Field Notes-Day 2 Gold Claim

An explosion of warm, melted chocolate, and gooey marshmallow just assaulted my taste-buds... The perfect way to end another long day.

About five feet behind Matt I discovered two angry Rattlesnakes fussing at me.... 

We are so ready to hit the sack. Just waiting on my bath water to boil so we can call it a night. It was very hard to sleep last night while 30+ mph winds bombarded our canvas wall tent. The whole thing was shaking and the dogs were too cold to sleep by themselves so all four of us are packed on top of two military cots like a can of sardines. The weather channel really needs to focus more on predicting reliable weather forecasts and less on their line of shows and special stories. No mention of wind was in the forecast leading up to our trip... Then the daily forecasts have been off too.  It's funny how they change the forecast hours after you've already been getting blasted by the wind; no kidding geniuses! Needless to say we are ready for the wind to go away. Kind of hard to do much of anything with your gear blowing all over.
We didn't find much gold today. Moved a lot of overburden and sampled some new areas. We ran into town today to get our blower vac serviced. That way we can test out some new areas and not be tied down to base camp. 
We worked today till about 7pm. I headed up to start our spaghetti dinner and Matt decided he had to take a real shower today; not just bathe in our bucket of water. So as the sun is setting there he is stringing up a tarp and taking a shower in Luke warm water heated only by the sun's rays from the day. It was in the 60's with 20mph winds and as soon as that wind hits your wet skin it's Cold!  He felt bright eyed and bushy tailed afterwards. I think i will just stick to my bucket of hot water...
Tomorrow depending on the weather i want to try building a shelter like the Indians used and start fire using an ancient method called the bow drill. Let you know how it turns out:)