My husband and I became interested in gold prospecting more than 10 years ago when we started watching Gold Fever on the Outdoor Channel. We lived in Florida at the time. When we moved to New York, I bought him a metal detector but it still wasn't gold. We started buying gold panning gear and a sluice box. We found a place in Vermont that lets you pan for gold in Buffalo Creek. It's called Camp Plymouth State Park. We found a few tiny specks and wanted to go somewhere that had more. Our dream is to go to Alaska on a Gold Prospecting outing, but that will be in the future. We are slowly working up to that.
During the summer of 2007 we took a vacation to North Carolina. The primary goal was to go gold prospecting. We stayed at Lucky Strike Campground in Marion, North Carolina for 8 nights. Total cost of that lodging was $100! We tented for the entire week, which was quite the adventure in itself. The torrential rainfall one of the afternoons made the creek behind us rise quite a bit. You could not look for gold for two days after that. We took advantage of that time to visit local attractions like Grandfather Mountain and the North Carolina Zoo. We went to the Natural museum and out to dinner to a great barbeque place. The campground lets campers prospect in the creek for free...all day if you choose. AJ had a great time lounging in the creek in a tube or sitting in a chair with his feet in the creek playing gameboy. He did some gold prospecting, but at 12 he didn't have the patience for it! We bought buckets of dirt at the
camp store and sifted for gemstones. AJ liked this better because of the immediate payoff.
During the summer of 2007 we took a vacation to North Carolina. The primary goal was to go gold prospecting. We stayed at Lucky Strike Campground in Marion, North Carolina for 8 nights. Total cost of that lodging was $100! We tented for the entire week, which was quite the adventure in itself. The torrential rainfall one of the afternoons made the creek behind us rise quite a bit. You could not look for gold for two days after that. We took advantage of that time to visit local attractions like Grandfather Mountain and the North Carolina Zoo. We went to the Natural museum and out to dinner to a great barbeque place. The campground lets campers prospect in the creek for free...all day if you choose. AJ had a great time lounging in the creek in a tube or sitting in a chair with his feet in the creek playing gameboy. He did some gold prospecting, but at 12 he didn't have the patience for it! We bought buckets of dirt at the
camp store and sifted for gemstones. AJ liked this better because of the immediate payoff.
This was one of the most relaxing and fun vacations we have ever taken. We found some gold,learned a lot, made some friends that we still keep in touch with, and would love to go back and try again.
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Sounds like a lot of fun! I need a vacation.
ReplyDeletethat sounds like our kind of vacation.. we also can not wait to go to alaska... some day in our future... not so much for gold.. but just becuase I am sure it is beautiful there :)
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