Reeds Travels

Reed Lukens

Silver Member
Jan 1, 2013
2,653
5,417
Congres, AZ/ former California Outlawed Gold Miner
Detector(s) used
Tesoro Vaquero, Whites MXT, Vsat, GMT, 5900Di Pro, Minelab GPX 5000, GPXtreme, 2200SD, Excalibur 1000!
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
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Reed Lukens

Reed Lukens

Silver Member
Jan 1, 2013
2,653
5,417
Congres, AZ/ former California Outlawed Gold Miner
Detector(s) used
Tesoro Vaquero, Whites MXT, Vsat, GMT, 5900Di Pro, Minelab GPX 5000, GPXtreme, 2200SD, Excalibur 1000!
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Then we came home to Alta, California as Oregonians now, since we had to change states with the new job. My niece was supposed to be taking care of our place while we were gone and we ended up spending the summer cleaning and bringing it back up to shape. She hadn't cleaned any of the houses at all since we had cleaned them 2 years before, so... We ended up booting her out because she had gone down the wrong path... Just for some insight, she argued with us, saying that there's no way to keep mice under control... lol. We had left her with 2 full cases of rat and mouse bait that she put up in our garage to keep away from the other animals. Everytime that I called she said she had another project done. I was giving her our main house for her and her kids. She's a single mom and before this new boyfriend that she had move in here with her, she was doing great. He was a known addict and she fell hard and fast... We were paying all of her bill's, I had given her my Hummer and she was living here for free plus an extra $1000 a month that I was giving her to keep those kids fed and taken care of.
I tried to do good but we literally walked back into a rats nest, the place was overrun with rats and mice and she had never even opened the cases of poison like she had continued saying she was doing...
We put out 54 boxes and bars of mouse bait from the 2 cases the first night...
And they were empty by the next morning... Needless to say, we spent the next month living in our trailer in front of our house. It took about 6 weeks for the smell of dead mice to finally go away and we were cleaning up, fixing pipes and normal ranch upkeep all summer.
We did make a couple of camping trips down to the mining claim and we did get some gold :)
Mid September came and the weather was turning, the house still needs more work, but that's normal, so we started out for Stanton and back to traveling and gold mining. Fun times were ahead :evil6:

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Reed Lukens

Reed Lukens

Silver Member
Jan 1, 2013
2,653
5,417
Congres, AZ/ former California Outlawed Gold Miner
Detector(s) used
Tesoro Vaquero, Whites MXT, Vsat, GMT, 5900Di Pro, Minelab GPX 5000, GPXtreme, 2200SD, Excalibur 1000!
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
The first thing that you see when pulling into Stanton is the sign above. Basically it's a retired gold miners RV park that I've been coming to for over 20 years now.

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As you drive up main Street you come to the old Ghost town of Stanton AZ. It was originally called Antelope Station as it is right beside Antelope Creek and it was a stage stop in the beginning. Here's a couple pics of the town from this year -

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Charlie Stanton was a well documented murderer, you really should read this page below in the link to get an idea of where we are staying, and yes... there are documented Ghosts as well.
#PrescottAZHistory: 1875-86: The Murderous Stanton Syndicate
 

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Reed Lukens

Reed Lukens

Silver Member
Jan 1, 2013
2,653
5,417
Congres, AZ/ former California Outlawed Gold Miner
Detector(s) used
Tesoro Vaquero, Whites MXT, Vsat, GMT, 5900Di Pro, Minelab GPX 5000, GPXtreme, 2200SD, Excalibur 1000!
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Here's another link that has more pictures and stories of the town and about he gold discovery on Rich Hill, where they found nuggets the size of potatoes.
Stanton

The first thing that we had to do was to get the Man Shed put up, so that we could unload the truck and start Gold Mining. So an old friend Ron Rhodes, the retired president of the Idaho GPAA arrived and came over to help me put up the tents. I had the frame played out in pieces and together we got it going.

