Gazette

Hey, guys.

Stuff happened. Newsletter will get posted around 7:00, so check back later.

Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley

NEW! RSS Feed Added to the Prospectors Blog

Mt Elbert has snow on it, again, and two ski resorts are opening today. Gold Prospecting season is definitely winding down here in Colorado.

It has been chilly here in Denver the past few days, and the house has been wanting some heat. However, I'm stubborn, and try not to turn the furnace on until around Halloween. I have been working on the metal detecting blog for you, and also got a reminder from Rock and Gem that my deadline for a January article is coming up SOON!

I've been reading that Blogger has an RSS feed that can be added to a blog, and I have finally had time to investigate it further. I should be in the "Links" at the bottom of each blog posting. This posting is to see if I can activate it and get it to work right. If so, I have an opportunity to post it to the RSS feed sites. That means that more gold prospectors will be able to find this blog and hookedongold.com.

We have had contact with the BLM about next year's plans for Cache Creek. The office is very busy right now, but they do have a vision in place and I will let you know what it is as soon as I know.

No one from GPOC has let me know who the new officers are for '09, yet, but then I've been too busy to even send an e-mail, either. Ever have a great idea, but have all the support stuff not cooperate? Well, that's where I am this week. I have a line on a full size metal detector for myself, and we may have the 2 1/2 inch proline dredge sold. (Anyone who knows me, knows that I use a Falcon to detect with, AND knows the technique I use, too. Do I find gold? You bet 'cha!) All for now. As always,

Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley Weilnau (MQS)

P.S. The new RSS feed link can be accessed at the bottom of the blog, or by clicking on the "Links To" at the bottom of each blog in the tags and then finding it at the bottom of the page it brings up. I'll work on getting the widget on the template later. Gott run! TTFN

Hooked on Gold Gazette 10/10/08

Dillon Reservoir a couple of weeks ago. The beetles have taken their toll on the lodge pole pine trees, as you can see.

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $849.90
· Spot price last Gazette: $834.80
________________

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 - LINKS MAY NOT BE LIVE - COPY AND PASTE INTO YOUR BROWSER

Wow. What can be said about what is going on in the markets this week? Gold advanced into the $936 range and then back down. The dollar is up and the Euro is sliding. And the stock markets of the world are near crash mode. On a better note, I am slathering on golden Orange Ginger body lotion and breathing in the aroma deeply so I can go to one of my happy places until this mess sorts itself out. (You can get that at Bath and Body Works if you’d like to give it a try).


News this past week included some about the dredge piles in Breckenridge that the city bought last year and put into their “Open Space” program. According to one of the Planning Committee members, classifying the rocks and removing the dirt that bears gold is not allowed. Neither is gold panning or sluicing allowed. There are several people who are trying to get involved with modifying this attitude, but until we can resolve this issue, you cannot prospect for gold in the dredge piles that are in Breckenridge’s Open Space. The Denver club was successful in getting Jefferson County to allow our gold prospecting activities in their open space a few years ago, so this issue is not closed. Give us some time to work on it and perhaps next season we will have better news about it. (Dang, it’s a bunch of rocks, people!)


I noticed that the goldnstore page is not showing, so I will be spending a little time to see what is up with that. I purchased a shopping cart this past week, and as soon as I can get that working, I’ll be replacing it anyway. It’s a wonder that someone hasn’t told me about it before now.


Also, I was online this past week and watched as someone tried to send for panning tips and DIY bucket classifier instructions without a name or e-mail address to send it to. Folks, you can give me any name you want……Fido will do, but unless I have an e-mail address to send the request to, you can’t get it. I had to watch as this person sent the form in 4 times within 5 minutes. Honestly, I don’t want your e-mail address so I can send you a bunch of stuff you don’t want. I DO wish that some of you would respond to this blog and tell people you don’t get spammed by me. Please? You can post a comment at the bottom of this blog and it will go to get moderated by me and then posted. I only moderate so that I don’t have someone posting profanity I don’t have control over.


Did you find any gold this past week? How about this past summer? Respond to any of the blogs that are about finding gold, and it will get posted for others to read. I don’t care where you found your gold, just give a few lines about what you found in what state. You don’t need to give away your special spot or anything.


Have you visited any of the gold prospecting AUCTION pages? You’ll find 4 of them under AUCTIONS on the menu bar. E-Bay has a lot to offer you for really good prices. Check them out for Christmas and buy something that your favorite prospector would love to have.


Well, our golden fall weather is getting pretty cold today and the weekend looks like it will be pretty chilly, too. Kinda puts a hold on all of our gold prospecting activities, but we are hopeful that November will give us a few nice days to go looking for gold. I know for those in Australia, their season is winding down, too, as most of it is done in the winter months when weather isn’t so HOT. Halloween is just around the corner, and that means Christmas isn’t far behind. Gold and Sterling Silver Jewelry is a great gift for anyone on your list. Until next week, as always,


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.
_______________________________________
Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley Weilnau
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)

Hooked on Gold Gazette 10/03/08

Sterling Silver Gold Nugget Ring sz 9
$205.00 shipping included


$9.00 & $18.00
Gold Panner Prospecting Scenes

18K REAL gold accents

Pyrite Panner $8.00, Geode & Pewter Figures $15.00

Geode $32.00, Amethyst Wagon Wheel $26.00

Sluice Box and Blue Agate $45.00

Free Shipping on most items

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $834.80
· Spot price last Gazette: $877.80
________________

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

So how about that gold swing this week, eh? Up around 925 again and then back to where it is now. There was better news with Wachovia today as they accepted a buy out from Wells Fargo that did NOT include Federal money.

