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…

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!

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.

On about the fifth time across one of these slopes, and down near the little wash...bam! I found a nice chunk of rock, laced through with gold. Wow! How had I missed this?

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.

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

Making matters worse, we could feel the truck moving very slowly down the mountain along with the trees and mud. It was an uncomfortable sinking feeling, as you might guess.