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

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!

He could tell that the top part just slid partway down over the bottom half. So, he tried to twist it apart with his hands. No go!

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

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.

…being sneaky, I filled in the hole, and buried therein some trash items that I had previously found, just to discourage any other detectorist that might come along.

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.