OK, it does look pretty bad out there, but few of us remember the G.D., so I thought I would share a list I saw earlier this week with you.

In the crash of 1929 the Dow Jones industrials plunged 40% in two months; this time around it has taken a year to fall 22%.
The jobless rate jumped to 25% by 1933; it is little more than 6% today.
The gross domestic product shrank by 25% during the early 1930s; it is up over 3% during the past year.
Consumer prices fell by about 30% from 1929 to 1933; and the last time I looked they were still rising.
Home prices dropped more than 30% during the Depression vs. about 16% today.
Some 40% of all mortgages were delinquent by 1934 compared with 4% today.
In the 1930s, more than 9,000 banks failed compared with fewer than 20 over the past couple of years.

AND gold was priced at $17.00 an ounce. There are pictures of lines of people on the South Platte here in Denver panning for gold or using sluice boxes to eke out some gold dust to buy a loaf of bread during the Great Depression, and accomplishing it. Colorado has weathered these things pretty well over the years, and I expect we will this time, too. Gold and Silver do well in times of crises, so I would suggest you find you some or buy a few bullion coins just in case. Heck, they’re nice just to collect!

Hey, has anybody been watching platinum lately? It closed today at $962.00 with news that the auto industry will require less platinum for car production. Build fewer cars with catalytic converters, and what cha think happens to the price of platinum? Copper is way down, too, what with fewer homes being built. Maybe those copper thieves will leave homes being built alone for a while. Oh, yah. There ARE none.

There was one other important thing I saw. Spending and money bills are required by the constitution of the United States to be introduced by the House of Representatives. So how come the spending bill that just passed today was started in the Senate? Has the Senate overstepped their authority? They also put in provisions to prevent the judiciary from prosecuting them or the Secretary of Finance. I’m pretty sure they only did that ‘cause they know it was illegal for the Senate to start this bill. Remember that both your Presidential candidates voted FOR this bill.

Is this good for gold? Most analysts say most probably. The dollar is up, though, and gold is back down. How long can that happen after 1 trillion additional dollars have been printed? Some are saying this is stop gap until the new administration is in office. I don’t know, but I still think I’ll buy a few more gold coins for Christmas.

GPOC’s regular meeting will be this next Wednesday night, and they will be electing their next year’s offices. I know that our present President will be leaving us and want to say what a most excellent job he has done for us the past three years. Eric Vesterby has to be one of the all time great presidents GPOC has ever had. I have been a member for about 18 years, and I have to say, things have run pretty smoothly under his wing. His cool head when things got tough to handle, and his all around command of things has served us well. We will miss your leadership, your good nature, your patience and above all your friendship to all who are members of this organization. Maybe now you can find the time to go prospecting with everyone who has asked you over the years, and you could not find time for, with all your commitments and duties for GPOC. Our next president has very big boots to fill.

And now, I will return you to your regular program and say farewell until next week. I won’t promise my soapbox will be put away, what with all the political stuff going on, but I will try to bring you some interesting news that does pertain to gold and prospecting, as well as your daily life. I’ll be working with the store pages this week, getting pictures up and links solidified. I could not believe I was putting up the November calendar today and seeing how close it is to Thanksgiving. That means Christmas is around the corner and you will be looking for gifts for that special prospector in your life. We still have a wonderful supply of prospector scenes to choose from, and if we run out here, we can have one delivered to you a couple of days later than I can get them to you from my house. My supplier is really fast on deliveries. Anyone looking for gold nugget jewelry can visit the jewelry pages found under goldnstore as subpages on the menu on that page. I will also be updating the calendars I have on Cafepress to ‘09’s with new pictures. That’s it for this 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.
_______________________________________
Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley Weilnau
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.

A Golden Fall in Colorado

HERE THEY ARE AS PROMISED Golden Fall Aspens in Colorado

WOW! What a contrast of gold and green!

Gold and Orange Apsens

Golden Aspens against Crystal Blue Skies

We found a lot of Aspens with a Cherry Red tinge

A Golden Canope above your head

Golden Aspens with the Promise of Winter the Background

Ok, I promised I would post the Aspen pictures today, and so I am doing that for you to see the beautiful scenes we saw this past weekend in the Cache Creek area. People were still running all over the piles and digging in the pits and finding gold. New gold panners came in for a lesson, and highbankers and sluice boxes were running full tilt. Water is still not an issue in the area and people are taking advantage of the wonderful weather while they can. We took a walk to check out some more areas and to possibly find another area to find gold. Several are looking good! While the V.P. candidates debate this evening, I'm sitting here putting up pictures and getting a word or two to you while I listen to what they have to say. I have a report on our metal detecting trip for next week, so stay tuned to see what we did and what we found, and a few pictures.

