We started off excited and enthusiastic as we began hiking up the river, daydreaming about finding big gold.

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…

All of this made me have to conclude that those dummies just didn’t know what they were doing. It was a couple of years later before the solution for this puzzle became clear to me.

As I laid in my Jeep and tried to get some rest, I began to realize how tired I was. I felt like a little kid who walked around Disneyland for 12 hours with his parents.

At first we decided to see what the flat by our camp would produce where the old-timers had worked it with their Pelton wheel and dragline buckets.

…I was looking down on what was a frightening 500-foot sheer drop-off. We were precariously close to the edge as the shoulder was practically non-existent.

The dredge and our gear, with us clinging on to the sides, bounced along until it got hung up on a large boulder in the middle of the river.