The start of a Journey

Welcome to my little blogging page. Here I am going to try to keep up with some of my Hiking and Camping adventures as well as some of my gold prospecting attempts. I am not much of a blogger as I have tried before but I will give it another shot. I guess this is where I will get into a little background info.

Gold from Alaskan paydirt off ebay

My name is Brian and I live up in the corner of Northeast Tennessee in the Tri-Cities area. I have recently gotten into gold prospecting as a hobby. I joined the Coker Creek GPAA Forum since it is the closest gold group to me. There are some good people in there with much knowledge. I have not joined the GPAA though because it would be a 4 hour drive one way to get to the Coker Creek Claim. As a College Student (at this time) and family man, I just can't justify it yet. I have joined in on their April 2013 Group Outing below Marion, NC to private property they secured. Had a good time on that Friday as the weather was nice. The next day though we packed up because the rain settled in. Only got a speck of gold but was fun and very informational as to what to bring on a tent camping trip. We brought way too much stuff. I might get back to this trip later on in another post. Click here for the Coker Creek Forum

Now, Northeast Tennessee is not known as a gold area. So I may be spinning my wheels locally. I have done much searching on the internet and have found rumors of gold in the local areas. I am in contact with another local hobby prospector who also has heard of rumors of gold. We now have a shared goal of chasing down these rumors and even looking into places that just look promising. Gold is where you find it. We want to prove there is gold here even if it is just small amounts.The thrill of the hunt! Even if there is no gold, it gets me outside and away from being held up in the house.

The Marion trip got me thinking about doing more primitive camping and I started thinking about packing into areas where there is nothing but woods. There is close access to the Appalachian Trail with plenty of creek branches around. This is not something I can do with the Family because of my Daughters age so I talked with my Wife. She gave the ok for me to go out without them. Some places I want to test have Cherokee National Forest campgrounds and those are where my family will join me. 

I am marking spots in Google Earth now. I have a hiking gps program for the phone. If that fails, I will have my compass and resort back to land nav skills that I learned in the Army. I have pans, sluices, backpacks, tents and motivation. My excursions will be mostly around N.E. Tennessee and possibly into North Carolina. There may be lots of time lapse between post due to not a lot of time for trips. Thats how life is though. Let the journey begin!