everything vintage/what is it worth?

Somewhere in the hills of Nevada, off, off, off, off road! My daughter Leanne is at the bottom of a mine shaft. This is one of the 7 that we purchased through our jewelry store. This was quite an adventurous trip!

 This is a nice big nodule of turquoise found inside this particular mine. There was plenty of turquoise just lying outside the mine too. I plan on selling some of it on eBay soon!

MY JOURNAL:

Day 1: Fly from Philly to Phoenix, get ride to hotel, stay overnight in nice hotel

Day 2: Get ride to storage unit to pick up 2 vehicles and all the supplies we have stored, drive to Sunflower mine, ride in on extremely rocky roads (scary!), hike mountain for hours, find 4 new adits, drive out, get stopped by AZ police who thought we were growing marijuana (NOT!), drive to my brother’s house and pick him up, drive through the AZ mountains for 30 miles in a blinding snowstorm, stop at Kingman AZ for the night–finally!

Day 3: Nice hotel breakfast, drive past Las Vegas, drive 4+ more hours to Tonopah, Nevada, only passing about 3 towns on the way. Get supplies, talk to local people (very nice!), buy groceries, stay overnight in warm hotel.

Day 4: Wake up to a snow storm, drive south for a few miles and no snow–sun is out! Drive off road for an hour, off off off road for another 30 minutes or so to reach a high and very remote mountain where we set up camp. Drive across to another mountain, blow a tire, fix it, reach the turqouise mine, go inside, come back in the dark, make steaks on the fire, go to bed. The wind started picking up and was so bad I could not sleep the entire night. Sleet and snow were hitting the tent. So glad for a tent heater!

Day 5: Wake up to 30 mile per hour winds, 30 degrees, snow showers, and no sun. Made breakfast anyway and froze the entire day. Scott made an attempt to go down a 150 foot shaft. At least it was warm down there! Explored a short adit a few feet down the mountain. Went to bed at 6PM and the wind finally died down! Slept much better.

Day 6: Wake up to beautiful sunrise and no wind! It is barely 20 degrees but we hardly feel it with all of our layers on. Make french toast and bacon over the fire and start packing up all the tents and equipment. Drive across to the turqouise mine again, stay there 2 hours, get lots of rocks, drive off the mountain, stop for about an hour at another old gold mine to explore but the claims are all taken. Drive about an hour to get to the main highway. Tire is losing air and our “slime” is frozen. We warm it up in front of the truck heater and the tire makes it another 60 miles to the nearest town. We drive 4 more hours in the dark, losing our bucket toilet in the process (it flew off the back of the truck and we didn’t care!) Pass Las Vegas and end up at Kingman, AZ again, about 10 PM.

Day 7: Nice hotel room but when we wake up, the tire is flat. The last spare is also flat but civilization is nearby and we get a used tire to complete the journey. Now we don’t have time to drop off my brother at his home so his wife has to meet us enroute. A few hours later, we end up near Phoenix, return the vehicles and supplies to the storage unit and get picked up to get to the airport — in plenty of time! Just 4 1/2 hours on a plane and I’m finally home!

hiking in AZ —  Scott and I

I’ve never been so happy for a warm house! I kind of wanted to go outside to use the bathroom though — not!

                                                                                                                                   Brief dust storm after our first hike.

 I think this is the one where a few bats were on the ceiling.

Visit my eBay store at everythingvintagesteph.com! I find lots of local treasures to put in there!

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