Gold probably is one of the easiest things in the world to cheat an absentee owner out of. He would generally have no way of really knowing if a guy had found 3 nuggets or 30 nuggets on his claim.

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.

My right rib cage took the brunt of the blow from the fall, which left me feeling partially paralyzed and in immense pain.

Because waiting for spring seemed to be taking forever, my 15-year-old granddaughter Grace and I decided to pan for gold sooner. The thought was…even if we did not find any gold, we would set a new record for absurdity—gold panning in the coldest weather!

My brother Darryl and I had not had a prospecting adventure since January and we wanted to try out our new drywasher, so we decided to go for the weekend and check out some claims near Barstow…

It all occurred when Gus and I returned to a remote placer gold area where we had previously found really good gold. The problem was that it would take about an hour to walk through the desert to get to it.

The temptation to enter the dark interiors beckoned to me before the day was finished but I resisted.