Kiss The Fiddler

Ramblings, moments of humor, random thoughts, experiences, insights, simple wisdom, and whatever else I feel like sharing.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Sapphire Adventure



First, we got dressed, complete with headbands. Aren't we bad ass?

Then we drove miles and miles on a windy mountain road.



Over Skalkaho Pass



Past an old burn area



Past a really pretty waterfall and nice mountain meadows.

Past a really rock scree.



All the way to Gem Mountain.

We met Larkin, Mac, Kanon, my dad Leonard, and his wife Christine there.

This whole looking for sapphires thing is fun! I've been there several times and can't wait to go back.

You pay fifteen bucks for a bucket of gravel.



These guys shovel gravel into your bucket from this pile.



After you get your bucket of goods, you find a table, a screen, a pair of tweezers, and an empty film canister. Then you dump some of your gravel into your screen.



And wash it in the giant water trough. Rock and shake. Rock and shake. Rock and shake.



When your gravel is clean and you've shaken all the sapphires to the bottom of the screen, you take your dripping rocks back to your table and dump the screen upside down.



If you've done a good job washing your gravel, the sapphires will be sitting right on top of your dumped out rocks. They look like little pieces of glass. They can be just about any color.

Here, Larkin and Kanon pick through their screen of gravel.



Monka leans over to help.



Looks like Lollie (Luken's name for Christine) found a nice one!



While the big people hunted for sapphires, the little people played.

They dug in a gravel pile.



They pushed "big trucks!" around the grounds.





There were fun things to climb on.

Fences



and poles.





Everybody had a good time. When we were finished with our gravel buckets, we gathered for lunch.



It was a great day! I enjoyed the time with my family. We should get together more often.

HBK

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Im jealous! That looks like fun and as usual you got some great pics to share!

montanasnowbaby said...

You got awesome pictures! What a fun day. I wanna go!