For our last day in the greater Rapid City area, Hannah wouldn’t be denied her chance to pan for gold. The other option was Devil’s Tower in far eastern Wyoming, but that choice was voted down. After doing a bit of research on the available choices, we decided on Big Thunder Gold Mine in Keystone.
After a 2-minute introduction to the craft, the girls (including Monica) had a great time in the troughs panning for gold. The idea was to scoop up some rocks, gravel and water, slosh is around your pan for a few seconds and let the gold flakes (if there are any) settle to the bottom. Dip your pan back in the water and let the gravel drift back into the trough. The weight of the gold will keep it in the pan and, if you’re lucky, you’ll have a gold flake to pick out from the fine gravel. Put a dry finger on it and drop the flake in your water vial. Repeat for as long as you can stand it. Most of time you come up empty, but every once and a while – just enough to keep you interested – there’s an excitement that comes when you find that elusive shiny flake. I think they each found about a dozen flakes over the course of 2 hours.
It was a pretty warm day so we were in and out of the gift shop a few times during the afternoon to cool off and look around. One of the last times through all the lights were out and we we informed the power was out. OK, whatever, let’s go to the building next door and get some ice cream. Shucks, the power was out there, too…and in the whole town. This is obviously not good for the town at the base of Mt. Rushmore on the Saturday of Independence Day weekend. We headed back to Rapid City before learning what happened with the power.
Overall, the gold panning experience was quite fun because the girls were great on their own. They learned the proper technique and found a flake every once and a while. There were, however, plenty of younger kids running around with the attention span lasting maybe 5 minutes. You could see the frustration growing in the parents as they tried to find a flake or two for little Johnny while he was running around and digging in the trough with his bare hands. If you have any interest in panning in a very controlled environment, go ahead and give this a try.
(Link to all unedited photos from Big Thunder.)