oldmancoyote1

It's been raining here in the Klamaths for many days. My camper leaks. The only dry spot was my bed.

Looks like a coprolite. See the images from a Google search for coprolite. You're not ****ing us are you Edwardo?

If you are looking for a "personal trommel", consider a google search for Mike's Trommel. It cost me about $100 to build, and it works very well.

I think an important point is just how flexible a cell phone or tablet based system is. As a sometimes iOS programmer I am frustrated by the limited information displayed on my detectors. There are wonderful things I could do if I could import data into one of my iOS devices. As it is easy to import the audio, I am toying with what I might do with it including 3D maps, vertical profiles and trace stacking to reduce noise. There are technical issues, but I think I could overcome some of them. Maybe next winter. I'm hoping to someday see a mainline detector with data-out streams. I'll geek out if I do.

I don't know much about rocks from deep within the earth, but that looks like a garnet-rich rock from the lower crust or upper mantle.

Appropriately named city.

It's often a good idea to check out anything that's different or anywhere there is a change of some kind. Contacts can be a good choice. If it works out, keep at it, but don't push things beyond a reasonable effort. Regarding the photo, you have indicated a contact between a blue soil and a red soil emphasized by a change in topography. It might work out. Try it. Don't overlook the contact between blue and red soil along the upper right corner either. Good luck.

It might be one of those spikes that railroads used to indicate the year when a wooden tie was installed.

Here is my set up. I have replaced the sluice box itself with a Angus MacKirk drop sluice box.

Regarding the slur against Mexico, I live in Mexico half the year. In my personal experience it is no more violent than the U.S. It is regrettable that the further we are from a situation, the further we tend to be from understanding its reality.

About the black Broach or what ever it is. It looks very much like something I found last summer. It was actually a buckle of some sort. If yours is a buckle, do you have any idea about how it was used?

As far as splitting up finding and recovery goes, consider construction flags to mark the location of your finds (stiff wire with a small plastic flag) so you can continue on searching. They are about $10/100. I get mine at the local big box home center.

It has been mentioned elsewhere in this forum, but it's worthwhile to mention again. Historic and current USGS maps are on-line and you can effortlessly overlay one on the other at this site: http://historicalmaps.arcgis.com/usgs/

The presence of iron rust strongly suggest specular hematite.