Crisp air is on its' way this next week, so be sure you have that jacket if you are out in the field. We will be on our way out our door on Saturday to find gold in the high country. After spending a couple of days sitting with my youngest grandson, and then back home to try to begin to get the house under control after a summer of being out and about, I will be ready to get out into the field this weekend to find some more gold. This winter may have a lot of cleaning and separating.......and I just MIGHT clean and separate stuff in the HOUSE, too. LOL! Newsletter tomorrow.

Good Prospecting to You,

Shirley Weilnau

Highbanking Cache Creek for Gold

Finding gold at Cache Creek the first week in September. Warm, sunny days were with us as well as some mighty fine company.

Here are Sam and Larry at the end of the second day with the hole opened up twice what it was.

There are the two 'bankers side by side. The one on the right is the 15 year old and the one on the left saw its' second year.

We struck water on day four.

Last Day. Boy are we tired!!!

I got to make a golden visit to sit with my youngest grandson Monday and Tuesday this week while his daycare sitter has shoulder surgery, so I’m a little late getting to the blog. I wanted to tell you more about our highbanking trip early in September, AND get some gorgeous fall pictures posted, with all the golds, oranges, and reds of the aspens. Oh, yeah, some gold prospecting pictures, too.

We actually did end up with 5 really wonderful days for highbanking. I’m gonna have to hold back a bit, though, as Rock and Gem magazine wants me to write a couple of articles for them on gold prospecting this next year, and this trip will be one of them. Can’t send them anything that was published anywhere else, either, so I’ll have to be careful with my wording and what pictures I use. I can tell you that our old level in the big hole got buried under a ton of rock and ‘banker tailings, so we were not able to work on the level that produced so much gold for us last year. However, someone dug under the little tree we had spent over a year trying to keep people out of and toppled it over. So, we decided to take the rest of the material out from under it. We spent the beginning of each day throwing off rock for an hour before we could even dig. If your aren’t doing that, too, your not securing your site from rocks falling in on you. DO NOT DIG UNDER THE ROCKS WITHOUT THROWNG THEM OFF!!! We REALLY do not want to dig you out or to hear that someone has been buried under them.

Anyway, after we secured the work area, we began digging out the dirt that was under the rocks down to the first clay layer and found decent color. A few bigger pieces came out, as you saw in the blog that was posted while we were away. However, the gold volume was a third (yes, you read me right ONE THIRD) what we took out last year on the level that is even with the creek. We even dug down to try to find it again and hit water. It’s still there, but it will probably be next year before we get it uncovered again. In the mean time, we want all of you to make sure you process all that stuff on top so we don’t have as much shoveling to do when we get back to it. And don’t be digging any further down in the gravels,’ cause WE WANTS IT ALL!!!!! LOL!

We also hear that the BLM will be removing a few more trees next year, but we guess it might be quite q few what with all the pines infested with those D****** beetles. The Dillon area looked grim when we went through there this last weekend with the trees already shedding their needles. One lightning strike will have the forests of Colorado consumed in a fire that will probably e impossible to stop. The wildlife will not be able to escape, either. And so now you know what Mother Nature really thinks, don’t you.

I have an announcement to make to all of you. The site is getting high enough rankings in the search engines that I am getting requests for paid onsite advertising. You’ll see some text links that go to external sites that have paid me a fee to link them. Most of them are relevant to the words, but a few have requested odd text links, so don’t be surprised if you get taken somewhere you didn’t want to go. I will try to make them as relevant as possible, but you know how it goes in the advertising biz, and, besides, it makes a couple of bucks for me to put toward the hosting fees for the site.

That’s about it for today. I should have another blog posting for you before Friday. The newsletter will probably have a bit of commentary, (I’ll keep it brief, don’t worry), about some of the information I found on the bailout, etc. this past week. Oh, and any of you who think you would get $425,000 if the government gave the AIG bailout to you, buy a new calculator, ’cause the one you used to check it out with isn’t working any better than the one the person who started this nonsense used. Oh, you say you didn’t check the numbers? And you though it was only politicians that lied. Silly you.

Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley Weilnau (That’s Madam Queen, to you) MQS

P.S. Didn't get the Fall pictures up, cause they're still in the camera!!!!!

Hooked on Gold Gazette 9/26/08

Cache Creek Fall Colors from 2007







· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $877.80
· Spot price last Gazette: $871.80
________________

Calendar of Events
SEPTEMBER
· 1st - LABOR DAY
· 10th – GPOC General Meeting
· 12th – 14th Denver Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show Panning Demo with GPOC
· 30th – Last Day for Motorized Equipment on the Arkansas River in Colorado
OCTOBER
· 1st – Arkansas River is now closed to motorized equipment until March 1st
· 8th – GPOC General Meeting
· 31st - Halloween
_______________________________________
NEWS

FALL is sure here, but we are having temperatures in the 80’s this week here in Denver. It looks to be dry and warm for the next week to 10 days. Since it will be nice weather, we are escaping for a day up to B.V. to finish up closing up camp and do some prospecting…….and picture taking. The Apsens should be in prime color.

Gold is showing positive this week with it reaching above $900 several times. Stock market isn’t sure what it thinks and the bailout……well…...your guess is as good as anyone’s in Congress. Oh, here’s an oldy but goody, “If con is the opposite of pro, what does that make congress the opposite of?” LOL! Are you ready for the debates tonight?

