Final Tuneup Before Oz

[mn90403]

Tuesday I leave for OZ as it turns out now it is a scouting trip for those to follow.  I'll still be there when Condor and crew shows up some place in the Triangle.

I don't live on gold so I had to take a trip to find it.   As a matter of fact I've taken a few in the last couple of months but I've come up 'short' on each of those trips.  I've not had anything worth posting either.  This time I went to Gold Basin again which is 6 hours for me. 

This trip started out with a nice conversation with a guy who told me about 'finds' he knew about and he had made.  He warned me about a couple of things.  One was the snakes.  He had been bitten while reaching into a bush but said later it was a 'dry bite' so he survived without knowing the snake had hit his arm.  The other thing he 'warned' me about was all the gold had been taken by the 7000s!  He told me he was hunting in way out places now and had found good gold but not close in.  Ok, both of these warnings will make me more ready for OZ.  haha

I left him and detected with the 800 first on a site that had been a loading platform for dirt to be processed.  I've hunted near this site before but not with the 800.  It has lots and lots of trash.  My first good target looked like a penny (20 on the screen) and sure enough it was but it was a Lincoln.  Ok, that was different.  I remembered I had seen where someone had found a gold coin in the area this year so I kept looking.  Not far from this penny I got a dime sound (25) and thought oh, great but then it was also a penny but a wheatie (1947D).  That was a good start. 

Now it was time to hunt for gold in some 'worked' places.  I was looking at the previous areas where gold had been found hoping to find missed or undetected nuggets.  I've armed myself now with deep seeking settings!  Nothing at the next several locations but I've had a good start.  It was time to find some meteorites and a place to stay with the 4Runner for the night.

Meteorites were tough also.  I got a little one and then travelled to a different area.  I got another one and just before driving off into the sunset I got a 90 gram sunbaker!

The next morning I got up and searched around.  I was looking down on Lake Mead.  I looked in that area to no avail and then headed to known gold areas for me.  I hunted and hunted and finally found a 1.3 g nugget to break the skunk!  

I was going to make a better story out of this but there are distraction here.  haha  Enjoy the pictures.

In the collection picture I have an odd flat shaped nugget of some sort.  Any ideas?

Mitchel

 

[Chet]

Hi Mitchel

Great finds; Just a reminder for your trip;

Review the GPZ 7000 Detect settings on pages 21-27 of the user manual.

And recheck your settings at the start of each day.

Have a great trip,
Chet

[fredmason]

Nice nuggie, nice meteorites and pennies from heaven!

What are the two pic's of the "hot rocks"...looks like some of that nasty Gold basin shist or shist's close cousin...

fred

[mn90403]

7 hours ago, kiwijw said:

Very best of luck Mitchel. Some beautiful pics in your post. Thanks for sharing. Stay safe, keep well in your travels. Hope you head home with some Aussie yellow.?

Very best of luck to you out there.

JW ? 

I still may have to come and get a nugget or two of Kiwi gold no matter what happens in OZ.  My sister-in-law lives there growing veggies!  They have a young son working Auckland.  I'll be there for a visit one of these years.

[mn90403]

5 hours ago, fredmason said:

Nice nuggie, nice meteorites and pennies from heaven!

What are the two pic's of the "hot rocks"...looks like some of that nasty Gold basin shist or shist's close cousin...

fred

Fred,

I took those pictures because it was layered.  I wanted to bring that rock home for my rock garden but I have so many now ... I just took a picture.  The rock was not hot.  I had just not seen quartz in quite that many layers.

Mitchel

[flakmagnet]

Nice post Mitchel. Now for the real story, your trip. Looking forward to reading your impressions. Wishing you safe and exciting travels.

[Jim McCulloch]

Mitchel, show those Ozblokes what a California Desert Rat can do! Best wishes, bud! HH Jim

[Drillerdave]

I hope you have a great trip Mitchel. 

Safe travels

Dave

[jasong]

The rock in question looks to be Arizona BIF, you'll probably see some more of that in Australia too though lots hotter there and more reddish/yellowish. In AZ the cherty layer has been partially metamorphosed into something that looks very much like quartz but I believe is quartzite.

Might be a cool rock to snag because if that's what it is, you are looking at something amazing and precambrian outcrops are rare in AZ. It's an indirect fossil record of the largest oxygenation event on Earth, a process created by the emergence of the first life over a billion years ago, which was bacteria. Same way plants create oxygen, except this was before even plants existed. This made the iron in the oceans form oxides (magnetites and hematites) and settle on the bottom in layers between sediments (the quartzy stuff). Without this life as we know it would not exist, pretty cool stuff for an unassuming rock.