Friday, June 29, 2007

You can't make this stuff up...

I'm just getting around to posting pictures of what I did last weekend. I'm doing this so my mama can get a good laugh. You see...my husband is a thirty something trapped in the body of a sixty something year old. His hobby is gold prospecting, and he even has a website where he sells gold dirt (a.k.a. concentrates). No kidding.

Well...Brian talked me into going camping/prospecting with him in North Carolina. Technically, we had a room - not a tent. But there was no room service or restauraunt on site, and accommodations were sparse...close enough to camping for me!

Friday night we arrived in time to say hello to some of Brian's friends that were there and then we headed out for Mexican. (Okay...I confess...I'm not really a camper.) But we did come back and make s'mores around the campfire of our friends who were actually camping.

Sometimes - it doesn't take much to amuse me - I had some fun playing with a slow shutter speed and Conley's glow sticks.




Here is proof that I really did do some prospecting. This may not be a shocker for some of you...but I don't exactly like to get dirty. Just for frame of reference...do you remember the plaster of paris hand print that every child makes growing up? Well...I'm probably the only person who made it to adulthood without one. I don't remember this, but apparently I don't have one because I refused to put my hands in the gooey, green plaster when I was four years old in Vacation Bible School. :)

The contraption in front of me is called a highbanker. We shoveled a HUGE pile of dirt into it. After almost three hours of shoveling - we were left with an impressive amount of gold.


This is the Broad river that runs along Heather Grove. After we finished running the highbanker, we headed down to the river so Brian could run his dredge.


I walked down the river and looked for things to take pictures of. I found some clover...


...and some prettyugly texture on an old bridge. (I made up the word prettyugly.)




This is Brian's five inch dredge. It is like a big vaccum cleaner. It has a big hose that he uses under water to suck up dirt. It dumps the water out in the sluice box and the concentrates with gold are left behind.


I didn't take part in the dredging. It looked like a lot of hard work. You have to throw lots of rocks out of the water to get to the dirt.


The river was full of people dredging. This girl was dredging for the first time. They use regulators so that they can go deep and stay under water for a long time.


Crazy, huh? But I swear it's true. I'll have to get a picture of the gold that we found.
If you want to know more about gold prospecting, be sure to check out Brian's Gold Grubbin' site. He even has a link to his popular gold forum on the site.

13 Comments:

Blogger Amy Martin said...

WOW. I had NO idea about your pirate adventures :) I think it sounds fun!

I just watched Into the Blue... and now I want to go move to the Bahamas and search for treaure in the ocean. Kind of the same thing :)

4:56 PM  
Blogger Mike said...

How cool! I used to watch the "gold prospector" show on the outdoor channel, "you got to go down deep to get the goooooold"! I think we all have a little spirit of adventure, the "well, just what if..." part that makes it exciting!

10:26 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Hey Jill I see you are from the east coast also. I am frm myrtle beach keep in touch... Great work

9:56 AM  
Blogger Chris+Lynn said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

10:59 AM  
Blogger Chris+Lynn said...

That looks like so much fun! and that preetyugly texture would look prettycool as a photo overlay! Neat shots!

11:01 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You are right....your mama IS laughing! hahaha:)

4:06 PM  
Blogger Jill Higgins said...

Amy - Oh yes, I'll be sure to invite you next time!!! :) lol

Mike - Brian was heartbroken when we moved to Charleston b/c we don't have the Outdoor Channel and he went through Gold Feve withdrawals.

Hey Ricki - You're not far away - I'm about to move to south GA though.

chris+lynn - oh what a good idea. I've need to learn how to do overlays.

Hi mama- glad I could amuse you!

4:13 PM  
Blogger abcdef said...

Hey Jill, Thanks for sharing these images with us. Too funny. You and your hubby need to move up to Dahlonega, GA. It's home of the Gold Rush Days. Happy 4th of July.

9:57 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

So you want me to get down and dirty and trash my wedding dress yet you hate getting dirty yourself? LOL. Just kidding...

This actually looks VERY interesting. I'd love to try this sometime!

2:37 PM  
Blogger Jill Higgins said...

Oh yes Crystal - I think he would move in a hearbeat!

Maybe we can go gold digging in Mexico Catherine - for some of that Aztec gold! ha

4:40 PM  
Blogger william's girl said...

it's ok. i never did one of those BS plaster hand things either. william wants me to take him to pan or dig or whatever for gold and stones somewhere in western NC. please.

6:49 PM  
Blogger Rachel said...

haha! this is awesome! I love Brian's gold grubbin' site!!
-Rachel

10:33 PM  
Blogger Shara Lana said...

Brian- You are so cool!!! :)

8:03 PM  

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