My mining partner Keith McBride and I spent a week in May working on a twenty-nine man crew split up into six teams at a couple of “pay to mine” mining camps.

I love it when I am in the middle of a high trash area and all the ferrous bars go away, the screen number goes to a three or an eight, and the meter is forty to a hundred. I don’t know for sure that I have found gold, but it narrows the odds down.

" I went on a detecting trip in Northern California a few weeks ago. I called several friends to see who wanted to meet up with me. With an undeniable crispness in the air, I left Redding and started my drive to the goldfields."

The only thing that saved me was talking to a local miner who gave me a “heads up” that private individuals owned all the mineral rights in that section.