Treasure Fest with Route 66 Gold Miners Club

It was 112 deg in Hemet on Friday (the desert was hotter) so what could a Prospector do to keep cool and have some fun? Well the answer is, go to Bolsa Chica State Beach for one of the Route 66 Gold Miners Treasure Fests.

The event schedule was, sign up at 9:00am, the first hunt (warm up hunt) at 10:00am lasting about 45 minutes and the main hunt (with all the great prizes) at 11:00am. When I arrived at the beach at 8:00am (always try to be early to help set up) it was 65 deg and although the sun was out and felt hot there was a breeze blowing off the ocean and it never got above 80 deg the whole day.

It was great to see so many Temecula Valley Prospectors show up and out of the 30 people that signed up for the hunt at least half were TVP’ers. The Route 66 Gold Miners signed everyone up and put out the clad coins (and a lot of them) for the warm up hunt and everyone began detecting. Wow, is all I can say, what fun.

Next everyone came in and had desert snacks while they put out the silver coins, old coins, special prize articles and about 9 pounds of foreign coins. There was no shortage of targets. When the main hunt began I went across the target area one time and had a hand full of coins. After the hunt I noticed that everyone seemed to have an abundance of coins and of course trash.

Then the special prizes were awarded. If you found a key (several were put out), you had a chance to open the treasure chest which contained a Home Depot gift certificate and some mardi gra beads and fake gold coins (a real treasure chest). The rest of the prizes, the gold nugget, a package of jarred peaches, a jumbo pack of AA batteries, and the orange buckets that lined the search field were all awarded using labeled target articles.

I had a ball, kept cool (well somewhat), got a lot of great exercise and lots of coins.

What a day. I can hardly wait for the next hunt.

Thank you Route 66 Gold Miners for a great Treasure Fest and outing. I hope you will invite us again.

Tom