2005/04 Deep South trip - Emerald Hollow Mine |
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Friday April 1st
We were retracing our steps on Friday, going back south to a mine near the little town of Hiddenite, but we took the scenic route across hillbilly country. As North Carolina is very frugal with its road signs, we saw rather more of this country than we intended. The roads wind around the hills, past cottages and shacks, and orchards loaded with apple blossom. We even found a roundabout, possibly the only one in the state. (We have two in St Paul. As no one is taught how to negotiate them, there is plenty of confusion as to what to do.)
We also found a field full of vultures, some of them swooping low over something in the grass. It looked like this bunch had got tired of waiting for something to die and was actively helping it on its way.
We got to Hiddenite after lunch and found the Emerald Hollow mine. We found we could either go sluicin’ or creekin’. Sluicin’ involves buying buckets of gravel from the mine and washing it through a screen in a sluice or flume, looking for stones. These buckets are usually “enriched” to make sure the customer leaves happy with at least one rock, but it’s very artificial, and we opted for creekin’.
We waded into the creek, dug the red mud and gravel out, and washed it with our screens. We had little 
company as the water was cold and most people don’t travel around with wellies or, as in our case, kayaking boots. In addition, the rain set in soon after we started. The gravels were full of crystals, so many that our main difficulty was in distinguishing the desirable ones. There were loads of quartz and its varieties, citrine and amethyst. We found a nice chunk of smoky quartz and a small emerald, not big enough to get excited about.
We kept at it until closing time, scraped the worst of the mud off, and set off into a wet fog looking for a campsite. We ended up at the end of a muddy track alongside the creek at Boone Fork, in the Pisgah national forest, with a steady rain continuing.
Saturday April 2nd
The rain continued most of the night, really pounding down in the early hours. Our nearest neighbours packed up their tents and left at about this time. I got up to turn on the truck lights just to make sure we were still by the creek and not up the creek. This storm system had dumped four inches of rain on Georgia earlier in the day.