Sam's and El Dorado Gold Mine, Aug 25, 2010

With afternoon reservations for the El Dorado Gold Mine (2 or 1 TourSaver coupon) we visited the Sam’s Club for some shopping in the morning.   This was our first Sam’s Club since last April.  As you can see, we did a good job.

  Upon arrival at the El Dorado Gold Mine, we all boarded the train which took us on a short narrated trip through a permafrost tunnel, an early gold mining camp and then to where we would see how the modern gold miners mine gold and lastly, pan for gold ourselves.

Here you can see the large sluice box.  The water source is behind the large shovel bucket in back of ‘Yukon Yonda’.  The shovel bucket is slowly dumping the gold bearing gravel into the sluice box.  The water washes the gravel and dirt down this long sluice. Since gold is 20 times heavier than the gravel, the gold will sink to the bottom and be caught in the riffles.

Then Dexter, her partner, lifted out a section of the sluice box which collects the gold and then proceeded to pan out the pay dirt.

He found quite a bit of gold.

We were then given our poke of dirt to try our luck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just making sure no gold nuggets were left in the bag.

Yes, I did find gold!  But you can’t see it in this photo.

Here is my gold on the left and Bob’s on the right!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We then had our gold weighed, mine 4.5 grains and Bob’s 4 grains.  Combined weight 8.5 grains and that equals .019 ounces, about $35 worth.

So, what do we do with the gold, well, I ended up with a locket holding all the flakes.  I love it!

Bob finally got to get up close to the Alaska Pipeline.

The view out behind the coach.