Get ready for the Arkansas River to close to motorized equipment for the winter early this next week on Oct. 1st. Cache Creek will be open until November 30th. Yeah, I know. The summer is over and we don’t have many days left to find gold with. I have a bunch of magazines and new books to catch up on and read, but not quite yet.

Wow! It seems like there isn’t much to write about. Remember when we had water so high on the Arkansas River in July that the rafters couldn’t get a raft under the bridge below the numbers? With B.V. already having had 5 inches of snow in September, we may be in for another winter with lots of snow. Then again, Mother Nature may throw us a curve and make it a mild winter. I haven’t had time to look and the sunspot activity reports lately to know what to expect. I’m sure I will be wearing my sweats and gloves to pan out cons whatever it does.

I’ll have pictures for you of what Cache Creek looks like after the trees were removed next week. I’m also anxious to see how much more dirt has been moved since the first of the month. Sounds like there was another incident up there right after we left. This time we know who it is and this person has been a problem in the past. Shouting matches and bad manners simply have no place in public. If you don’t like the rules, go somewhere else! We’ve worked d***** hard to keep what we have open for the public. We’d all appreciate it if some people would not do whatever they can to ruin it for the rest of us.

That’s it for this week. Remember to check out the new GPOC website at www.gpoc.com. Watch the blog this next week as I get more pictures and reports written about our September trip. Until then.

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: 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 opened TO MOTORIZED EQUIPMENT until October 1st.
_______________________________________
Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley Weilnau
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.

Cache Creek-Signs to the Gold Area

Sign at the Parking Lot Entrance

Kiosk in Parking Lot

Signs at the Entrance to the Road and Then the Gate

Thought you might get a kick out of seeing the new signs up at Cache Creek. We will be back up this weekend to finish closing up camp, and we have friends up at Cache Creek that we will stop in and say “Hi” to, as well as get some pictures of the area and the trees that have been removed.

The Kiosk is too big for me to get all of the words big enough for you to read online, but I may get around to transcribing them into a word doc and publishing them for you later. Right now, we will make a few weekend trips to B.V. while the weather is still good and look at property for sale in town. Who knows what might turn up. It’s as good an excuse as any to get out of the city and we will probably do a little gold panning and metal detecting if the weather holds.

Gold is bouncing around this week, but has still managed to stay above $875. I am still hearing noises like it will make it to $1500 by the end of January. Speaking of gold, I just remembered that we finished cleaning up the cons from the September trip and the total was about 6 grams for 5 days. We did better last year when we could get to the layer at the creek level. When we uncovered it a few weeks ago, it was under water. BUMMER!

Watch for the newsletter tomorrow afternoon. Until then

Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley Weilnau

BLM Tree Removal at Cache Creek

I had been busy downloading and resizing pictures this week so I can get a series of blogs up on what we did in September, when I remembered that the BLM, with the assistance of GPOC, is at Cache Creek today removing trees that are diseased along the side creek where all of the gold prospecting work has been going on recently. Removal of these trees will make the area safer to work in, as well as getting rid of trees that already have Aspen canker and pine beetle infestation.


The ridge above the area is already red and brown with the beetles that have burrowed into pine trees and left larva that eat the inside bark so the trees cannot get water or nutrients to the leaves. While we have been debating about whether to remove some trees from the area or not, Mother Nature has made the decision for us.


On a better note, however, when the gold prospectors are finished finding gold and we are in the reclaimation part of the site, we can replant the area with healthy trees, hopefully after the beetles have done their damage and flown off to “greener” pastures. Hopefully there are pictures that someone took today that I can share with you later. While we wanted to be there, the “j*o*b” said otherwise.


I have been fiddling with the Facebook page I started last December and have put some more information and pictures up. You can find it at facebook.com and look up my name, if you have an interest. Add me as a friend and let me know by e-mail that you are a prospecting friend. Some of the people who ask to be friends are not exactly “appropriate”, if ya know what I mean. It’s a fun way to communicate and get conversations and discussions going.

Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley Weilnau

HookedonGold Gazette 9/19/08

Two of the Fabulous Gold Nuggets shown at the Denver Gem, Mineral and Fossil Show. WOW!

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $871.80
· Spot price last Gazette: $829.90
________________

Calendar of Events

SEPTEMBER
· 1st - LABOR DAY
· 10th – GPOC General Meeting
· 12th – 14th Denver Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show Panning Demo with GPOC
· 30th – Last Day for Motorized Equipment on the Arkansas River in Colorado

OCTOBER
· 1st – Arkansas River is now closed to motorized equipment until March 1st
· 8th – GPOC General Meeting
· 31st - Halloween
_______________________________________
NEWS

Boy has a lot happened since my last Gazette! Gold spot price has been near $750 and back above $900. The DOW has been on a rollercoaster as well, and we now have nearly a trillion dollars loaned out to the financials who apparently can’t add and subtract even as well as you and I. In case you aren’t aware of what the 50 billion coming out of the Exchange Stabilization Fund is, it comes out of the U.S. gold reserves. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all wipe away our bad decision debts as easily as some of them have? Oh well, at least we all make enough to be able to bail out the institutions who lend US money.? AND pay their debt back along with our own.

