospecting.html

Vintage Projects
http://www.vintageprojects.com/misc/dry-washer-prospecting-plans.html

Have a wonderful Holiday Season!
Until next week……..

Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley (MQS)
Google has begun running third party ads and is requiring adsense sites to include information about this change on their websites. You can read about this on our Privacy Policy page.

World Open Panning website has this year’s world wide panning competitions listed and they add more all the time. A great site to visit: www.worldopenpanning.homestead.com . If the links do not work, copy and paste them into your browser.

If you find a broken link, please let us know
THE ARKANSAS RIVER is now closed TO MOTORIZED EQUIPMENT until April 1st.
_______________________________________
www.hookedongold.com
www.hookedongold2.com Metal Detectors at Auction
info@hookedongold.com contact us
PLEASE BE ADVISED: Ads that you might find on this blog or on a website using ads, may use cookies or other tracking means to track your movements on the web. Please read our Privacy Policy to see how this affects you and what you might want to do to prevent cookies being used to track you.

Hooked on Gold Gazette 10/17/08

YES, I vant to suck your blood! I need it to go gold prospecting in the high mountains. HEH HEH HEH!

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $782.90
· Spot price last Gazette: $849.90
________________

Calendar of Events
OCTOBER
· 1st – Arkansas River is now closed to motorized equipment until March 1st
· 8th – GPOC General Meeting
· 13th – Columbus Day
· 31st – Halloween

NOVEMBER
· 2nd End of Daylight Savings Time
· 4th ELECTION DAY Get out and VOTE!
· 11th Veterans Day
· 12th GPOC Regular Meeting 7:00 p.m.
· 27th THANKSGIVING
_______________________________________
NEWS

Who would ever have thought that the dollar would strengthen so much with all that is going on with the financials here, but that is what is happening to keep gold prices sliding downward. Of course, anyone who follows currencies had a glimmer of what would happen, but to see gold slide this far when so many thought it would be up by now is strange.

The new Gold Prospectors of Colorado officers for ’09 are…….(drumroll)……the same people as last year. I am dumbfounded. Now, I know Eric had decided not to run again this year, so what happened? Is there no one out there willing to let this man get on with his life? Ya, know…..if no one is willing to take the reins of this club soon, what is to become of it? Eric cannot go on being its’ president forever. This will be his fourth year. Even politicians have term limits. Maybe its’ time GPOC did, too.

We have word from the BLM office that they are working on next year’s plan for Cache Creek. They will try to coordinate efforts among two agencies and GPOC to get a porta potty in there next year. Also, we are working on having several retired and interested persons rotate weeks during most of the prospecting season and act as “camp hosts” to assist anyone new to prospecting and help clear up any misunderstandings of rules and regulations for the area. Hopefully this will also help to keep trouble down to a minimum. (We need to come up with another name for these people). The BLM is planning on doing some more tree management next fall, and digging out the beaver pond that has filled up with silt.

I have finally been convinced to buy a “big” metal detector. I love working with my Falcon, but everyone says I need to use a “real” detector. Now, I didn’t go out and get a fancy MXT, ‘cause Larry runs one of those and we can’t use them together. I also, did not get a GMT, as too many other people also use that one and they can’t be used near one another. I opted for what everyone used to use, a Whites V/SAT. It’ll do what I need it to and I won’t be running up and down hillsides with it, so it should be OK for where I will use it. I have trouble swinging them for more than two hours, so after that, I can go back to what I was doing before. Is everybody happy, now?

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, stuff happened today, as it often does, to keep me busy enough I could not get to the newsletter before now. Sorry it is late. As many of you know, I like to get it out around 4:00. However, better late than never, they say. We will have fabulous weather here for the next couple of days before it turns cold. Until next week.........

Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley

Google has begun running third party ads and is requiring adsense sites to include information about this change on their websites. You can read about this on our Privacy Policy page.

World Open Panning website has this year’s world wide panning competitions listed and they add more all the time. A great site to visit: http://www.worldopenpanning.homestead.com/ . If the links do not work, copy and paste them into your browser.

If you find a broken link, please let us know
THE ARKANSAS RIVER is now closed TO MOTORIZED EQUIPMENT until April 1st.
_______________________________________
http://www.hookedongold.com/
http://www.hookedongold2.com/ Metal Detectors at Auction
info@hookedongold.com contact us
PLEASE BE ADVISED: Ads that you might find on this blog or on a website using ads, may use cookies or other tracking means to track your movements on the web. Please read our Privacy Policy to see how this affects you and what you might want to do to prevent cookies being used to track you.

More Cache Creek Pictures

Ah....a few more scenes from Cache Creek to help you get over your 401K anxiety


Our resident "beggar"



The BLM marked campfire wood to be used in the area. This stuff has aspen canker and beeltes in it, so DO NOT REMOVE IT FROM THE AREA. You will spread the diseases.



Some of the tree removal that was done in the area.


This sure has turned out to be a wild week in the markets. Gold is up over $900 today. We are looking at some cooler temps in the Denver area this weekend as a cold front moves in from out of Alaska. I heard that the high yesterday in Fairbanks we 29 degrees....average is 40. After one of their coldest summers on record, we could be in for a cold winter here as well. Much of our winter weather comes down the jetstream from Alaska.

Did you see the trees that were removed from Cache Creek by the BLM and GPOC members late in September? The BLM is planning on removing more next spring. You can use the wood stacked around for your campfire, but DO NOT REMOVE IT FROM THIS AREA! It is diseased and you will carry that to wherever you take it and it will spread among healthy trees. Ft. Collins is having a time with the beetles that have come out of the mountains with wood that people have brought back with them. While we LOVE the golden Aspens, they simply do not look the same with the pine trees dead. I'll put up some of the pictures I took a couple of weeks ago with the Apsens and the dead lodgepoles in the Dillon area. Pretty sad.

The cold is beginning to bring the gold propsectors back out of the mountains. We spent a fridge day up high last weekend end. Needed a hot bath afterward to warm back up! Found a bit of gold, too, but not much to write home about. Still, and enjoyable day in the Rockies. As always....

Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley Weilnau (MQS)