Panning for Memories

(If you haven’t heard the beginning of this adventure tale, go back in my blog posts and listen to my podcast, Healthy Mom Crazy Life, to catch it all from the beginning!)

Our Family Adventure Treasure Tale vacation seemed to be flying by and day 4 was knocking on our door, ready to bring us new things to see, new people to meet, new things to learn . . . and maybe even treasure?!

We were up and at ‘em early in anticipation of finally getting to some of the destinations we had on our treasure wish list. Heading out of West Yellowstone we had our eyes focused on hitting up the old mining towns turned tourist hotspot which hosted our first destination of Virginia City/Nevada City and the River of Gold…!

Upon leaving West Yellowstone, it wasn’t long before we added yet another new state to our bucket list, Idaho! Now I have to honest up here, we were only actually in Idaho for about 20 minutes, BUT, we did get a picture by the welcome sign so that does make it pretty legit.

As we started traveling north we enjoyed the southern Montana landscape and could almost taste the gold we were going to find. We had just enough time to build up that appetite for treasure in our 1.5 hour tour from West Yellowstone. After three previous days of traveling hundreds of miles, a 1.5 hour ride seemed like a piece of cake . . . maybe that’s really what we had an appetite for?!

We went from main roads to the back country and back again. Just when we were “pretty sure” that this wasn’t the route (despite the map, I mean, Google is never wrong!) all of the sudden we come back to civilization or at least a paved road. The countryside, although lacking the green tones like that of Wisconsin, did exhibit a variety of other beautiful colors. The ruggedness we saw brought comfort of simpler times. A distant rain shower looked imminent, but within the vastness of the country, the best it did was provide a few cool pics.

After a smooth 1.5 hours we finally rolled down into Nevada City, home of the River of Gold. Immediately we could see this place was pretty legit - sporting “rust”ic lawn decor and a ramshackle cabin it seemed like a fitting place to find my retirement fund. Although panning for gold at a tourist attraction isn’t exactly 100% authentic, it was probably one of our best bets in actually possibly conceivably maybe finding some treasure. I’ll admit I’m pretty green when it comes to sluicing and I knew that seeing a panning demonstration, asking some questions, and actually getting our hands on some real paydirt would be a wise move versus us randomly hitting up a river with our fingers crossed we’d find some sparkling gold.

So anyways, here we were. With excitement we got out of the car - 3.5 days and about 1,100 miles later, this was the first of the moments we had been waiting for - but the question was, would we actually have any luck in this former gold rush town?

We walked up to the log cabin “office” and were warmly greeted, we spoke our request to ‘hit it rich’ (bahaha!) and also fessed up that we didn’t know anything. Neither of those comments were anything new to the worker here and she warmly offered to show us the ropes. The material we panned came from two different mines- one a gold mine and one a garnet mine. While they could not guarantee we would find any gold, they did guarantee we would find garnets - well, we would soon find out . . .

We walked outside to find several watering troughs and stacks of gear and supplies, yes, it was time to finally make this real! After a quick demo, Adam, Brett, and I were on our own to pan for our treasures! It was a fun process of swirling and shaking and slowly shedding the gravel material we didn’t want - all the while looking intently into our pans for golden or deep red treasure.

But did we actually see anything?

By golly, it wasn’t long before we started picking out tiny red stones out of our pans with the tweezers they gave us. Each of us quickly hunkered down into our respective pans, frequently letting out cheers of success as we held up another garnet. Each boy asked for some help from me here and there - although they really didn’t need it. The bonding and excitement was treasure enough for me. ❤️

An hour passed.

And then another.

It was easy to get lost in the passing time as we carefully scoured our pans and even more carefully released the non-precious gravel and sediment into the watering trough - anxious to not dump anything away that we’d regret.

Just over two hours later our pans were down to the last bits of gravel - for it was in these last moments that the truth would come out as to whether our pans contained some gold. Since gold is heavy and the treasure sinks, the entire panning process we had been doing was in attempts to shake down and settle out the gold - and the garnets.

Brett finished first - was any gold to be found? No . . . there were flecks of fools gold, but we knew the test to tell the difference between the two. Strike 1.

Adam finished next - any gold there? No . . . again, the fools gold tried to get us, but we knew better. Strike 2.

Finally I finished fishing out the garnets and got down to the final bits in my pan - was there anything left to harvest? Nope . . . gold panning was a bust and it was Strike 3.

We were out.

BUT, we weren’t down. Remember the garnets we carefully picked out over the past two hours? Well, we sure found a load of them! The two boys and I each picked out enough to fill a small glass vial full of these small dark red and pink gemstone treasures - SUCCESS!

And while we didn’t find gold, our cups were filled from finding some kind of treasure, my cup was even fuller with the memories made with my boys! Day 4 of treasure hunting was FAR from over . . . but you’ll have to stay tuned to find out what other treasures were to be had yet in Day 4!

Until next time,

Be well, healthy, happy, and ALIVE!

Brianne ❤️