Did you get a chance to see the fabulous gold specimens that were shown at the Denver Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show last weekend? That big nugget shown in the picture at the top was at Colorado Nuggets and is around 116 ounces and came out of Colombia. Pretty impressive! The other picture is a piece of gold showed by Collectors Edge that looks like a pinecone. GREAT show and we were all VERY busy showing the public how to pan for gold with GPOC. Oh, by the way. GPOC’s website is now back up and running, and you can view it al www.gpoc.com That also means that our pages will come down soon that held the GPOC pages.

I wanted to take some time today to thank all of you who read my blog and visit my site regularly. I met a lot of you in the field this year, and was surprised by how many people out there already knew about the site. Last year about one in 10 people had heard about it, but this year it was closer to one in three! You are all a great bunch of people and I an honored to have you want to keep up with what is going on with Hooked on Gold. Hopefully we bring you some interesting news most weeks and keep you up to date with some of what goes on in the mining world. Thanks again, and may you find that big gold nugget somewhere in the world you explore. I always hear “Are ya rich yet?” and I have to say “yes, yes, we are”.

Kitco has had a run on silver coins this last week and has upped its’ bid or buyback amount on Silver Maples and Eagles. Gold and silver will continue to be a safe haven for some of your assets. Besides, they are just so darn purty to look at! I saw an article today about a coin store near me. They are having trouble keeping older rare gold or silver coins in stock and were urging anyone with gold coins to come in and sell them. Can’t imagine why you might do that right now, but if you’ve a mind to, you might want to go and see what your local coin dealer is offering to buy coins for. This store said they were paying a premium. Now, I’m not sure what that means, but I’m also pretty sure they have to make a profit, so maybe they aren’t giving what they are worth. What do you think? I haven’t checked out e-Bay recently, but you used to be able to sell them there at a pretty good price.

The Comex raised the margin price for gold today by a whopping 47%! They cited accelerating gold prices as the reason. Gold also rose AND fell the largest percentages in its’ history….all within a couple of days! The Bull is in the house, but I’m afraid I still think the Bear will stare him down. It ain’t over yet. Well that’s about all I got today. See you next week, and watch the blog for some more stories about our Sept. adventures.

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: 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 opened TO MOTORIZED EQUIPMENT until October 1st.
_______________________________________
Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley Weilnau
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.

Gold surges upward

Denver Gem and Mineral Show has come and gone, and after 10 days of placer mining and metal detecting, one of packing everything up and getting things ready for the winter, and one to do laundry before spending four days in booths, I had to take a couple of days to catch up on SLEEP and rest. Today was a busy day for me and for my favorite metal GOLD. What with the financial markets tanking again today, there is a lot of fleeing into gold and silver, and gold is up over $100.00……TODAY! $886 as I write.

Christmas is coming in a few months, and while I know you aren’t ready to let go of summer yet, (first day of fall is Tuesday?) I wanted to remind you that we have lots of items for prospector gifts in our gold ‘n’ store, so pop on over and take a look. I have another gallery to put up of jewelry that has more on it than is showing right now, so come back in a day or so and see what else we have on hand. You can also order anything on the extended jewelry pages at about 40 % off the price that may be quoted on a page other than what we have in stock. I work with a company that has been in business for 42 years and takes great pride in their nugget, gold in white quartz, gold in black quartz and silver ore jewelry in 14 K gold or sterling silver. Lots to choose from. Mining scenes, too. Something for every prospector on your list starting at $5.00.

After Gold in the Colorado Mountains

Tossing Rocks for an Hour or so at Cache Creek so we had enough dirt to move. (That's Larry and Sam) Everyone keeps throwing rocks out onto unrun dirt. The walls can be steep with a ton of rock above your head. We saw holes dug in farther than a shovel is long and about as round as a small man can hunch over to scrap the back. PEOPLE THIS IS DANGEROUS. YOU ARE RISKING HAVING THESE ROCKS FALL IN ON YOU AND KILLING OR MAIMING YOU FOR A FEW GRAMS OF GOLD! Gold price is around $24.00 a gram right now and not worth a trip to the hospital.



Our final week in the field is over, and we are headed home. By the time I post this, we will be unloaded and resting before gong to bed in our king size bed in Arvada.


Our last day at Cache Creek was warm, dry and beautiful with aspens looking a little crisp, hinting at the gold color to come and more of those azure blue nearly cloudless skies. The colder weather stayed far to the east along the Front Range, and gave is some wonderful days in the September sunshine. What a week. We found about 3.5 grams of Cache Creek gold in our firsts with a little left in the cons after five days of highbanking. The metal detectors brought us a few more pieces of specimen grade gold, although the pieces were smaller than previously found. Still, worth the days of walking and digging.

We are tired, but still not looking forward to going back to the daily grind. April seems a long way off, and yet it is a mere 7 months away. The Denver Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show starts tomorrow and the Arkansas River will close to motorized equipment at the end of September, only about 3 weeks from today. The holes at Cache Creek have advanced at an amazing rate, and anyone who was not there this year would be shocked at the amount of material moved this season. The BLM is planning on removing some of the trees on Sept. 25th, hopefully with help from GPOC. Thursday may be a difficult day for working stiffs to take a day off to move 50 or more trees, but they will try to have people there to help. We are out of days to take off, and so will not be joining in the work.

