Spent a day at Montana’s Gem Mountain with fellow rockhounds Tom and Debby.  This is the place that was featured on an episode the Travel Channel’s Cash and Treasures.  We got there bright and early before they opened.

The gigunda sized sluice box was just begging for action.

Our friend Tom, who is an expert god panner, checked to see if there were some sapphires in the muck in the bottom of the sluice.

Finally, we got our buckets of gravel that hopefully contained some of Montana’s beautiful sapphires.

We carefully put little shovel fulls of the gravel into our screen.

And washed them in the sluice.  That takes skill, working it from side to side, washing off the dirt and moving everything to the center of the screen.

Then pick out the sapphires.  They look like glass or a little glob of gelatin.

There’s one in there… do you see it?

There it is!

We found a few good ones!

Deb and Tom were wonderful and helped many new gem hunters become proficient so they wouldn’t become discouraged.

So, off we went with our treasures and headed for the little town of Phillipsburg, MT.

On the way, we spotted a herd of elk crossing a hay field.

And headed for the Doe Brothers Restaurant & Soda Fountain.  This was our ambiance.

What a treat!  Huckleberry shakes!

And got some treats at the Sweet Shop.  Bill kept saying that he felt like a kid all day.  Now he really felt like a kid!

Well, we ended up with four flawless, cuttable Montana Sapphires and took them to the Sapphire Gallery in town to have them heat treated, faceted and mounted in a ring.  Sorry we didn’t get pictures of the them before we dropped them off, but when we get them back in about 9 weeks, we’ll show it off.  What a way to remember a wonderful day with two special people.