Treasure Hunting

 

Blairsville, Georgia  (high 64, low 40)

Yesterday was a beautiful day, with sunshine, blue skies and no wind.  It only got into the 60’s, but it felt warmer and we enjoyed being outside.  Those kinds of days are becoming more rare.   We’re hoping today will be just as nice, because things will be going downhill tomorrow with predicted temperatures down to the low 20’s.  We usually are a few degrees colder than what is predicted, so we may even see some teens.  There is a 30% chance of snow, and we’re hoping for it.

Yeah, it’s getting cold here, and people wonder why we haven’t left for Florida already.   It was a really HOT summer in Florida this past year, and even though we weren’t there all summer, we got really sick of the heat, humidity, and rain.  Remember, we have lived most of our lives in Florida, so cooler temperatures are a nice change for us.  Plus, it’s nice to know that we can leave here anytime we want, and that warmer temperatures are waiting for us. 

We have been pretty cozy, with our little Source Green Quartz heater (which we love), and our electric blankets (one for us, one for the kitties), and all our warm clothes.  Of course it remains to be seen how we will feel it it gets down into the teens.  :)

Here is a view of our patio table this morning.  Notice the pretty sparkling frost?

This week is being devoted to re-organizing and winterizing things in preparation for our departure, but last week we did some more sight seeing.

We decided to go back to Consolidated Mines, in Dahlonega, Georgia.

Click here if you missed my post on our previous tour of the gold mine.  It’s well worth visiting.

We enjoyed the gold mine tour so much, that I’m sure we’ll go back another time, but this trip was to do some gem mining.

You can buy a bucket of sand with prices starting at $15 all the way up to $100.   We split a $30 bucket last time, but we decided to splurge and get the $100 bucket this time.  Each bucket of sand has the “chance” to find gems.

It’s a lot of money, but we rationalized it by telling ourselves, that since we very rarely go to a movie, this was our “movie money.”   :)

Here is Al searching for treasure.

You do the gem mining and gold panning inside of a building.  We’ve been to a few other places and had to be outside in the cold.  The water flowing through is pretty cold and your hands get pretty chilly, so it’s nice to be inside. 

The gold mine is right below us.  The blue tub was was our $100 bucket filled with sand and gems???

Would we find any treasure??

Here is our stash taken about 2/3 of the way through. The box on the right is where you put the sand. You put it down into the water to wash the sand away and find your stones.

The box on the left were my treasures.  We kept our stashes separate. :)

 

The big blog in the top right of the picture is a big chunk of amethyst.  These were Al’s treasures.

 

We ended up with 5-6 large garnets, sapphires, a few emeralds, lots of quartz, rubies, a piece of petrified wood and lots more.

We ended up with 6 plastic bags full. The small bag on the right front was the stones that could be cut.

The emerald I got was a pretty good size stone.  They have gem cutters on the  premises, and I was told I could have it cut into a nice stone for about $300.  Yikes!   I think I’ll just admire it like it is.

I don’t know how much of this gem mining is set up and how much is real, nor do I want to know. I do know they get their stuff from North Carolina.  Every bucket seems to have gems in them, so I’m sure there is a little “preparation.”  We don’t care, we enjoy it and always find lots of pretty gems.

On they way home, we drove by Lake Blue Ridge.  It’s another man made lake formed by a dam.

The water was a little low on some parts of the lake, don’t you think?

I couldn’t believe how high the stilts on this house were.  Anything to get a better view, huh?

I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if any of that ground eroded?

 

Some trees are really getting bare.

 

There is still color in a lot of areas.

view of Mt. Yonah.

The grass around our RV park is brown, but some areas have the most beautiful green pasture grass.

This is one of the back roads where we ride our golf cart.

This is a dilapidated old building we see along one of the golf cart roads.  Now that the leaves are falling, it’s a little easier to photograph.

Remember this beautiful tree in our front yard?

 

Here are those same leaves now, laying in the grass.  You can’t even see the grass for all the leaves.

Today, we will drain and winterize the hot tub, but we plan on getting in one last soak.

I guess I’ll let Al drain and winterize the washing machine too.  Boy….am I going to miss that!

Dahlonega Gold Rush

 

Blairsville, Georgia (high 80, low 57)

 

We decided to head south for a day trip.  There are so many interesting places nearby, but we chose Dahlonega, Georgia.

We ended up taking highway 180 and then onto 60, taking us on the Suches Loop/Georgias Dragon, which is a popular motorcycle route due to the many curves.  It’s a twisty 2 lane road with steep drop offs and very few places to pull over.  We went up and over Blood Mountain and got over 3200 feet in elevation.    I don’t think I’d want to drive it on the week-end when most of the motorcycles are out.  If you are a motorcycle enthusiast, you’ve probably heard of this road.  It’s a very popular ride.  Definitely not for rv’s.

Once we got into Dahlonega, we found the old courthouse, which is now the Dahlonega Gold Museum.  The courthouse was built in 1836 and is the oldest surviving courthouse in Georgia.  It was used until 1965.

The Georgia gold rush started in 1828, which was before the California gold rush.  The discovery of gold was attributed to a young man named Benjamin Parks.  It’s said he stepped on an unusual “rock” while out deer hunting.  It turned out to be a large nugget of gold.  Word quickly got out and soon 15,000 men had flocked into the area to try to strike it rich.