Thursday through Sunday will be work days for me at the Gem Show, and so this week’s newsletter will not be published. However, I will fill you in as I have time with blog postings and some pictures of Cache Creek and some of the holes dug there.

Gold spot price is DOWN today with the stronger dollar and lower price of oil. Its’ lowest point was at $748.70 and is now hovering around $750. Does this mean that gold prices will stay down or go lower? Well, in the short term they may fall some more, but in the long term, the dollar does not look like it will stay up, which will send gold prices back up. When? Who knows for sure. I DO know that bailing out Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae is a mistake that is going to cost you and me really BIG money, and that could help to make the dollar fall again. What do you suppose might happen if both of these giants go bankrupt even with the government bailout? Yeah, I know. Blame George Bush who has control of the Congress and the Federal Reserve. NOT!

Have a GREAT weekend. I’ll talk at you some more in a day or so….maybe four.

Good Prospecting to You,
MQS Shirley
http://www.hookedongold.com/
info@hookedongold.com

Cache Creek Gold in September

A Cache Creek Picker! Should have took the picture from the other side, 'cause that side was all yellow. Looks like some iron rock still attached, but still a nice gold nugget!

I see that gold is up a bit right now to $801, but still down from its' highs in July.

If any of you have thought that the fall might be a little less busy at Cache Creek, you would only be slightly correct. The parking lot has been full with gold seekers every day this week, although we have heard that there were fewer people there Labor Day weekend. Since the weekends have been so busy, a lot of folks have decided to come in to find their gold during the week instead. Us, too. Hmmm. We might need to change that.


I thought you might like to see this beauty that was found on Wednesday…….in our hole, but not by us. We invited a couple of new people to dig in our hole who had been sluicing for a day or two and hadn’t found much, so we told them to take some material from where we had been digging. We hate it when people don’t find gold! Not to worry. While the biggest piece of gold wasn’t in our ‘banker, we did come away with some real nice yellow colored metal.


The weather, by the way, has been some of the nicest we have had all summer, and the aspens and willows are being their annual seasonal change from green to golden yellow. It’s a little cool in the mornings, but sunny most of the time and pleasant. The only time it isn’t so nice is when old sol goes under and cloud and you are wet. If the wind is blowing some at the time, it can be down right bone chilling! However, pulling up a nice string in your pan helps to warm your heart and everyone around comes to see what you have found. I have to say, that there is STILL some very nice gold coming out of the area.


A cold front slid into Colorado last night, and so we are taking a day for rest and book shopping. Lucky you. You get a blog put up to read. Aren’t you special!? YES, you are to me. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t bother to think about taking these pictures to post and to talk to you today. Have a great one….I know I will.


Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley MQS
http://www.hookedongold.com/

P.S. The e-mail IS working again. I have had many requests coming in and even some dreaded “Spam”, too. Thanks for your requests and thanks for your questions, too.

Hooked on Gold Gazette 08/29/08

Strange faces can be seen all around the Arkansas River Valley. This old fellow looks to have a tale to tell, don't you think? Notice how the rock is chipped away from the right hand side of the beard. These smooth areas on the rock are not in character with the rest of the rock in the area. Whodunit? Man or Mother Nature?

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $829.90
· Spot price last week: $822.40
________________

Calendar of Events
SEPTEMBER
· 1st - LABOR DAY
· 10th – GPOC General Meeting
· 12th – 14th Denver Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show Panning Demo with GPOC
· 30th – Last Day for Motorized Equipment on the Arkansas River in Colorado
_______________________________________
NEWS

Labor Day weekend is upon us and our last big push to find gold. While we will have many weekends that will still be warm enough for gold prospecting, this next week will be our last week out and about without work interfering with our progress. If you have not seen it, scroll on down after you have finished with the newsletter to read about all of the website problems and fixes for today and this past week. Suffice it to say that the e-mail has been down for what looks like the last 12 days or so. I did go in this morning and was able to fix it, so if you were one of the many who did not get your information or an answer to your e-mail, please try us again. I was able to get e-mail messages and form requests sent to myself, so it looks to be fixed.

Has it been as quite around your house as it has been in ours the past two weeks? We find our favorite buttons on the clicker have been the mute and off buttons for the last 6 to 8 weeks. Tired of all the political ads running. We are, too. Nuff said! I HAVE been busy reading some very interesting books on some of our favorite areas while I am waiting for T.V. to return to normal, and by the looks of things I should get several read before the November elections. Should be good fodder for a few more articles to post for you to read.

If anyone (Paul) can think of a subject they would like to see an article on, let me know. I certainly would like to write about something people are interested in. The winters can be long and researching some information can lead to all sorts of ideas, so don’t hesitate to make a suggestion. It’s probably right up my gold pan. (One of the big military ‘copters just flew over my house, a left over from the DNC.) Gunny (He’s in Iraq for those of you who know him), check out www.icmj.com to keep up to date. (If the link does not work, copy and paste it into your browser.) Joel, try the e-mail address again. Sorry if you got the undeliverable message. I really don’t know what happened to it.

