Big Jim's Visit, Part 5: Panning for gold

Saturday morning, as you know, was full of parade-y goodness. After the parade, I took Big Jim to see Northland Furs and meet Leon, then to do his souvenir shopping and get a burger, halibut and breaded mushrooms at the Burger Bus. James got off work and met us at Town of Living Trees to learn to sluice and pan for gold. Dirt from Crystal Creek is available, for a fee, to look through for gold. We thought it would be a good idea to have someone show us how it's properly done before we ever head out to the river to try it on our own. Here we are, operating the sluices:

Big Jim points out a fleck of gold caught in the ridges of the sluice box:

Jim feeds some silt and rocks through the sluice:

James sifts through his sluice. He was also lucky enough to find several nice quartz crystals in his bucket of dirt.

I finished sluicing my dirt first, and the instructor showed me how to pan the silt that was caught in the sluice filters. There wasn't any extra gold in my silt.

James didn't find any extra in his silt, either.

However, when Big Jim panned his silt...

... he found some more!

As did Jim:

Here's the findings. Okay, so you can't see what's in the vials, but there is gold in there. This is just a bad picture. There are 11 pieces of gold in my vial but they're all small and they settled to the bottom. We're not about to sell our finds and retire on the profits, but it was still entertaining. Thanks, Jim, for the fun new experience!

Of course while we were at the chainsaw carver's, I had to have a look around at the new carvings. There was a chainsaw carving competition here the previous week, and this is the winner:

Another entry was "Poodle Panic." The poodle's owner is using a flyswatter to defend it against the giant mosquito. 

SO CUTE. A saddled sea horse in progress.

I have a new friend. I think he likes me.  :^)

James seems to be having different luck with his new, uh, friend.

Once we got James out of the jail, we headed home for a supper of steamed crab legs followed by ice cream, and I have introduced Big Jim to the joys of Nutella straight out of the jar. Life is so good!