Dredging and Dallying

Getting gold from the bottom of a river is a lot of work. It seems that more time is spent getting ready to dredge, climbing down to the river, suiting up, and setting up the equipment than actual dredging! Today we made the first attempt at getting to the other side of the river, where there is a very promising-looking cove.














The pics today show Mike carrying supplies around some boulders to get to the launch site. I scramble over the rocks. The middle pic is of the dredge floating in the water. On the left side of the picture is the opposite shore we're aiming to get to.

The pic of Mike shows him suited up for crossing the river. That's a boogie board in his hand. He's got a wet suit on and a life jacket and is tethered to a 300 foot rope that I'm feeding from the shore. I'll get pics of the crossing later this week.

It's not all work up here, we took a trip to Grants Pass earlier this week and on the way back I snapped pics of some of the wildflowers growing in the higher elevations of the mountains. I made Mike stop along the road and got out to take the shots. We've been here 3 months now and will be heading back the end of September. I'm looking forward to seeing some early fall changes before we return home. Summer is just flying by.