December 1st we were out fishing -- in t-shirts--- I caught one small striped bass. Mostly we catch more rays than fish. Fishing has been so slow that we decided to start exploring the public lands with a metal detector. There is a guy in camp who knows a lot about metal detecting and has owned all kinds. We learned from him what a good one to buy would be for finding "treasure". He has lots of pointers on where to try around here so we have been going out onto lots of gravel roads "detecting".
Of course this is also the guy that has a $10,000 detector -- I should say ground penetrating radar. He and another guy found a great target 14 feet deep and started digging. They thought they were going to be rich and after two days of digging -- they dug up an old volkswagen.
We've also been rockhounding while using the metal detector. We are learning what some of the pretty rocks are: carnelian, jasper, chalcedony, lots of crystaline rock and pieces of petrified wood. We met one couple out rockhounding who have been doing it for three years while down here for the winter. They cut and polish the rocks they find and set them in sterling silver rings. They say they do pretty well selling them. They have also found arrowheads in this same area. We just look and don't really keep anything we find. We can't afford to add the weight of rocks to our load. It will have to be a rock worth a lot of money for us to keep it -- like a meteorite -- which the metal detector will help find -- usually they have a very high iron content, are pretty scratched up looking and are also magnetic.
We hope to have better luck with rockhounding than we have with fishing.
1 comment:
GREAT detective stories ... sounds pretty interesting! Hope you find something fun and not-too-heavy to 'set' ... and wear!
Chilly and snowy here ... bells are ringing and lights are twinkling ... some talk of inventory around the office :) ...
Enjoy!
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