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I picked up the 10'x10' garage from Harbor Freight, they have larger ones but the wind here can be really strong... And this one came with the longest stakes. I tried drilling them into the ground but it would just sit on top and spin, so I got out my grinder, cut the welds off and then handed them to Ron, who beat the feet the rest of the way off of the stakes.
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Reed Lukens

Reed Lukens

Silver Member
Jan 1, 2013
2,653
5,417
Congres, AZ/ former California Outlawed Gold Miner
Detector(s) used
Tesoro Vaquero, Whites MXT, Vsat, GMT, 5900Di Pro, Minelab GPX 5000, GPXtreme, 2200SD, Excalibur 1000!
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
From here on Ron helped me put the canvas on and we were ready to roll :evil6:

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After we did our part Ron and I helped Karen put up her lights around the camp, she sure loves having a beautiful place to stay and she got lots of compliments and thank you's for brightening up everyone's nights :)

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Next came unloading the truck into the shed and setting up the trommel. I had taken the lithium battery and mounted it inside of a new plastic ammo box. I bought the switches off of Amazon and the box, wires and plugs locally.
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I have it all set up as plug and play with quick connects. The pump and trommel motor each have their own plug in and then you can plug in either the Solar panel or the battery charger to the power lead that has a higher amp load.
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Reed Lukens

Reed Lukens

Silver Member
Jan 1, 2013
2,653
5,417
Congres, AZ/ former California Outlawed Gold Miner
Detector(s) used
Tesoro Vaquero, Whites MXT, Vsat, GMT, 5900Di Pro, Minelab GPX 5000, GPXtreme, 2200SD, Excalibur 1000!
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
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The Gold Fox Extreme works great and everything packs right into the back of the truck. The 2 black totes are used to haul gear. One holds my jacking blocks, locks, electrical wiring and daily trailer tools while the other that you see behind it, with the hoses coming out of it, holds the hoses, pumps, trommel legs and spray bar, along with my gold mining equipment, Karen's lights and charcoal for the BBQ. The truck is packed tight and everything has its place.

I have 6 different levels of separation for the recirculation system.

First the material drops off of the sluice, and most of the sand and heavies, classified to 3/16" out of the trommel, stays in the Red Bucket #1.

Then the flexible purple bucket, #2, when it is filled with water, pushes back into the red bucket and tilts it so that what doesn't stay in the red Bucket flows over into it. I can run one bucket of unclassified material and the tailings fill the red bucket around 3/4 up, so I empty it after every bucket. Pretty much, the purple bucket catches most of the slimes. I notched it out so that the water flows in the direction of the arrows. The slimes and clay that are suspended in the water then dump into the lower right corner of the tote and most of it settles to the bottom right there in the front of the tote.

Then in the opposite corner is the 3" ABS siphon, #3, that separates it even farther into the next stage.

Later after I took this picture, I found that I could put a 30 mesh screen over the 2 hoses on the opposite side marked as #4.
I cut a 2x4 to set in and hold the 30 mesh Keene screen tight. This keeps most of the roots, leaves and floaters out of the next stage. So the -30 flows into the 2 hoses.

The hoses are cut to fit, the ends are wired together and they drop the -30 on top of the purple -50 mesh screen that you can see the edge of and marked as #5... Now were getting to the small stuff and -50 is smaller then needed, but the spray bars are drilled with 9/64ths holes, so I need to have it classified small enough to maintain a smooth flow.

Really, I need a little bit longer tub, but I bought the black tub originally for the Gold Hog Multisluice recirculation system and it fits over my generator in the truck. The purple classifier is locked in by resting on the edge of the tub on the far side and locked against the inner tube that you can see around the green classifier #6.

So the completely filtered water down to -50 drops into the tub and the super slimes mostly settle out there.

Then the last stage is the green 20 mesh screen that floats on top of the water in the inner tube with the pump sitting in it. Small but efficient, the system works and I do just fine getting gold :)

On the outfeed of the trommel is the white bucket with a 1/2" classifier, I run a detector over the -1/2" and check the +1/2 by sight for the nuggets.

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russau

Gold Member
May 29, 2005
7,250
6,700
St. Louis, missouri
Back to the future....
We left the Blue Bucket and went over to the coast for 10 months and I had made this video of where we were staying the year before, but I never opened it up to the public until today because we wanted to be sure that Mom stayed safe. She moved out of this house and into town a few months ago, so I made it public for everyone today:)

Reed ,sharing the memories is great while you have a chance to do so !
 

