Well shuck my corn! The one item discovered on trip forty-five proved to be a shirt I left behind on the previous quest. Painfully aware of winters rapid approach, the target area continued to be thoroughly investigated yet the gold bars remained elusive. With hunting season on and with the proliferation of the ubiquitous beer can, I wore my red bandanna pirate style for easy identification. If mistaken for some hapless creature a clean head shot would’ve eliminated any undue suffering.
The creek babbled on occasionally mimicking human voices. While deeply comforting and spiritual, the forest also tricked an old man’s overactive imagination at times. Hello, is anyone there?
Both of White’s detectors have served me well to date. The TDI Pro signaled the first three sites that yielded the bulk of the hardware shown. But the Sierra Madre took the search a step further, or I should say deeper, and helped to uncover more pieces of the puzzle. The Sierra is a much lighter unit until I added the fifteen inch coil. My old arms tired quickly forcing me to switch arms every few minutes. With the nine-inch coil the unit’s a dream to handle. I tested both detectors at home on known targets, or tried to.
The TDI failed to find the buried power line running to the greenhouse and woodshed. I knew roughly where the lines were buried so the Sierra Madre came next. Right where they were said to be and likely two or three feet deep (as they should be). A final test involved locating an old Studebaker truck rumoured to be buried in a low spot on the property. Confirmed and deeper than the power line. The original land owner said not to bother digging it up as he had a D 8 Cat ‘gently’ clatter over it, drastically lowering the profile.
The long-range forecast for the target site showed rainy days but no freezing temperatures quite yet. Soon enough though so another journey is required. Any accumulated snow changes the search to a large degree. I don’t want to think about that situation yet.
And then there’s that standing invitation to winter in Los Angeles. It’s looking more attractive with every leaf that flutters to this soon to be frozen Canadian ground. Perhaps I’m aging not so gracefully but this former prairie farmer has shoveled more than his fair share of snow. But first things first. There is, after all, gold in them there hills…..