A caution about old mines; Three friends were killed this past May in a mine in the Sierras that they had entered. The cause of their deaths was due to carbon monoxide poisoning. They were the first deaths reported in that area since the early 1900’s. Gold is nice, and it can bring you some change, but it isn’t worth your life. Stay out of abandoned mines and stay alive. If the poisonous gas doesn’t get you the water or the deteriorated walls and ceilings may.

For all you out there searching for treasure, gold and silver, beware the Hundredth Monkey theory. (Reply to this post for the answer)

Gold is back up a bit with a weaker dollar, and the stock market still hasn’t made up its’ mind on what to do. Think I’ll wait until it does before I start risking the 401K again. Retirement from this job comes in spring next year, and we don’t need to be without enough to play with.

Oh, and by the way, there will be no newsletter for the next two weeks. First week we will be out of town……second week I’ll be working the Denver Gem Mineral and Fossil Show at the Denver Merchandise Mart. GPOC will have their panning troughs set out, so come on out and for a day of amazing things to see and do.

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 opened TO MOTORIZED EQUIPMENT until October 1st.
_______________________________________
Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley Weilnau
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 e-Mail is Back Up and Running

info@hookedongold.com is now back up an running. Sorry for any inconvenience you may have had in getting your panning instructions or in contacting us for any other gold prospecting information! More on this at the bottom of this blog.

10 inches of snow on Mt. Evans and the smell of fall in the air two weeks ago make me realize that gold prospecting season will be at an end for another year before I know it. This morning was chilly for Denver at the end of August, and my hands were cold for the first time since the first of June. We will be making our last week long trip to camp for this season and the weather looks to be a lot more favorable than it has all summer. We are looking forward to warm days and cool evenings in the mountains as we look for gold and hopefully find enough to make our winter warmer with the thoughts of the summer before.


We have met many wonderful people this year, and many were from website contacts. What fun to be recognized in the field with a floppy hat and dirty clothes on! Yeah, I know. I don’t exactly look the part. But then, that’s part of the fun, too. Not many people would take me for someone who digs dirt for fun and entertainment, or for someone who maintains a website with information about gold prospecting.


Speaking of maintaining a website, if any of you have tried to contact us through the website e-mail address, I found out just yesterday that there was a pathway error. Now, I’ve been e-mailing and on the Internet almost since its’ inception, and I have NEVER had this type of error develop with a VALID e-mail address before. I’ve had quite a few with many different hosts over the years and can’t imagine how this happened. I announced it on the website yesterday, and went in today to cancel the current one, retype it exactly as it was, and reinstate it exactly as it was. All of the pathways are now showing correctly and all of the forms are getting e-mail out again. I cannot think of why the error occurred and am thinking that only the ethernet gods know why. Anyway, it is all working again and if you requested information in August or tried to contact us with the web e-mail, please try again…….and again. I was successful in sending myself e-mail and information requests off of the form. I am SOOOOO sorry if you had a problem with it. I try to troubleshoot these things as soon as they come up, but it is NEVER soon enough for the one who didn’t get through.

ALSO, gold'n'store is semi back up and running. You will find links to the product description pages on the gold'n'store home page with pictures to come as I have time to resize and put them back up. I will add more of the gifts with prospecting themes in October, and DO check out the prospecting auctions for any items you want to add to your prospecting equipment, GOLD, too.

As always,

Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley Weilnau MQS

Hooked on Gold Gazette 08/22/08

Here is an early morning arrival at the Cache Creek parking lot. She had a companion that stepped out of the woods on the left just after we put the camera away. Could have been this year's fawn.

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $822.40
· Spot price last week: $786 and change
________________

Calendar of Events
SEPTEMBER
· 1st - LABOR DAY
· 10th – GPOC General Meeting
· 12th – 14th Denver Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show Panning Demo with GPOC
· 30th – Last Day for Motorized Equipment on the Arkansas River in Colorado
_______________________________________
NEWS

Gold! How the mighty have fallen! In case you missed last week’s close on Friday, it was down in the $786 range. The dollar rallied late last week by nearly 5 cents to send the yellow metal tumbling past its’ price supports. This week it is back up above $800, but still well below the $850 mark. If it does not make its’ move soon, there is little chance it will see $1200 by year’s end. However, as you saw last week, that can change on a dime so don’t count it out quite yet.


Finding gold this year has been really tough. The weather trends have been against us most of the summer, and it seems that just about the time we come home, the sun comes out, the skies clear, and we hit a stretch of hot weather. Such is the way of luck. We had plenty of time out, but spent much of it in or volunteering our time. The 10 inches of snow that fell last weekend portends possibly of an early winter, and what with all of the rain in the high country we went through this year, we certainly are not looking forward to Indian Summer being cut short. We do hope that the cold snap has cleared out all of the mosquitos and biting flies that have plagued us all summer. Still, we did find gold, and will have more opportunities to find more. Wish us luck!

