Beautiful Day

We finally had a chance to try out our dry washer again but when we started digging dirt it was too wet to run through the machine.  We had a soaking rain almost a week ago and the ground that we wanted to work still had too much moisture.  If you can take the dirt and squeeze it in your hand and make it clump its too wet. 

We did enjoy a very beautiful day visiting with friends from Montana.  We were able to sit outside and enjoy the most perfect weather.  It was warm and sunny with just enough breeze to keep the sun from feeling too hot.  Its hard to believe its January!  We have so many people coming down now especially from Canada and they weren't able to put water in their RV's because it would just freeze up.  They talked of running into snow as far south as Las Vegas.  Brrrrrr    

Our new Thompson Dry Washer

We finally broke down and bought our own gold dry washer.  Where there isn't water available you use a dry washer to find gold.  After having our lesson from Old Stoney on how to run one we felt confident enough to purchase our own.  The one he had was run by a gas powered blower so you need a generator, gas can and a leaf blower type motor to run the dry washer.  We opted for one that is simpler because we are so limited in storage space.  Ours runs off of a little battery that you can see under the machine.  It operates by blowing air up from the bottom and blowing the dust up and off of the machine while the dirt/gravel runs down over the riffles.  The gold catches in the riffles and after shoveling dirt into the machine for awhile you then do a clean out and pan what is caught in the riffles.  We found one little piece of gold that was big enough to grab with a tweezers and the rest of the specks were so small you had to suck them up into a sniffer bottle to capture them.

A dry washer only works with dry dirt.  Of course, the first day we ran the machine, got it home and cleaned back up it then started to rain.  It rained quite a bit for the desert so now the dirt is too wet and will take a while to dry out enough to run through the machine.  Some diehard people will dig dirt and spread it out on tarps to dry it faster.   We aren't that crazy yet!

Our Winter Spot

We have a palm tree in front of our site albeit a very small one.  We don't have anyone right next to us but that is going to change this week.  Two more workcampers are coming into the park and will be surrounding us.  The park is filling up quickly.  Many more people are coming now that the holidays are over.  Every day rigs are pouring into the park.  Most have terrible stories of fighting cold, snow and slippery roads to get here.  Their rigs look like they have been through some very bad winter storms. 

You can tell the folks that have just gotten here and have come from somewhere up in the frozen north.  They are out in their shorts and short sleeves when its only in the 50's.  They can't understand why the pool is closed and covered when its only 35 degrees in the morning.  Luckily there were only a couple of mornings that cold and now its back to warm weather again.   Now we can all get back to wearing shorts even those of us who have very thin blood.