North to Alaska?

Skimmiing through the program guide before I went to feed the animals tonight, I saw that one of the channels had an offering on Alaska.

It seems that with the rise in the price of precious metals, some folks are once again seeking to get rich on the gold in Alaska. Anyone here considering it?

I will leave it to the young and adventurous.

Always wanted to try panning for gold but I think I'm just too lazy to be any good at it.

Unless you are young and limber, it is back breaking work. It might be easier to sluice for gold, but I won't wade out into the rivers!

It might be easier but sluicing for gold I think is still hard work and in Alaska it's going to be very cold in them there rivers

thehairymob wrote:

It might be easier but sluicing for gold I think is still hard work and in Alaska it's going to be very cold in them there rivers

Well, with were the price of gold is going these days, all that hard work will pay off all the more.

But you'll need more than the couple of grams that most get from weeks of work to make it big

I'd be content with a nice fat nugget. But I am NOT going into a river, especially in Alaska!

thehairymob wrote:

But you'll need more than the couple of grams that most get from weeks of work to make it big

Well, if gold goes significantly over $2,000 an ounce (I think it could) even a few grams could amount to a nice pile of money. If I remember correctly, there are aproximately 28.5 grams in an ounce and at $2,000 an ounce, that would be about $70.17 per gram. If you were very lucky and found five grams a week, that would be $350.85 a week, of course you'd have to be very lucky.

zadaconnaway wrote:

Skimmiing through the program guide before I went to feed the animals tonight, I saw that one of the channels had an offering on Alaska.

It seems that with the rise in the price of precious metals, some folks are once again seeking to get rich on the gold in Alaska. Anyone here considering it?

I will leave it to the young and adventurous.

Well Zada, I've always wanted to pan for gold... somewhere, anywhere... and Alaska would be a dream place to do it.

In June the sun hardly goes down at all, so I guess there'll be continuous daylight to pan all around the clock :pirat:

Joking aside, I'd love to go inside the Arctic Circle in extreme northern part of Alaska someday. Around about time of the summer solstice each year, people flock there to see the "midnight sun". Wouldn't that be something...

I live in "The Silver State".
Nevada is known for both silver and gold mines.
There are people here who still pan.

I'm not really interested in hunting for precious metals.

However, my husband and I had seriously discussed moving to Alaska for a couple of years ... just to do it. Our company used to truck there, but they don't now. So, we've put that idea on hold ... but we haven't scrapped it.

I got some Fool's Gold going cheap:

Ya see I don't play the guitar, I'm a drummer!

During the great gold rush of a hundred years ago the man who seemed to have made the most money from it was poet Robert Service. He worked as a clerk during the day and spent his nights in saloons writing such things as "The Shooting of Dan McGrew," "The Cremation of Sam McGee," "The Men Who Don't Fit In," and dozens of others.
He sent some of them and a check to a printer in his native Scotland to have a few copies made up in book form for family and friends. When he received a letter from the printer he was afraid to open it because he felt his poems were being rejected even though he had paid to have them printed. When he did open the letter it contained a check for $10,000 (a fabulous sum in those days) and he was on his way to being a very rich man.

There's gold in them there poems!

From what I have read of history, the only ones who really made out during the gold rushes were the shop keepers. Talk about price gouging! They would charge whatever someone was willing to pay for supplies.

Shopkeepers and Mr. Service did well.

If you are going to go all the way to Alaska, I'd invite you to visit the Yukon as well, directly to the east (where the gold was, and Robert Service is immortalized). If you go a little later in the summer Abdul, the blackflies will ease up and, by August and September the Northern Lights are so low in the sky it seems as if you could reach out and touch them. Beautiful, haunting and mysterious. You can also hike the Chilkoot Trail (33 miles of rugged mountain terrain) from Skagway into the Yukon. In the old golden days, the miner's were required to haul a year's worth of gear across that trail. Tough ol' buggers.

Black flies? That does it for me. They are one of the worst creatures on earth and I have suffered considerably from them. When I lived in upstate New York, people called them May bugs. That was too nice a name for something so wicked.

You should try the Scottish Midgey tiny but they swarm in big clouds and eat anyone alive

Before you visit, check the Midge Forecast:

http://www.midgeforecast.co.uk/2007/default_map.asp

Somehow I wouldn't be surprised if those midges and balck flies are actually related. Not to worry Dick, they are not as bad as the mosquitos, although I could easily do without either one of them!

Not as bad as the mosquitos? Hah! When my hands were covered with blister-like sores and swollen to twice their normal size I would have laughed at your puny little mosquitos. And then there are chiggers to add to the joy of life in the outdoors.

*shudder*

I understand the mosquitoes are big enough to ride in Alaska during certain months, and they can smell you coming from California and all points East! We have those black flies here, too. Only they are often referred to as $h*t flies or nicer, deer flies. They sure do bite, so I can sympathize with you Dick.

Our version of midgies here in the Deep South are called Noseeums.

You don't see them unless you really look...they are small...but, they will bite the ever'loving fool out of you. Plus, they seem to thrive on bug spray!

I can't tell you the exact number of camping trips they have spoiled. I remember actually getting up in the middle of the night, packing up, and going home.

Just writing about noseeums makes my skin itch.

The Noseeums sound like they might be related to our Scottish Midgeys maybe thats where they go in the winter. I can just see them now packing the little cases, jump on a plane and head over to the USA. Then they get on a Greyhound and head south.