Can you tell me?

Alaska is an amazing place to live, work, play and raise a family it.   Every day is full of new experiences.   There is almost no way to describe the wonders every day will bring.  You could go outside on the deck and find that a mother moose has calved twins and get to see them take their first wobbly steps in this fantastic place.  You could be driving home at night and have to pull your car over to park so you can watch the northern lights dance through the sky.   When the trees have the hoarfrost on them and they look like they were pulled out of some fairytale book, you just have to stop and admire.  The photo in this post I was just driving to town to pick up some groceries and I had to pull over and take a picture, if you look close you can see the double rainbow.  Go ahead and write a comment about your favorite things that you experience where your from.

SLAVE DRIVER!

You know, I can't help that I am an early riser and like to start my day as soon as possible.  I have a passion for gold mining, maybe its being outdoors all the time with my family on a mission of sorts. Well no matter what it is I like to work as long as there is light, which is quite a while in the summer here.  My family says that I am a slave driver and that I work to hard.  I always tell them they are welcome to stay at camp and I will go out by myself.   They always come with.  Then they say that I work them to death, I say you look like your still walking around to me.   Well the photo here is me catching my wife sneaking in a standing nap hoping no one would notice she was catching a few z's if she was standing up.  Well someone noticed and got a great picture.  I am not a slave driver!  I cant help if everyone wants to fallow me out in the morning and stay out late, until the equipment runs out of gas.  (They don't know I sneak extra fuel into the equipment so it will run a few more hours, Ssssshhh, it will be our secret.)

Everyone loves Chicken(no, not the animal)

This is a photo from one of our family outings to Chicken Gold Camp.  We had a ton of fun, found some gold visited with friendly people enjoyed the sights and scenery.  I cant say enough good things about the Chicken gold camp.  Anyone who gets a chance to visit chicken should look these guys up they are very friendly, they provide a lot of conveniences at their campground that would otherwise be unavailable to the recreational miner.  Here is a link to their website - Chicken Gold Camp.

You Look Like Your Getting Weak!

This picture is a typical day of running pay dirt that is about a quarter ounce of gold if we run all day.  Lots of people ask me the question, "Does your Mine Pay for Itself?"  I always answer with,"Heck no no it does not pay for itself, but my family and me sure do enjoy being out there mining either rain or shine."  I cant put my finger right on the exact reason we like it out there, maybe its working together, or running equipment, or playing save the puppy with my daughter(there always seems to be a puppy stuck in a tree).  I guess all of this can be summed up into to two words, Gold Fever, and we all have it.  People always use the term gold fever in a bad way, but that is not really what it is to us.  Everyone gets gold fever a different way, some cant get it at all.  My family and me are running a fever of 104.0 Degrees, and we don't need any doctor to look at us.  A few more sunny days would be nice though.

Introductions and a Discovery

Here is a little introduction, from left to right, Me - Robert, Daughter - Lyra, Wife- Teri.  We are standing in front of an outcropping we discovered this summer with a large quarts vein running through it.  It looks like it may be the source for where we are currently finding gold.  We have taken grab samples from the vein and are going to have it assayed to find out what it contains.  Some of the samples had very nice quartz crystal development, Other samples we could see specks of gold in it, unfortunately the gold was to small to get a good picture of but I will post a picture of the crystalline quartz maybe next post.