Archive for the 'Club Outings' Category

The January TVP Outing will be at the Cargo Muchacho Mountains near Glamis on Saturday January 16th. Please check the members only section on the TVP Forum for more details (January 2010 Outing Cargo Muchacho Mountains) or contact Wagonmaster Jay.

We have a booth at the Lancaster gold show. The gold show is a great way to let people know  that we are here and what we do. It is also a great way for us to get new members and make a little money from a raffle. We need volunteers to help out running the booth and answering questions. But most of all we need members to just come. The more the merrier. If you have not been to a gold show it is a lot of fun and you get to meet a lot of great people.

We need some members to help the Gpaa to setup on Friday morning 8am - noon. I will not be able to get there until Friday night due to work. We will set our booth up on saturday morning at 9am. The gold show will run from 10am-5pm on Saturday and 10am-4pm on Sunday. The Gpaa will need people to help take down after the show on Sunday. If you can help setup, take down, or run the booth, please give me a call at 951-244-3442.

The gold show will be held at the Antelope Valley Fairgrownds. The address is 2551 West Avenue H, Suite 102 H Lancaster, CA 93536.

The December TVP Outing will be at the GPAA Bautista Placer claim on Saturday December 19th. Please check the members only section on the TVP Forum for more details (Baustita Placer Outing) or contact Wagonmaster Jay.

The Temecula Valley Prospectors October outing will be held this Saturday, October 17th, at the GPAA Stratton claim (CA-63) which is just North of Barstow. The group will be meeting Wagon Master Jay Picone at 8:00 am and he will lead the caravan out to the claim around 8:15 am. The meeting location is at the intersection of Irwin Road and Copper City Road in Barstow. Click here for a Google map of the meeting place.

This claim is located on USGS Topo map “Mud Hills” which can be downloaded by clicking here. Note: This is an 8MB Zip file and may take a little bit to download on a slower connection.

Please remember that this is a wilderness area and you should bring the appropriate gear for being in such an area. This is a dry claim in a desert terrain, so you should have plenty of water for drinking and panning. The weather forecast is a high of 92 in Barstow on Saturday, so you’ll probably want some sun screen and a hat or some other type of shade.

If you have any questions about the outing, please contact Jay directly at wagonmaster@gpaatvp.com.

Have a great time and Happy Prospecting!

It is time to come show off your treasure hunting skills, or if you are like me it is time to hunt through the closet, dust off your metal detector and replace the batteries.  We are having our annual metal detector hunt at Siera park in Canyon Lake. We will be having two detector beach style hunts and a potluck lunch. There will be prizes handed out for special targets and also a prize for the best potluck dish.

We will start at 9am. We will have the hunts followed by lunch and probably end sometime around noon. TVP will supply the hamburgers and hot dogs. Please bring a potluck dish or something to share.

You will need to be on the list to be allowed in the Canyon Lake gate. If you signed up at the meeting you are all set. If not, Please give Mark Weaver a call at 951-244-6138. Everyone in the car does not need to be on the list just the driver. Don’t forget your ID or they will not let you in past the gate. At the gate don”t forget to ask the guards for a map to get to Siera Park.

Last year we had a lot of fun so don’t miss this.

See you there

Jay led us up the mountain to Big Bear for our August 2009 outing.

What a great place to go when the weather is still hot. Plus, “everyone” likes the mountains and there is actually gold to be found.

Holcomb Valley is the site of Southern California’s largest gold rush in 1860. It is now home to the Holcomb Valley Scout Ranch.

The Gold Mountain and Holcomb Gold claims are part of the GPAA Claims Guide and are a great place to visit and prospect. Drywashing and Metal Detecting are the recommended means of finding the yellow metal and you have to remember to take lots of water for drinking and panning.

Most of us met Jay at the Big Bear Kmart around 8:00am and hung around until 8:30am to make sure we didn’t miss anyone. I think we had around 20 TVPer’s.

The road up to the claims is rough in places, but most vehicles can make it. It’s just better if you have a truck or SUV.

What a beautiful place to spend the day. We checked the temperature most of the day and it held at 72 deg with a nice breeze. You couldn’t ask for better weather.

After checking, most prospectors using a drywasher were finding some fine gold. They had to work very hard and move a lot of material to get it, but they were getting it. (See pictures)

Prospectors metal detecting picked up the usual, a few coins, ammo brass, nails, cans, etc.

Yes, it was another great day, whether you found gold or just enjoyed a beautiful day in the mountains.

Thank you again Jay, for your leadership and help.

Tom

The August 15th outing will be at the GPAA’s  Holcombe Gold and Gold mountain claims in the Big bear area. Many TVP’ers have been there.

We will meet at the K-Mart on the east end of the lake at 8 AM and depart for the diggins as a group at 8:15 or so. The adress is 42126 Big Bear Blvd., Big Bear lake CA 92315.

It is a dry washing and metal detecting spot. Bring water for panning and for drinking as the area is desolate and none is immediately available. Make sure to bring anything you might need like food, tools, and first aid. It is the great outdoors and there is not a lot of stuff out there. We will be meeting at the K-mart so you can get some last minute items there.

For more info,  you can call Jay at (909) 821-0979 for outing info or directions, or refrence the GPAA guidebook for directions to the claims.

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