After running my marathon in Virginia Beach on Sunday (I ran a 3:30:14 and qualified for the 2009 Boston Marathon!), we headed down to Statesville, NC on Monday, where we had hotel reservations. Statesville is only 30 minutes from Hiddenite.
On Tuesday morning, we got up, ate the hotel’s free breakfast, and then left for the mine.
The Emerald Hollow Mine opens at 8:30am, but we got there a little early. So we waited and the guy showed up to open the gate right on time. It took the guy a little bit to get set up, so we walked around looking at the rocks that were displayed. So the guy was ready to start checking us in. The guy was not in a good mood. Or maybe that is his normal mood. We got the combo permits so we could dig, do creeking and sluicing. I only rented a single digging kit since I would be doing all the digging, not my wife. With any of the permits, you get a free bucket of dirt to sluice. So we each got one, and started sluicing. It ws pretty easy to tell the buckets are filled with plain dirt with some fancy looking but non-valuable rocks seeded in. Mostly quartz. You could buy buckets with better stuff seeded in.
After we finished sluicing, we headed off to dig. There was a general area where you are allowed to dig, but we had no clue what to look for if anything. And the people there never told us what to look for for digging locations. So we just picked a spot, dug, and filled the bucket with dirt. The bucket can get heavy when filled with dirt. So we put the shovel handle through the back handle, and I took one end, and my wife took the other. Still, it is a bit of a walk. We didn’t find much except some small pieces of quartz. After multiple trips digging in different spots and not finding much, we were getting disappointed. We started talking about not coming back the next day.
Digging was not producing. We decided to try creeking, so we returned the bucket and shovel. I wanted to get a couple creeking setups, but the guy said we only paid for one. I had only wanted on digging kit, but I wanted two creeking kits. I was ready to pay for another creeking kit, but dealing with the guy was too much trouble. So we got the single creeking kit, and headed down to the creek. The creeking kit consists of a small hand shovel and a screening box.
Right away we were finding better stuff in the creek. We were finding larger nicer pieces of quartz, as well as amesthyst and some other pretty rocks that we don’t know what they are.
So now that we were finding stuff, we were now planning to come back the next day and only do creeking.
So we went back to Emerald Hollow Mine on Wednesday morning and bought only creeking permits (which would also allow us to do sluicing as well). But we paid for two creeking kits this time!
With the experience of the previous day, I decided to sift more rocks, and focus more on quality stuff. I had gotten a ton of small quartz and agate stuff the previous day. But this time I was going to look for larger more interesting stuff instead of keeping every little sliver. I dug in various locations such as in front of big rocks, behind big rocks, under rocks, in deep pools. I found stuff in each of these locations. I also found coold stuff just walking along the creek and looking for rocks under the water that looked different.
We also decided to buy a Killer Beryl/Emerald bucket for $25. We wants to be sure we at least came home with some emeralds. And we got a buch of emeralds, but they are all low quality. I am sure the rocks in the $25 bucket are worth less than $25.
My suggestion is that if you come here, just do the creeking. You may not find anything super valuable, but plan to have fun. I am sure that Kirsten from Cash & Treasures got a guided tour, and was told the best spots to dig. Most people don’t get that, or at least we didn’t.
Emerald Hollow Mine is located at 484 Emerald Hollow Mine Dr., Hiddenite, NC 28636, (828)632-3394.
* I went and checked my recording of the Cash and Treasures emerald hunting episode. I noticed that Kirsten got to dig in the area reserved for school groups. And when she was digging else where, she had a guide telling her where to dig. Is it possible stuff was planted for her to find?
After seeing the Cash And Treasures marathon on the Travel Channel, my wife and I and been looking for an opportunity to go to one of those places they had on the show.
I am scheduled to run a marathon in Virginia Beach, VA in March, and I noticed that North Carolina wasn’t that far away, and I thought that one or two of those places were in North Carolina. I checked out the Cash And Treasures website and found that there was Emerald mining in a place called Hiddenite, NC. And it was only a 6 hour drive from Virginia Beach. Way cool! We had just seen the Emerald hunting show again recently during a New Years day marathon. My wife liked the idea of going to hunt emeralds!
So the plan is to take a 2 day drive to Virginia Beach, run the marathon on Sunday. Then Monday we will drive to the Hiddenite area, and check into a hotel. Then go digging for emeralds on Tuesday. And if we have fun, we will hang around Wednesday and spend another day digging for emeralds.
Seeing that the digging will be only a couple days after running the marathon, I am guessing that my legs will be sore. But which each marathon I have run, my legs have recovered faster, so I will probably be okay.
I saw there was another place down in Georgia with an amethyst mine. But my wife thought the emerald mining would be enough. On the Cash And Treasures, they seems to find other types of gemstones also. The website lists aquamarine, sapphire, garnet, topaz, amethyst, citrine, rutile, tourmaline and hiddenite as other stones that can be found.
They have different types of permits. I plan to get the combo permit which would allow us to do everything (digging, creeking, sluicing).
What triggered our interest in rockhounding most was seeing a tv show titled Cash And Treasures. We had been flipping through the channels looking for something to watch and found Cash And Treasures on the Travel Channel. It was Cash And Treasures marathon, and they were playing the 30 minute long episodes back to back. It was a cool show.
On the show, the host Kirsten travels to various places to hunt for valuable stuff like emeralds, sunstones, meteorites, gold etc. We became very interested in trying some of these things. Most of them were in other parts of the country, but we like to travel, so we planned to work a vacation around one or more of these places.
The episodes that we saw that day that most interested us were Sunstones in Oregon, and Amethyst in Georgia, but also Eggs (Geodes) in New Mexico, and Meteorites in Kansas looked interesting too.
I went online and found some other episodes that they were playing that day, but that looked good where they go hunting Diamonds, Aquamarines, Sapphires, and Opals.
I was guessing that the host had help beyond what regular visitors get. Also, I wondered if people from the crew dug, sluiced, etc, and then she got credit for the find on camera. It wouldn’t make a very interesting show if she found nothing. Also, it would be in the best interest of the places where she paid to mine if she found nothing, found a piddly amount.
I’d have to say that our first taste of gemstones was on our honeymoon. We had taken a 7 day Caribbean cruise which stopped in the Bahamas, San Juan and St Thomas. We did a snorkeling excursion in the Bahamas, so didn’t do much in the way of shopping. But in San Juan and and St Thomas we got to do some shopping. I don’t remember buying any stones in St Thomas, but we did buy a few loose stones in Old San Juan. We bought a large oval shaped amethyst stone, and a couple smaller retangular (emerald cut?) amethyst stones. My wife’s favorite gemstone is amethyst.
Later I had the two smaller stones mounted as earings, and gave them to my wife as a birthday or anniversary gift. The large stone, my had mounted as a pendant with a small diamond accent. Also on this trip, we bought a small teardrop shaped topaz. We bought this in the ship store. I had this mounted as a pendant as well.
On subsequent cruises, we have also bought a few loose stones as well as jewelry. On our last cruise, we bought several pieces of amber jewelry.
Now for anniversarys, birthdays, valentines days, etc, I usually buy her a small piece of jewelry. Not always expensive stuff. She likes a variety of stones. So I have bought piece with amethyst, citrine, peridot, pearl, emerald, and of course diamond.