Post by rockpickerforever on Jan 8, 2014 15:21:15 GMT -5
As most of you know, I was away for almost two weeks, starting on Christmas eve. It was a prospecting trip to a claim our prospecting club holds out near Yuma. We also spent Thanksgiving out there.
Here's some photos of the recent trip. I will post a Part 2, rockhounding, when I get the pics uploaded to PB. Yes, gold, agates and fossils, what a great place!
Took this shot through the dirty windshield. This is coming off the mountain, just east of Jacumba, before dropping down to the desert. It was pretty clear, you can see the Salton Sea in the distance.
The jumble of rocks and cactus that are the Jacumba Mountains.
At the bottom of the hill, just a small part of the wind farm that has sprung up in the last year.
Usually a lot of wind available in this location, but the locals are not happy with it there.
Any specks you see are on the dirty windshield, not UFOs!
Don jakesrocks might recognize this place. The mountain is actually in Mexico, the north side is where the sand spikes are/were found. It's called Mt Signal, and is west of Calexico. The tower is a camera for Border Patrol. They are thick out there, you can see either cameras, vehicles or agents on the ridgelines all around there. Appreciate what you do, guys and gals!
Had a tire malfunction on the drive out, Christmas eve. Those wires throw some sparks!! Luckily someone honked and pointed it out to us, it didn't actually go flat until after it was taken off. Fortunately it happened in a convenient location, where we had light and could be safely changed without fear of being struck by a car. Put the spare on, and continued our journey 15 minutes later. Took the flat into Yuma on Dec 30, and got it replaced at Discount Tire.
This is looking east at the Yuma Proving Grounds. It is very green (and lots of mosquitos!) due to the Colorado River going through there.
A little to the south of that, just to give you an idea of the landscape.
View to the north of the camp site. Wide open spaces, no trees to hides us from the aliens, James.
Was up before the sun every morning. It rose around 6:15, and I saw it every day, except one day it was clouded up a bit, and it didn't come out until about 11 am. This is the wash we were working off of most of the time, there's a canyon that comes in on the right, just out of the photo.
Every morning, I'd roll up the shade and see this from my bunk - beautiful!
Other than the day the sun showed up late, this is the only other day there were some clouds, albeit thin clouds. Every other morning, and most days, there was not a cloud in the sky.
This was some sort of an ore chute, that a previous owner used.
Ore chute. Not quite sure how they used it.
We'd normally be down the hill working by 7 am. Lucy went everywhere with us.
This was the lowest overnight temp - 36.8 degrees, on the last day of the year. I took the photo several hours after the fact, when there was some light available. Highest temp the entire time was 77 degrees, on January 1.
Some of the local cacti, this is a beavertail (a type of Opuntia). They have gorgeous hot-pink (magenta) blooms in the spring.
A barrel cactus. this one's about four feet tall.
Some "baby" ones. They probably took 20 years to get this big!
Some cholla.
Had to drive truck down the hill every day, and park next to where we were running the drywasher. Ran an extension cord from the generator in back of truck to a shop vac, set to blow, turning an impeller with a counterweight. That shakes the drywasher to make the dirt run over the riffles to collect the gold. Operates something like a highbanker, but dry, no water.
The drywasher.
Lucy oversaw the operation.
Gas vacuum cleaner used to vacuum out cracks and dirt in the bedrock up the canyon.
A few specks and flakes from one pan. Most of those black chunks are buckshot, a lot of lead out there.
A better pan, a couple of pickers in there, whoo-hoo!
The final take. Ten days worth of labor to come up with 1.4 grams, worth about $60. You can see why gold makes people crazy!
Lucy on my bunk, sharing our breakfast.
Doing her vulture impression. Her eyes look like they are about to fall out, lol!
One the way home, back up at the top of the hill, we saw some folks that had THREE of these cute little spaceship thingies. UFO saucers on golfcarts? These pics are actually from someone's blog I found awhile back. At the time we are going past, we are doing 70mph up the hill, no time to stop.
I wish I could have taken photos of them then. They are out there quite often, but I've never seen more than one before. I'm sure they have a blast with them!
That's it for the prospecting part. Will post some of the photos taken of the agates/fossils soon.
Thanks for looking! Jean
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