Freedom

Pic from www.rving.com

What is freedom? Is it the ability to do whatever you want whenever you want? I think that about sums it up. Nate and I have a dream to take some time off and just be free. So, how do you accomplish this? What about bills? We hope to sell our house in a few years and set out on the open road. A small trailer is the way to go. It's economical and small enough to take almost anywhere. At first we'll travel the U.S, there so much breathtaking beauty just around the next bend. After that who knows. How liberating will it be to wake up and have a place like the Grand Canyon be your backyard. To many of us get stuck in the rat race we call life and never truly experience the simplistic beauty of the world. 
Heres to making dreams reality.....

Glowing Sapphires and Ghost Stories

Glowing sapphire

At the flume

Us with Todd, and our bell ringers

Over spring break Nate and I did a road trip to Franklin, NC. A gem mining mecca, Franklin and the surrounding aren't short on gem mines. Most are little, pull off the side of the road, tourist traps. They have already dug buckets that you wash in the flume, and magically find gems. We we're on the hunt for a real mine. One where we could dig our own gems. Yes, the work would be harder, but the reward could be greater, and who wants buckets that have already been picked through? We found Mason's Ruby and Sapphire mine. We arrived in the morning and Judie(the host) and Todd(Mr. Miner) got us all set up. After a few hours of digging and buttering up Todd, we finally convinced him to let us dig in the "off limits" area of the mine. We just knew thats where they'd be hiding the big ones. We found some small sapphires, rubies and a whole bunch of rocks. Not the big stuff we were hoping for. On our lunch break, Todd showed us some of the big sapphires he had found at the mine. He has an ultraviolet light that he used at night to look for sapphires. Apparently sapphires glow bright red under a black light. Somehow we got the chance to come back that night and be the first of the public to do ultraviolet mining. We were so in. The stars didn't give much light to the dark night, but the lack of moonlight would help our hunt for glowing sapphires. With nothing more than a headlamps to guide our way, and gloves to protect our hands from the ultraviolet light, we set off for the mine. Todd had the black light and gave us a demo of what the sapphires would look like under the light. They glowed like radioactive strawberries! Glowing bright red, with purple undertones. This should be easy. We walked around the mine slowly with the black light inches above the dirt, a bit back breaking, but the only way to see the coveted glow. A few minutes in and we had already found a couple smalls. Todd told us about a miner who had died at the mine back in the 30's. He said the miner haunts the mine and doesn't like strangers coming and taking his gems. During the night we did hear some strange noises, maybe a deer in the woods, or mad miner ghost, but we didn't see anything. The hunt was slowing down and the gems harder to find, so we moved a little further up the hill towards ghostly territory. Thats when the ground started to glow and Nate found his 10.65 caret sapphire, maybe the ghostly miner liked us after all. That little gem got Nate a spot on the mines website for "Bell Ringers" (any sapphire over 10cts) The total for the night ended up being right at 50 carets of sapphires. Most were small and a couple weighed in just under the 10ct mark. Heres the link to the bell ringer page if you wanna see the proof.  www.masonsmine.com/bell-ringers.html

Love 'em and leave 'em

Grubs, worms, spinners and spoons, so I've been told, all catch Bass. I'm still a little skeptical though. I have what some would refer to as a competitive nature. I don't just want to win. I want to be the best! Ok, I know thats not realistic, but you can't blame a girl for trying. So, when we (me and anyone else) go out to do something fun I seem to automatically make it a competition, if only in my head. In the spirit of a good ol' friendly "I'm better than you"attitude I just wanted to catch more fish than Nate. Now I don't begrudge Nate the thrill of catching fish. This makes him happy, and when He's happy I'm happy and he released the Bass so it was happy. All around everyone was happy, and that makes for a good day. After only about 10 minutes of casting Nate yells "Fish on!" and proceeds to pull in a 3-4lb Bass like he's Jeremy Wade or something. One fish Nate, no fish me. I was ok with this. I chalked it up to beginners luck since it was our first fishing expedition of the season. When he reeled in his second fish and I still had no bites I was a little less ok with it. Man, what was I doing wrong? A couple hours and a few bait changes later I finally had a bite. My turn to yell "fish on"only to get overly excited and forget to set the hook. No more fish on. Damn. I admit I was a little disappointed I got skunked the first day out, but the lake made for good kayaking, and I got to spend the day with a sexy fisherman. Life is good!