KevinInColorado

Gold Member
Jan 9, 2012
7,037
11,369
Summit County, Colorado
Detector(s) used
Grizzly Goldtrap Explorer & Motherlode, Gold Cube with trommel or Banker on top, Angus Mackirk Expedition, Gold-n-Sand Xtream Hand pump
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
An impressive and well thought out setup Reed [emoji106]🏻[emoji106]🏻
 

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Reed Lukens

Reed Lukens

Silver Member
Jan 1, 2013
2,653
5,417
Congres, AZ/ former California Outlawed Gold Miner
Detector(s) used
Tesoro Vaquero, Whites MXT, Vsat, GMT, 5900Di Pro, Minelab GPX 5000, GPXtreme, 2200SD, Excalibur 1000!
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Good News :)

I switched to the Larger Battery Tender 8amp hour battery tonight, and the good news is that it still fit perfectly into the small Ammo Box. I had bought the small one as a test and used it for 3 years... But the big ones are all half of the price that they were when I picked up the smaller one. My smaller battery will now be installed into my Bucket Rig that I'm building for portability.

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Here's a picture of the dog ear that I cut into the new terminal caps. Definitely a better fit than the first ones from a few years back that are being seen on the rear post.
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johnedoe

Bronze Member
Jan 15, 2012
1,489
2,239
Oregon Coast
Detector(s) used
White's V3i, White's MXT, and White's Eagle Spectrum
Cleangold sluice & prospectors pan, EZ-Gold Pan, and custom cleanup sluice.
Primary Interest:
Other
Looks like some great travels and fun Reed.
 

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Reed Lukens

Reed Lukens

Silver Member
Jan 1, 2013
2,653
5,417
Congres, AZ/ former California Outlawed Gold Miner
Detector(s) used
Tesoro Vaquero, Whites MXT, Vsat, GMT, 5900Di Pro, Minelab GPX 5000, GPXtreme, 2200SD, Excalibur 1000!
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
We had an amazing year even with all of the covid restrictions. We were blasting in our mine last summer - received_314037386490384.jpeg
We got some gold out of it, but I haven't seen the final results yet from the crushing as it's being done by Rodney over in Sacramento California. We did a lot of claim maintenance as always and cleaned up the old trolley -
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We used to have a stamp mill and everything down here , but it walked away one winter...
Here's a picture of our crew down at the swimming hole -

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And that was pretty much our whole summer. We ended up back in Stanton Arizona around the first of November, got set up in our camp and started mining again in Arizona and we even got a bit of snow :)

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Reed Lukens

Reed Lukens

Silver Member
Jan 1, 2013
2,653
5,417
Congres, AZ/ former California Outlawed Gold Miner
Detector(s) used
Tesoro Vaquero, Whites MXT, Vsat, GMT, 5900Di Pro, Minelab GPX 5000, GPXtreme, 2200SD, Excalibur 1000!
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
We even had this roadrunner running around our campsite all of the time -
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Then, I went over to the Weaver Mining district office and on the way, saw a house for sale that said... I'm yours... lol. So I went back to camp, and now we are full fledged Arizonan's living in Congress, Arizona in a real house :)

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And for the first time in quite a few years... we have an internet connection that I can upload videos with, so... I have some catching up to do on our movies. But here's the first -



We're still moving in, but most of the work is done. Karen furnished the whole place off of Facebook marketplace for under 2 grand... and it's amazing :)

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And yes, there is gold in our new back yard... along with a seasonal creek.
 

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KevinInColorado

Gold Member
Jan 9, 2012
7,037
11,369
Summit County, Colorado
Detector(s) used
Grizzly Goldtrap Explorer & Motherlode, Gold Cube with trommel or Banker on top, Angus Mackirk Expedition, Gold-n-Sand Xtream Hand pump
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
How exciting for you both, congrats!
 

Goodyguy

Gold Member
Mar 10, 2007
6,489
6,895
Arizona
Detector(s) used
Whites TM 808, Whites GMT, Tesoro Lobo Super Traq, Fisher Gold Bug 2, Suction Dredges, Trommels, Gold Vacs, High Bankers, Fluid bed Gold Traps, Rock Crushers, Sluices, Dry Washers, Miller Tables, Rp4
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Congrats on the new home, its a beauty! :icon_thumright:

GG~
 

johnedoe

Bronze Member
Jan 15, 2012
1,489
2,239
Oregon Coast
Detector(s) used
White's V3i, White's MXT, and White's Eagle Spectrum
Cleangold sluice & prospectors pan, EZ-Gold Pan, and custom cleanup sluice.
Primary Interest:
Other
Kudos on the new digs in AZ ... Pretty sweet setup.
Love the vid too...
Best to ya.
 

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