Never had a pan spill, not even close. But a few years ago after our yearly prospecting trip I forgot about the nearly one pound of nuggets we recovered.
We always separate the nuggets from the fines. The fines go to the refinery and get sold, the nuggets are sold online because people pay more money than the spot for some reason.
So a year went by, the family and I hooked up the travel trailer to head up to Lapland for some hunting. We got there, and it was like day two or three and my daughter grabbed her sand toys to play on the beach. She said she was going to go get us some gold so we did not have to kill Moose. She walked down about 40 feet to the bank of the river and played with her strainer and bucket for about an hour. We called her up to get cleaned up for dinner and she said that she was not done yet, so we told her she had ten more minutes and then she needed to come up.
She came up with her bucket and and showed her mother all the nuggets she found. Her mother looked in the bucket and acted really shocked, right away I complimented her on being a good mother for being able to act so enthusiastic in matters such as this because I never could emotionally embellish.
She told my daughter to come show me but I was cooking on the grill and told her I would have a look after dinner. We cooked and ate and my daughter then asked if I would have a look at them. I said yes sure but then it was nearly bed time.
Man my heart nearly stopped, O looked through them all, I went inside and got my little acid tester and they where real. I asked my wife to please clean up and I grabbed my daughter and son, we got the three strainers, a pan and shovel from the belly of the caravan (never leave home without it) I told me daughter to take me down and show me where she got them.
However it was dark and she said that she did not want to leave the lighted area. I said thats cool, I turned around SUV, put the lights on, and grabbed a Peli Light Set and put that up. Told her I had my guns and we have enough light now to see anything coming from far off and that it would surely die tired before it could charge us.
So reluctantly she took me to her little spot, I knew where she was but seriously a little girl with sand toys digging that much gold I wanted to be certain that I could find this freakish wealth. My son and I get to digging, my wife come down and my daughter said she wanted to go to bed. My wife takes her to bed and I am digging and straining and panning like a mad man finding nothing, but the proof on the table was enough to keep me going man.
An hour later my wife comes out and tell me that our daughter was crying, really more concerned about the gold and not my daughters feelings at the time I asked my wife if she sorted and she said no not really all the way yet. So I stopped just wanting to get this over with as fast as I could because I figured she wanted me to read to her or something.
No that was not the case, my wife tells me that our daughter found last years nuggets in the drawer. I was like what are you talking about I thought we sold those on ebay. My wife said she already checked our ebay account for sales in the last year and we did not but that our daughter even handed her the small plastic jug she found them in.
I was laughing so hard about that, my daughter was happy that I was no angry and she asked me if she had lost any. I told her heck if I know because we did not weigh it ever only weighed what my daughter claimed to have found.
The next morning my son is up early MDing the heck out of that area just convinced that his little sister dropped a few and he was going to cash in. LOL
So no, never had a pan spill. I would hate to do something so foolish like spill my pan. Better to loose nearly pound of nuggets and not know about it so your daughter can play with them in a 2 dollar sand toy set out in the bush. LOL Much safer. LOL
? It wasn't a very pretty picture (well to me anyway!) BOY DID I LEARN MY LESSON!
John
