Vacation locations and experiences needed -- mining for gems

[sroweks]

Have you ever been mining for gems? How did that go? Was it worth it? Did your kids have fun?

Do you know of a location that would be within a day or two drive from central Kansas?

We found a place in north west Nevada (opal mining), but very expensive and a couple in north east Montana (sapphires), but far away.

[Lolly]

We did this in NC. It was great fun. The only regret I have is not having a ruby dd found cut and mounted there and mailed to us. It wasn't all that expensive for regular buckets. The salted buckets were expensive. We let the kids split one at the very end. They got a lot of cool stones out of it, but to be quite honest the regular buckets were more fun. It was a nice way to end the day. This has been one of my kids favorite vacations. They have asked to go back and do it again every year since.

[Brenda in FL]

We've done this before as well. In both GA and NC. I was skeptical the first time - my family never would have done this, but we were vacationing with the inlaws who still had some school age kids. Although my in-laws also had their own bucket - then and 15 years later the next time we went mining once we all had kids!

It is fun for the kids. The people who worked there told them what all the stones were - you can take them home and save them for geology lessons. We keep them in mason jars in the kids room with any other pretty rocks/shells they might find and want to keep.

Yes - its pricey - and we ended up buying more buckets then we intended to. Oh well, it was a vacation afterall.

[ljf]

If/when I get close to this place, I plan on stopping in. You can mine for diamonds, and get to keep what you find.

Linda


http://www.arkansas.com/things-to-do/diamond-hunting/

[Laurie4b]

We did it in western NC. It wasn't too expensive. The kids really liked it. They found all kinds of semi-precious stones (nothing valuable, just unique and pretty to look at.)