Mississippi River Trip: Lynx Creek, Prescott AZ -Bodies in the bushes...

We decided that we’d seen the best of Sedona along Schnebly Road (we had – 4WD and helicopter tours of that area are pretty much the tourist attraction) so Larisa and I decided to start moving south towards Phoenix and Saguaro National Forest, but first I wanted a day at Lynx Creek.  First of all it sits near Prescott  National Forest and free campsites, and secondly it’s a well known spot to do a little panning for gold, and I had the urge to wrest some wealth from the earth.  Or at least to get a  fleck of gold to bring home.

Lynx Creek is among the most productive placer mining creeks in America, with thousands of documented ounces  of gold coming from the creek bed.  Give the state of Arizona credit – they closed the creek to commercial mining and turned it into a state park that kisses the borders of the National Forest, making the whole area  a wonderful preserve of desert lowlands and lakes.   We found the free campsite easily enough, but couldn’t camp there.  The first good site we found had a yellow ribbon tied around a scrub oak tree.  The ribbon said “Sheriff’s Line – Crime Scene – Do Not Cross” in an endlessly repeating pattern.  Larisa followed the line down the hill a little ways and determined that foul murders had taken place and that we were likely to stumble across another body any second.  So off to the paid campground we went.  (It turned out that no foul murder was committed – the line was left over from when a hopped up kid stole a car and drove it into the forest.)   

It made no difference – we camped in the “safe” pay area so that Larisa could sleep at night.

After we set up camp we went down to Lynx Creek so that I could do a little poking around.  We found a group of five or six guys down by the creek with a camp set up.  The camp had several classifying boxes and buckets and buckets of water, so obviously the group was doing some serious mining for gold there.  We considered stopping for a chat, but they didn’t have the look of friendly chatters about them.  We passed them by and headed a little further down the creek, finding a spot to park and heading to the creek bed ourselves.  The area had been worked pretty well, with most of the big boulders being surrounded by deep digs.  Apparently the big boulders are where it’s at – the gold gets trapped behind the rocks and settles there.  Not all had been “mined”, but most had, and there were several holes along the banks near trees (tree roots apparently hang onto gold too, according to what I’ve read).  I picked a couple of likely looking spots and, since it was getting late, decided to come back early the next morning to do a little digging.

The next morning dawned hot and bright, and I took Larisa for a walk around Lynx Lake before heading down to the creek.  The lake was low – a consequence of the dry creek – but the walk was nice. 

 Larisa rescued a big crawdad that had managed to strand itself in dry area, and I saw some fat trout swimming near shore.  If we hadn’t decided to move on that day I’d have gotten a fishing license for the day.  Halfway around the lake I suggested to Larisa that the trip further south would be too hot for us, and offered to take her to San Diego for her birthday.  She agreed happily – apparently some of her friends told her upon her arrival in the U.S. that she would love San Diego and should go there some day.  Serendipitous that we were within 8 hours of that very place!  We agreed to head out after I went to the creek.

After our walk we went down to the creek.  Since the creek was dry and we didn’t have the resources to do any real panning I just dug my way down to the bedrock near some undisturbed boulders and started filling the 5-gallon bucket we brought with us.  I tried to stay mainly with the black sand and light clay and simply wound up with 5 gallons of dirt to clean.  I’ve decided to do a bit at a time when we stop near places that have water to use.  We’ll have to see if I got lucky or not.  Probably I didn’t but I’m having fun with it so far, and that’s all that really matters to me.