Unfortunately, the Cherokee Indians who had been living in the area were “in the way” and not inclined to leave.  In 1838 the remaining Indians were rounded up and forced to march to Oklahoma  on the infamous Trail of Tears.  Many of them died.  That a shame.

In  1835, Dahlonega, New Orleans and Charlotte, NC were approved to be the sites of the nations first mints.  The Dahlonega mint was operational until 1861 when in its last year of operation receipts were more than 6 million dollars, with over one million of gold coins minted. 

Somehow, we ran out of time and never got to tour the old mint.  Another trip I guess!

The mint closed after the start of the Civil War, the mint closed and in 1871 the building and 10 acres were donated.   Unfortunately, the mint building burned.

There had been talk of gold in California and many of the miners were making plans to head west.

In 1849 a crowd gathered in front of the courthouse to hear assayer Matthew Stephenson speak.  He pointed to a ridge in front of him and begged the miners to stay, saying “there is millions in it.”   Mark Twain hearing of the assayers plea from a friend, wrote his famous version,  “There’s gold in them thar hills.”  

Georgia gold was of a higher quality and more pure than what was later found in California.

The old courthouse is now a state historic site, so we paid our money for the tour.  We watched a great film on the history of the Georgia gold rush.  There were a lot of exhibits and definitely well worth the money.

Here is Al in front of the old safe.

The view from the upstairs balcony at the old courthouse was very nice.  You can see the fall colors are starting to change.

After the courthouse tour, we had lunch and then headed over to the old Consolidated Mines.  There were several mines there at one time and they finally consolidated them all.  Unfortunately, the old buildings burned years ago and the outside doesn’t look like much now.

There were some old mining tools of the trade outside.

A tour of the mine was $15 per person and included a little gold panning afterwards.

We walked down below ground into the mine which was at the time, the largest hard rock gold mine east of the Mississippi.  Miners had to blast veins of quartz to uncover huge veins of gold.  One vein of quartz was over 22 feet wide.

Our guide was very good and knew the history of the mine very well.  I have always been fascinated with rocks and I particularly liked seeing the beautiful rocks inside the mine. 

The tour moved a little fast for me, as I wanted to stop and look and photograph the rocks.

Aren’t they beautiful?

We started the tour off at the front of the group, but soon realized we needed to bring up the back because I kept holding everyone up when I stopped to take a picture.

The next problem was I kept hearing Al say, “hurry up, I don’t want to get left behind and lost.”

This was an original car that was used to haul the gold back up.

The guide explaining how they had to chip into the rock to make holes to insert dynamite sticks.  After a while, new technology brought them these new tools that made the job a little easier, using water pressure to drill the holes.

The only problem with this tool was that it caused pretty rapid hearing loss.  The guys that ran this tool got $1.50 per day, compared to the going rate for other miners of $1.00 per day. 

 

We loved the gold mine, but after about 40 minutes the tour was over and we went the 200 feet back to ground level. I could have stayed a lot longer.

Next was our chance to pan for real gold.  We didn’t enjoy that too much, but we did find a few flakes of gold.  They put them in little glass vials, but I neglected to take a picture of our gold.  It would have been hard to see anyway.  :)

The gold panning was a part of the tour, but if you wanted to try your luck at gem mining, that would be extra.  You pay for the size bucket you want.  I think it started at $15, and up $100.  We opted for the $30 bucket and split it.

We got a big bucket full of sand and ????? treasures…ruby’s, emeralds, garnets, ?????

What valuable gems would we find??

 

I had to slow Al down a bit.  If I hadn’t, he would have sifted through all the sand in 2 minutes.  For $30, I wanted us to take our time and enjoy it.

The next pictures are what we found.

They don’t look like much, but when we took them over to the table to compare them with actual gems, we found we did have some good stuff.

There were a lot we couldn’t id, so we took them to the guy that will (for a price) cut your  gemstones for you.

He went over each stone and laid out the stones that were  actual gems and were “cutable”

He sorted them out by what they were and laid them out on a by what they were.  The guide showed what the stone was and what it looked like after it was cut.

I took a picture so that I could remember.

You can see that we got some rubies, emeralds, smokey quartz, garnets and much more.  He thought we had a nice emerald.  It would cost either $112 ot $186 to cut it, depending on the size gem we wanted.  I think we’ll pass for now.

It was fun.  We thoroughly enjoyed our day at the gold/gem mine.  It cost us $60, but we felt it was worth it for a few hours entertainment.

It was time to leave Dahlonega, and head back over the mountain.  We found a new (and less mountainous) route for our trip home. 

We still had to go back up and over Blood Mountain, but this part was a wider road with passing lanes, so it was a little easier.

Al always, we found some mountain streams, with some little waterfalls alongside the road.

 

When we got home, our neighbor Alice brought over her dog Mr. Luke for a visit.  I can’t remember his breed, but he is a a hairless breed.  I was going to take a picture of his bald little butt, but Alice picked him up first.  :)   His eyes are sensitive, so he likes to wear sunglasses.

Later while taking Baxter on a golf cart ride, we ran across  Spanky, walking his parents Doug and Sharon.

It was a long day, but we rested up and are back out it again.  We may head Fort Mountain State Park.

 

Stay tuned.