My next strategy was to walk anywhere and everywhere that I had been inside this home and garage. I looked on the floor, in the bathroom, I checked the bathroom trash can, and I even pulled the shower curtain back and looked in the bathtub.

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

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

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.

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.

With one outstretched hand grasping the bottle and the other waving at air, I moved forward feeling for the tent. No tent. No tree.

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…