Emerald Mine

I thought I'd give the book talk a rest and post about my recent vacation. I used to play a really fun video game called Emerald Mines. It had like 99 levels. I don't think I made it beyond level 33. My friend Jeff suggested we go 'mining' for emeralds and other gems in Hiddenite, NC on a mini-vacation. Sounded like a fun, and potentially prosperous, trip to me. Hopefully, there wouldn't be any orange monsters trying to eat us as we mined. We left last Friday morning and arrived around 2:30 in the afternoon. It was pretty dang hot but that did not deter us from forming our plan to dig first, sluice the dug earth, and then pillage the creek if we had time before they closed at 7pm. This is what greeted us on our way to pay.

They were awful cute. We also passed this chicken pen on the way 'up the hill'.
Up the hill was all the directions we were given for where to dig. No one was on the hill or even thinking about the hill. Most of the guests were sluicing or in the creek. Jeff found us a sort of pre-dug hole in the shade and we got to work.
Well, he got to work and I just sifted through the dirt he was shoveling. After about an hour of shoveling he carried our filled buckets (they were so heavy I couldn't even lift one, let alone carry them down to the sluicing tables) down the hill.

This is us hamming it up for the camera just before heading down. We sluiced and found nothing. We also sluiced our complimentary buckets and found a couple pretty colored rocks.

Back up the hill we went to fill the buckets once more. Back to sluicing. Still no results. With about 45 minutes left before closing we decided to check out the creeking situation.

We found lots of colored rocks, gems I guess, in the creek. It was decided that the next day would be spent in the creek only.
This duck said bye to us as we packed up our many supplies leaving Friday night. The next morning we arrived at 9:30 and the place was packed. Families of all shapes and sizes were there and the creek was the hot spot. After purchasing our pass for the day and getting our creeking supplies (sluicing box and shovel), we found a decent spot and stayed there digging for a few hours at a steady pace. We did shift down the creek a bit in an effort to find even more once our spot became barren. We decided to go the opposite way as instructed in the creek to where no one was sifting through the rocks and sand. We dug for about 30 minutes and found nothing, which was odd after digging at the other end and finding something every few minutes. An employee found us and let us know we were no longer on the property and we needed to head back the other way. Jeff informed him that we didn't find anything anyway. We figured they were salting the creek. By that time it was two in the afternoon. We sluiced our complimentary buckets for the day and decided to head on home. So, we had fun but it wasn't necessarily a genuine gem site. It's a great place to take kids though.
Here's the 'cream of the crop' from our collection. The best emerald we found is now missing but we did find a ruby or two and lots of amethyst (at least I think that's what it is). We got home around 9pm. I had a nice long run the next morning (to work off all the junk we ate the previous two days) and a four hour nap to recoup from all the stooping, digging, and sweating in the dirt and water.