Ever considered looking for gold on your next RV camping vacation?

Ever considered looking for gold on your next RV camping vacation? All across America, there are places for greenhorns to pan for gold nuggets. Panning for gold is relatively inexpensive, and who knows, you might just come home with the motherlode! If doing a little prospecting on your next vacation sounds good, use the ideas below to start planning your next RV camping vacation.
Southeast US Gold Panning RV Vacation Ideas
For a southeastern gold panning RV vacation, head for Crisson Gold Mine in Dahlonega, GA. Tour the mine, and then pan five gallon buckets of ore for nuggets and gemstones.
Just down the road from the Crisson Mine, you'll find Consolidated Gold Mines, where your family can go underground for the mine tour before panning for gold in a sluice. Dahlonega is also home to some beautiful north Georgia RV campgrounds.
Central US Gold Panning RV Vacation Ideas
  The Phoenix Gold Mine in Idaho Springs, Colorado is a great place for gold panning enthusiasts! Your admission includes a guided tour of the historic Phoenix Gold Mine, plus the chance to spend all day panning for gold.
  Another super family experience is right down the road at the Argo Gold Mine and Mill, also in Idaho Springs. Tour the famous Argo Tunnel and Double Eagle Gold Mine, established in 1893, and stay to pan for gold and native Colorado gemstones. Great RV campgrounds can be found just outside Idaho Springs.
  While you're in Colorado, continue your tour in Cripple Creek in Pikes Peak country, home to the world famous Mollie Kathleen Mine. Take the thrilling mine elevator one thousand feet into the earth to tour the mine, and then head down-valley to the nearby town of Victor to tour the Victor Lowell Thomas Museum. Try your hand at panning there for gold, turquoise, and topaz. There are plenty of RV camp sites right in the midst of Cripple Creek action.
West Coast Gold Panning RV Vacation Ideas
   California is the ultimate Gold Rush State, and plenty of gold panning action can be found there by RV campers. Right in the heart of Gold Country, your family is going to love Jimtown1849 Mining Camp.
Located in the historic city of Jamestown, the Mining Camp will take you back to the days of the Gold Rush. Your family can prospect Wood's Creek for gold with experienced guides and take home what you find.
  Head north from Jamestown to Washington, CA, and pan gold from one of the scenic campsites in Tahoe National Forest along the Yuba River. This gold-rich area is open to casual prospecting, and tourists have been known to "see color" in their pans.
You should also definitely go to the source of the California Gold Rush and pan gold on the American River at the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma. See a replica of Sutter's Mill and twenty other historic buildings where James Marshall found gold in 1848. Park visitors have been known to find gold while panning, so don't miss this historic opportunity!
Within this gold-rich area between Downieville and Mariposa, there are streams and rivers on State and National Park land where panning is allowed. Check with Tahoe, Eldorado, and Sierra National Forest personnel as you plan your RV gold panning vacation.
This is just a quick tour of places your gold-seeking friends and family might want to visit. Doesn't this sound like a great way to spend time on an RV vacation? Pack up your boots and jeans and head for the hills. It's definitely time to find some vacation gold!

Gold Prospecting for family fun

Gold panning is a great way to enjoy the outdoors. If you look upon it simply as a hobby, a way to have fun out in the fresh air of nature, you may get more out of it than simply pursuing it for money,
Yes, many weekend gold prospectors make money with their hobby, but usually at the cost of fancy equipment, like expensive dredges. And it takes work, hard work But, if your focus is just fun and some pretty flakes to show off later, then you can get by with a lot less money with simple equipment.
Heck, you can even build stuff like sluice boxes and rocker boxes.
But at a minimum, you will need a gold pan, a small trowel or shovel and a snuffer bottle to suck up the gold flakes and specks in the bottom of your pan.
If the idea of scratching out the contents of cracks and depressions in stream side bedrock appeals to you, you can throw in a few sniping tools like a crevice tool, a couple of spoons, brushes, screwdriver, maybe a rock hammer. And don't forget, a five gallon bucket or two comes in handy for carrying material and tools.
Looking for gold in the outdoors is basically a treasure hunt, whether you find just flakes or you get a gold nugget or two. It is the thrill of the chase, a lot like hunting, as you learn to read a stream and figure out where the gold may be hiding. Gold has its own characteristics, like density, that help determine where it will settle out during high water times when much of the stream bed material may become mobile. As you get better at this, you have the pleasure of greater and greater success.
Some folks aren't all that crazy about digging, so their weapon of choice is the metal detector designed to read the ground for the presence of gold. Some awfully nice nuggets have been found in the US and many other places in the world, with these wonderfully magic machines.
Gold panning is a nice way to introduce children to the outdoors. Some take to it easily, others grow bored, but all can learn to enjoy being away from the house and its TV and computer games. And in the warm seasons of the year, that river or creek can be wonderfully inviting for a swim and picnic.
The US has many places to go to find gold. Public land along gold bearing streams, gold prospecting set aside areas, even private lands with access for a fee. Much of the West, parts of the South, upper Midwest and New England are some likely places to research for gold.
Go out and get the gold!

Prospectors find largest gold nugget in 120 years

 Chris Johnson holds four gold coins next to a cloth-covered gold nugget on Monday. Johnson will unveil the nuggetThursday at The Journey Museum. Found July 6, the nugget is the biggest uncontested gold nugget found in the Black Hills in the past 120 years. The amount of gold in the nugget is equivalent to about four of these coins, he said. Holly Meyer/Journal staff)

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A bright yellow glimmer caught Charlie "Digger Chuck" Ward's eye as he panned. His eyes had fooled him in the past, so he reached in the pan to feel the weight of the clump. Ward handed it to his prospecting partner, Byron Janis, and asked "Is this what I think it is?"
The 2-¼ inch by 1-1/2 inch by 1 inch rock was exactly what Ward thought it was:
gold.
It turned out to be the largest undisputed gold nugget found in the Black Hills in the past 120 years. (A larger nugget has been found, but its authenticity has been called into question).
"We were really excited," Ward said. "We could hardly stay in our skin."
On Thursday, the public will have a chance to see the nugget up close during its unveiling at The Journey Museum in Rapid City.
Ward and his partner, who call themselves the "Ice Box Mining Company," sold the precious nugget for an undisclosed amount to Chris Johnson, owner of the Clock Shop in downtown Rapid City, which often buys gold from prospectors.
"We paid a generous amount for the nugget," Johnson said. Based on current gold prices, the "Ice Box nugget" intrinsically has about $5,000 worth of gold in it. But because of its rarity in the Hills, Johnson could only speculate what someone might pay for it.
"Its value as a specimen far exceeds the gold content in there," Johnson said.
A mixture of quartz and gold, the nugget weighs 5.27 troy ounces, but a gravity test at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology determined its specific gold content was 3.96 troy ounces, Johnson said.
Other nuggets of comparable and larger size were found during the Black Hills gold rush but did not remain in one piece, according to Johnson.
Ward and his partner decided to sell their rare find because, as prospectors, they prefer the hunt and making money to holding onto what they find.
"You either work for money, or you work for gold," Ward said. "It's more about the romance of prospecting and going out and finding than having everything around."
The prospectors would not reveal where they found it but said it is within 20 miles of Rapid City on a dry site Ward and Janis have worked at for about eight months. The two take their diggings from the dry site and then take it to a stream to separate any gold.
Johnson said the nugget isn't for sale, and he expects to keep it on display at The Journey Museum for about a month.
"For the time being, we're just enjoying having it," Johnson said.Read The Article From the Rapid City Journal