Gold Paning

We spent the day with Jeff Orcutt at his place in Auburn, Ca. It is a couple of hours from her and he lives in a private community. He took us out on the lake in his boat. The water felt warm and the kids even had fun swimming in the lake. 

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They enjoyed just jumping off the boat. It was really pretty and quite. A lot of retired folks live there and quite a few houses are on the lake. 

Jeff even tried some fishing and let the kids cast the line. 

Then we drove another hour and Jeff took us gold paning in the American River. The American River is where they found gold originally. It is not far from Sutters Fort. He had all the pans and he taught the kids how to look for gold. We spent a couple of hours there and got about $20.00 worth in gold. He put it in a little vial for us. 

If you look close you can see the fleck of gold. 

It is harder than it looks you have to fill it with dirt and sift the heck out of it. 

The kids were good at it and were entertained by it. Jeff was super nice to take us and we had a fun day. Jon has been trying to plan this for a long time. Jeff used to gold pan every weekend and he sold like 20 lbs of gold. He has scuba gear that he goes on the bottom of the rivers and sucks up dirt and then later sifts it for gold. It was quite the experience because sometimes you only get a few flecks and sometimes you didn't get after sifting it.