No, I’m not, but I read up on it a little before we left. Apparently, the mountains in Georgia/Carolinas have a lot of gold and gems in them. Ours are all uncut, of course, and need a better appraisal, but these folks seemed to know what they were talking about, and this particular place has been featured on The Travel Channel, as well as being in several topic-specific publications, so having said that, I’ll take their word for it for now. Some of the lesser gemstones, like the rose and smoky quartz, Tiger’s Eye, aquamarine, etc., are fairly obvious. But the hills in that region are also known to produce emeralds, garnets, amethysts, topaz and rubies. Some people sit in chairs in the creek at the mine, and just pan the runoff from where the dredges lost excess raw ore, and come up big. Whether we were lucky or not, I don’t know. And Gina, I wanted to get as much done outside as I possibly could - mowing the back 40, weedeating, brush hogging, getting all the hedges trimmed, all of that, before we left. I didn’t want to come home today and have all of it staring me in the face under 90+ degree heat, so I even worked in a torrential downpour to muscle through it. Which is why I wasn’t wearing work gloves when the clippers tried to eat me - I was so soaked to the bone, my shoes were squishing and my gloves were so soggy I couldn’t hold on to any of the power lawn equipment, so I took my gloves off. And that, Your Honor, is how the fight started. LOL!
Well, at least you’re a trooper, Viking! :-D