I am having trouble getting my msn browser to open the website. If anyone else is experiencing this, reply to this blog or info@hookedongold.com and let me know. (Blogger has a problem letting these links go live, so you might need to copy and paste them into your browser)

Many new things are going on up at Cache Creek. We had two sessions with the BLM and much was accomplished. The biggest concern was the trees in the area. The BLM had their forrester out to assess the area, and he found that many of the trees are not in very good shape. Many of the Aspens have aspen canker and the lodgepoles and spruces are being hit with pine beetle. They may look for a volunteer group to clear dead trees and leave for firewood to be used in the area, but that has not been decided. The Kiosk was put up and the Arkansas Headwaters Group put up a sign at the parking lot concerning camping and day use, and BLM ranger has been in ticketing anyone camping in the day use parking lots.

The parking lot was expanded to the west across the road. An area was leveled off more to accommodate about 6 vehicles, if they are parked in along the sides and back. It was decided that this solution would be better than expanding the existing parking lot to the east since people have been using the west area anyway.

Another item that all agreed would be a good thing was to have a kind of camp host, like you have in the Forest Service campgrounds, to assist with information and help new people with how and what to do. You will still need to pack your trash out as these people will not be camping onsite, but probably in and out each day. We will be looking for volunteers to help with this program this winter, and we have several who have already expressed interest.

The issue of porta potties is still being considered. Since many groups, such as hikers and hunters, also use the area, the BLM did not think their department alone should foot the bill for these. There seems to be many areas that are as difficult as Cache Creek to get in and out of that have had porta potties put in and maintained.

Wow! That didn’t take long to spit out. Watch the blog for more pictures and descriptions on what we did the first of August. I’ll be getting the Colorado State Gold Panning championships list on the GPOC page this next week as well as some other updates that need posting. Store should get some new items back up, oh, and if you haven’t checked out the auction pages yet, you SHOULD! I took a look at them myself today and found several items I would have liked to bid on. However, I’m not allowed to click through anything on my pages from my computer. BUMMER! I had to pull up e-Bay and go looking for what was already listed on my pages! You will find links to the other auction pages at the top of the GOLD AUCTIONS page. It will take you to four other specialty pages on prospecting equipment, and metal detectors. Can't find what you are looking for? You can type it into the search box at the top of the auction listings and find it. That’s all for this week. Get out there and find some gold before old man winter sets in!

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 .

Until next week……
___________________________________
If you find a broken link, please let us know
THE ARKANSAS RIVER is now opened TO MOTORIZED EQUIPMENT until October 1st.
_______________________________________
Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley Weilnau
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.

Mt. Antero Aquamarines

Where to start in catching up? How about with mighty Mt. Antero and our search for Aquamarines with Brian Buschy and company. That's Mt. Antero's peak in the distance, and the slope, as you can see, is near verticle. Colorado gold and aquamarines is our quest, and making that happen is our challenge. Brian has invited us up for a day, but you can book a tour of the mine with Fun Time Jeep Tours at the Prospectors Village, right next to the Rock Doc, in Nathrop, Colorado.

Now, I know that we are all about gold, but I must tell you about one of our trips this last week. Under azure blue skies that faded into brilliant turquoise, we spent a day in the Mt. Antero area searching for aquamarines on a friend’s claim high in the mountains south of Buena Vista. OMG! What a fabulous experience!

That's the mine looking back from about half way down

While this trip was not for the faint of heart, or weak of body, it was exhilarating. (That's the mine where the blue specs are) The mountain views from near the peak of Mt. Antero, one of the fourteeners, was beyond compare, and I am hoping the pictures capture the colors as well as they were seen. Anyone who knows me has seen the gold ring I wear that sports a band cast from Arkansas River gold dust, nuggets from two areas in Colorado, a Kelsey Diamond, (Yes, we have diamonds in Colorado) and, yes, an Aquamarine from the Mt. Antero area. (Mt. Whites, to be exact. It sits just behind Antero). We found all of the components of the ring including the diamond that we found at the jewelry store already cut. HAHA. Everything else we hunted for and found ourselves. A TRUE Colorado gold and gemstone ring. Now don’t go getting your nose out of joint thinking that Larry has been left out…….his Colorado gold, nugget, and diamond ring is much more impressive, but mine holds the aqua. We had them done for our 25th wedding anniversary, which was quite some time ago, now. Since then we have found a lot more gold, and some very special types of gold from Colorado, but that’s another story.

View above the trail, but the trail looked much the same

So, back to Mt. Antero and hunting aquas. We left camp about 7:00 a.m. to drive up to the trailhead for the big mountain, and then creeped our way up the four wheel drive road for an hour over rocks. At just about timberline we met part of the mining company at their camp. Brian was already digging, so Randy escorted us up the mountain. The climb was steep and the air thin, but we made it without incident. They had also taken pity on us and walked us up the easy trail. Mountain goat Larry would not have had to take this route, but he did so for the ladies present.

That's the crew in the pit with Brian looking at the camera in the center

The last leg up the falls and scree tailings of the mine was almost verticle but we finally got sight of the pit. Buckets of material were screened for aquas and then dumped over the side. Rocks, too. A permafrost layer was uncovered that yielded several deep blue aquas as big as your thumb, and a few that were bigger. The color was as blue as the sky above our heads!!!!! After about 6 hours of digging, we decided we had better get ourselves out of there as the weather had turned colder and grey with the threat of rain. Down the mountain we went and then back down the horrible little rocky road for another hour of bouncing around. Glad we went. Glad to find a bed that night, too. Just look at that sky! Good Prospecting to You,

hookedongold.com