Okay we have it, Gold Fever!

After our time at Knotts Berry Farm John and I got hooked and we could do nothing but talk about getting gold pans and going up to the gold country and try some panning. Now there was no guarantee that we would get gold. What we call the gold country is about 130 miles East by North East  of Mountain View Calif. This is up along highway 49 which goes threw the original gold country from the 1849s. We would go to this area on the Mokelumne river just south of Jackson. There is this little dirt road that follows the river up stream and ends at a hydraulic power plant. This dirt road is called Electra Road and we would travel to the end of the road and we would find a spot to park and get out and pan for gold. The best part about doing this was that while we were panning for gold my dad could fish for trout and mom would just sit and relax or if they were ripe she would pick wild black berries. Those berries were so good I remember eating as many as we could pick.

Our first time we went out to try our luck at getting some gold we first had to stop in Jackson at the hardware store and buy our first gold pan. Our first ones were metal, later as we got into prospecting we found better pans that were lighter and improved and made of plastic. But here we are headed out to the river armed with our new metal gold pans and info from books on panning. We were far from experts, it would be later that we would acquire the knowledge and experience to have a better chance at finding some gold. When we got to the river we were so excited that we ran to the river and found a big rock to sit on and start panning.

We would take our pan and scoop up some sand and gravel and some rocks that we would just pick out and trow off to the side. I don't remember how many pans full of gravel and sand that we panned down to find nothing in our pan except maybe some black sand which is heavy and would stay in the pan like gold. Gold is one of the heaviest metals on earth and has we pan it settles to the bottom of the pan and will stay there if you do everything correctly. Also you collect what we call black sand, which is mostly iron flakes and is magnetic so sometimes we use a magnet to pick the black sand out of the pan. After a half day of panning we didn't find  anything. so we quit and tried some fishing, didn't catch anything either. Kind of a bust our first time out but we still had fun and this is just a long day trip, about 3 hours drive from Mountain View to Jackson. We are hooked and we knew we would come back and be better informed and ready to find some gold.