Panning for Gold!!!!!

Even though this also happened during our drive of the southern route in Custer State Park, this experience deserves its own entry. I have been trying to go panning for gold since Nevada City, MT and have not had any success. We went to Nevada City, MT, Lead, SD, Deadwood, SD and Keystone, SD and nowhere was I able to go panning at a creek, as I had envisioned it. The all had these big troughs filled with water and that did not look like fun. The lady in the store in Keystone finally explained something to me on Monday; due to insurance liability reasons, I will not find a commercial place that will let me pan in a creek, because I could slip on a rock and break my neck. People that know me know that I don't give up that easily. We went ahead and bought two pans and a little bottle to keep my findings in and went on our merry way. So today before we went out to check out more of Custer State Park we stopped and Mike and Pat McFalls to say our goodbyes and told them about what happened. Pat told us that around Custer's time people used to pan for gold in the French Creek in Custer State Park. See where I am going with this :-) We found a nice picnic area to park in, I found the perfect rock in the creek to sit on and I had the time of my life.

I had my shuffle, my pan and the water really was not cold at all. I was in heaven and you would not believe just how much fools gold is in the creek. It sparkles all over the place. My sweet husband sat on the rock (without getting wet) and checked out all the "gold" flakes that I found in the dirt. I had an absolute blast and we were thoroughly amused by the lady and her daughter that actually came over and asked us if we had any luck yet.

You know I bet a lot of people are really curious about doing this and are just to adult to give it a shot. That could not happen to me; I wanted to do this for a long time and I really did not care about the looks I was getting.