Well, the last time I headed out, I decided to go alone. Big mistake. Since I first started my prospecting adventures, I have had both knees and one hip replaced…

…while we were packing up, my wife called for me to help her with something, so I set the pan containing the gold down, off to the side of the parking area.

Sure enough, after hiking a couple miles uphill and hacking through some brush, we found the place just as he had described it.

We all love to see that first glimmer of gold when it peeks out from under the black sand in our pan, or feel the weight of a nugget in our scoop when we dig a good target. But sometimes things don’t go quite so smoothly.

Making matters worse, we could feel the truck moving very slowly down the mountain along with the trees and mud. It was an uncomfortable sinking feeling, as you might guess.