Full Moon on the Gold Claim

It feels like I haven't posted anything for a month now.... Just before we left I was busy sewing up an order of Valentine Owls and packing for our trip. This month we are going down to the claim twice. 4 days down, 2 back in Vegas and then another 4 on the claim... Talk about gold fever...

We just got back to Vegas late last night from our first 4 day stint. The days were long, dirty, and hard but at the end of each day you feel like you've done something.

Our mornings start off with the  chatter of birds around 6am, followed by a 70lbs furry blanket of kisses, begging to go greet the new day.  While the puppies are exploring the campsite for any intruders during the night I start on the fire and breakfast... My favorite breakfast food out here is definitely french toast and summer sausage bites. The french toast cooks up real easy on a cookie sheet turned upside down over the fire grate and while that's cooking I fry up a little summer sausage in my cast iron skillet. Pair that with a nice cup of coffee and the smell of sweet cholla wood burning and you have yourself a beautiful way to start your day... It doesn't hurt when Matt finds a little color in our concentrate bucket to get us motivated for the day either...

Spring has already begun in the Sonoran desert... The birds are taking up residence in any available cacti, a blanket of green covers the rocky ground, and brilliant orange poppy's are popping up through the rough terrain. 

We even have a resident owl that sings us to sleep at night. On our way out we managed to get a glimpse of him before he took off. 

A wise old jackrabbit spends the morning and evening teasing poor Hitch while he snacks on all the fresh grass sprouting up. He comes right up to camp the brave little thing...

We haven't seen too many jackrabbits surprisingly. Our neighbor tells us that's because over by their claim a 200lbs mountain lion is lurking around at night.  As soon as Matt heard that he made sure I had my gun with me at all times... That's a BIG kitty.










This trip we were lucky to get a full moon each night... Absolutely beautiful with the Saguaro cacti guarding the hilltops. We've also learned a thing or two about desert wood... The only decent wood around here to burn for a long hot fire is mesquite. It burns nice and hot and has a mild sweet smell. But the best wood for tender is the Cholla cactus. They grow like trees out here so there is always some old dead cholla laying around. It's actually beautiful wood so I collect the good specimens and the rest I pile by the fire for tender. It produces the sweetest smoke ever. It's really a wonderful scent, it's kinda like my desert perfume now:) 

So we worked wash #2 pretty hard in this section and it's time for us to start moving down... That means shoveling off a few feet of overburden. Matt is a shoveling master thankfully... First you have to move all the smaller rocks and boulders out of the way and then the back breaking shoveling begins. When we first started all of this I could barely  move our 200lbs generator. I had to do it in steps with him. Now I can dead lift the sucker. Who needs a gym when you own a gold claim:)


We found a layer of false bedrock and in between the false layer and the bedrock were some nice gold flake specimens... Not much in the way of consistent gold but the flakes were worth all of the effort to break apart the rocks. We figure if a root can work it's way down so can the gold....

 Just that little section took the better part of our morning to do...

A little farther down from this the wash narrows and bends into another main wash. We are working our way down to the intersection of the two washes... The next four days we hope to move through some serious material... Hopefully we will find some good color in this part of the wash for our PayDirt bags on eBay...

Jenn worked this section hard hoping to find a nice picker under that rock...