Pioneer Living 21st Century Style

Day 3: I swear time speeds up when we are working on the claim. The days never seem long enough. We are so busy just trying to survive in the desert that you never have a minute to rest. If I am not cooking, wrangling dogs, cleaning, hauling heavy buckets of rocks up and down hills, or prospecting, I am collecting wood or some other activity. Just as soon as the dinner is off the fire the water buckets go on and when those are done it's time for bed. Apparently, when my head hits the cot I fall right to sleep. Of course this is all hearsay by Matt:) I usually don't even remember the falling asleep part....

 Here is a small sampling of one pan of gold.... While I was cooking breakfast Matt was running the concentrate through the gold wheel. He loves to use the black pans because he thinks when the gold glitters in the sun it looks like the stars against the night sky.... I thought that was an awful sweet way to look at a pan of gold. Nice way to start the morning. Just the motivation we needed to drag our sore bodies back down to the wash.

 The sunsets out here are breathtaking. It's like watching a watercolor painting; every few seconds a new brushstroke as the colors intensify. For me, every sunset is a daily reminder of what awaits us all. A small, fleeting glimpse of heaven.

There just isn't enough hours in the day for me to get everything accomplished. I was able to sneak in a few minutes while dinner was cooking to do a little sewing. Thanks to Matt's thoughtful brother, he got an inverter for Christmas. Matt hooked it up to a marine battery and we were able to charge my sewing machine and our cell phones.