Circle Of Friends...

[rvpopeye]

Well done Gerry ! 

May your karma pay back arrive before the 25th !  

Those beaches gonna be berry berry good to ya mon . 🥸

[Gerry in Idaho]

6 hours ago, rvpopeye said:

Well done Gerry ! 

May your karma pay back arrive before the 25th !  

Those beaches gonna be berry berry good to ya mon . 🥸

I actually scooped a killer crazy find.  I dug many things in my 50 yrs and this is a 1st for me. I'll try to get it posted in a couple days. 

[rvpopeye]

Instant karma's already got you !👍

And the finds shine on......like the moon and the stars and the sun..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3qvosHHcWc

 

[Gerry in Idaho]

7 hours ago, rvpopeye said:

Instant karma's already got you !👍

And the finds shine on......like the moon and the stars and the sun..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3qvosHHcWc

 

Surrounding myself with like-minded caring Karma people is a great way to live. 

[GB_Amateur]

Thanks for the headsup, Simon.  I'll make a long "rest of the story" post later today or at worst, tomorrow.

[Ridge Runner]

Gerry  

 it’s great to have a like minded friends around you but as you get older you will find that like minded are circle of friends gets smaller. They couldn’t help it because they passed on and you find yourself standing alone.

 You owe to each one of them to keep going and take the good times you had together with you each time you go out.

 I know this will happen to each one of us because that’s where I find myself now.

 Have a great day today and tomorrow because I know I’m going to.

 Chuck 

[afreakofnature]

On 12/11/2023 at 3:04 PM, Gerry in Idaho said:

I know how Erin thinks...🤔. Remember my friend, we've had a few meals together.  So I won't ask outright, but did you make any cool finds. 😎 

Nothing but an earring in about 5 total hours detecting, hmmm wonder why? 🤔….😂

[GB_Amateur]

This June was my 3rd year attending (what was likely the last ) Welcome to the Hunt Outing (WTHO) organized by the now departed icon of detecting, Monte Berry.  Speaking of friends, I've made several in those three get-togethers.  I arrived in one of the Northeast Nevada ghost towns late Tuesday after Memorial Day and spent the next four days camped out, detecting with friends, hoping for my first Seated coin.  Joel from nearby Elko found two(!) but I got skunked.  Last year I found a few (2 or 3) oldies but not this year, so far (I thought).  After a much needed night in a hotel I drove to Sawtooth (named for a nearby 'peak') and found the spot I planned to detect.  This was a particular place Steve H. had taken me the previous year (speaking of friends) where I also met and bonded with Condor Steve and Andrew (abenson).  Steve H. had agreed to meet up there on Tuesday so I spent much of Monday scouting a couple ridges to the East of everyone's favorite camping spot.  I did find several prospects (bulldozer piles) so someone at some point (early 1980's) thought those spots were worth checking out.

Typically I keep my wallet with me at all times, in my pocket during the day and on the dashboard at night.  Except for a few hundred in emergency cash which I hide in my vehicle, everything else (credit cards, driver's license, insurance cards, even a few blank checks 🤔) is in the wallet.  As promised, Steve arrives Tuesday morning (with two Garrett Axioms, one a loner) and we spent the day detecting and the evening 'catching up'.  Thanks to his loaning me an Axiom I did find one dink that day.  Wednesday morning I check the dashboard for my wallet, without success.  I look everywhere I can think I may have put it -- nada.  I reach into my jeans' back pocket and get an uneasy feeling.  There's a large hole, large enough for my fat wallet to pass through....

Steve was planning on leaving that morning but he stuck around a few extra hours to help me search.  Problem is, as most of you know, tracing one's detecting steps isn't so easy as often there is no logical path -- zigging, zagging, up, down, back and forth with trips back to the vehicle for forgotten tools (that happens to me a lot), lunch, water bottle refills....  I also couldn't remember for sure when I last had my wallet -- it might have been the day I walked all over Hell's half acre just scouting.  As you now know, neither Steve nor I was successful.  He departed early afternoon and I, after a couple more hours searching, had a decision to make.  Did I stay another night or head back to Winnemucca where I had a hotel reservation for the evening?  If I stayed, would I even be allowed into a hotel without a photo ID?  I decided to head out, driving East on County 49 which was in the process of being watered to minimize dust.  Besides a fresh coat of (quickly dried) desert dirt my vehicle windshield also suffered a rock strike which eventually (few weeks later) required replacing, fortunately fully covered by insurance.

So much for getting back to the Eastern Nevada ghost town.  After a night's sleep (they did ask for ID but let me get by without it) I drove to Craig, CO where again the hotel wanted the cash badly enough to let me stay sans ID.  From there I got back to my sister's place outside of Denver.  Oasis!  After canceling credit cards and a couple days R&R I headed home, with one final night in a fleabag motel where I was told the police often came around to see the photocopied photo ID's of the 'guests'....

I never drove (2000+ miles) so carefully in my life, being especially mindful of slower speed limits in towns.  (I didn't take interstate highways most of the last 1500 miles.)  Arriving home I began the task of getting replacements for all the important documents.

Before departing the site, Steve and I speculated when someone would find my wallet.  I said 'five years' but he, knowing the area much better, predicted it would likely be this prospecting season, no worse than the next one when it would be found.  'Friends' was Gerry's thread topic and Steve felt that the detecting community would be generous in returning everything, if still identifiable.

So at the beginning of November I see a missed call on my phone, identified as being from Idaho.  Then I get an email message from friend Jeff McClendon (via this site's messaging channel) saying Gerry is trying to contact me.  It still didn't dawn on my that he was calling about the wallet (I'm a semi-regular customer, including having bought my ML Manticore from Gerry).  When I call the first thing he asks is if I've left something out in the desert!!  🤣  He said one of his staff (they were there for one of Gerry's three day hands-on metal detecting for gold classes) had found it on the slope just West of where we typically camp.  He said all $151 was still there and I told him to take his guys out for pizza and beer with it but he declined.  Gerry is like that in case you haven't met him.  You help friends out and he was doing just that, without compensation.  In a week or so I get a package in the mail and except for some minor water damage was no worse for wear (it does rain in the summer in the NW Nevada desert -- just ask this year's Burning Man attendees, that site being 30 or so miles away as the crow flies).

Finally back to Gerry's thread topic.  Thanks to this site I've met (in person) several new friends.  But I've also made 'pen pals' with others I've never had the privilege of coming in contact.  Too many to mention, but I'm sure most of you know what I'm talking about.  Thanks to all of you, particularly Steve H. for making (and keeping) this site about sharing information and experiences, without the painful off-topic arguments that are rampant on most internet social/communicative locations.

So what have I learned from this experience?  From now on I will have a spare credit card in my stashed cash hiding spot, with photocopies of my DL and insurance cards.  I probably will still stubbornly (try to) keep my wallet with me at all times, but now a bright orange one, kept in my *front* pocket.

[phrunt]

That's a good story and shows how tight the detecting community is.

I'm surprised you have to have ID to stay at hotels, that's a new one, must be an American thing.

A bright coloured wallet is a good idea, I did that with my gold bottle after losing it with something like 8 grams in it that I'd just found.  I stupidly had a little brown coloured pill bottle that blended in well with soil, now I have a bigger white bottle with a Red electrical tape strip around it.

[rvpopeye]

Rut Roh Raggie .  My wallet is camo ! 😯

Thanks GB for helping me decide what to get myself for Christmas.👍

The lesson here is if you have to lose your wallet , do it in a remote location that a lot of your friends go to look for things 😉  the karma part. is well established. 

and Steve knows his crew .