Adventures in Gold Panning

Today we tried something different, we went gold panning.

Jason and Larry Denzil rented a sleucer and bought

a load of dirt while Sheba and I panned for gold.

It was both fun and interesting.

Here is our little set up.

Here is our mound of dirt that was

guaranteed to contain both gold nuggets and flakes.

I don't think we found any nuggets, but we found quite a few

specks and flakes.

The kids loved playing with the water falling

off the sleucer.  

Ruby in happier times.  Trust me

her and Savannah both had lots of mood swings.

The teen age years are going to be fun in our house.

The kids really enjoyed the water.  Not sure if this was

allowed, but no one said anything.  We just let the kids

swim and play around.  It was quite deep too.

This is a picture of Xander standing.

Here are all the kids staring at a crocodile on the bank.

We tried to scare them, but they did not take the bait.

Savannah and Larry panning for gold.  They both 

found at least 5 flakes or specks each.  Ethan was

able to find the biggest speck of our 5 kids and he did 

it without even trying.  He barely panned and there it was.

Emotions ran high towards the end.  Here is Ruby throwing

a little fit.  Her terrible twos have definitely arrived.

My favorite picture.  Here is Emalene completely zonked out.

I do not know how she fell asleep in this little chair.

And she was clutching her oatmeal iced cookie to boot.

Can you tell we were there too long for these two little girls?

We were there for 7 hours.  About 4 or 5 was spent just sleucing 

and the remainder was spent panning the dirt.