{"id":1646,"date":"2009-09-01T12:15:44","date_gmt":"2009-09-01T19:15:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/?p=1646"},"modified":"2020-07-20T09:40:32","modified_gmt":"2020-07-20T16:40:32","slug":"prospecting-camping-the-lower-kern-river-august-28-30-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/?p=1646","title":{"rendered":"Prospecting & Camping The Lower Kern River"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prospecting & Camping The Lower Kern River
\nAugust 28 – 30, 2009<\/strong><\/p>\n

With a forced day off without pay due to the sucky economy, I decided to try and supplement my income with a little Gold from the lower Kern River.<\/p>\n

Nobody I invited could make it, so I had the choice of either going alone or staying home with psycho woman – I decided to venture alone.<\/p>\n

The mighty truck made it to Lake Isabella in less than three hours.<\/p>\n

\"Keysville\"<\/p>\n

After a beer break at The Shady Lane Saloon and a stop for ice, I headed up to Keysville to find a nice place to set up camp.<\/p>\n

Instead of turning left at the toilets to head towards the water, I decided to go right and head for higher ground; I was going to prospect along a stretch of the river that is surrounded by high cliffs and is difficult to get to.<\/p>\n

I figured with every local yahoo with a sluice digging in the easily accessible areas, I might have better luck with a little hike.<\/p>\n

\"I<\/p>\n

I set up my tent in a way that would make the Three Stooges proud.<\/p>\n

After a lunch of fried beans and Spam, I hiked about 200 yards down to the water and set up my sluice.<\/p>\n

\"Digging<\/p>\n

The place I chose was very rocky – almost too rocky; I moved a few large rocks and dug to the bedrock before settling in on an area below a boulder where plenty of gravel had settled.<\/p>\n

\"My<\/p>\n

A lot of clay and dirt filtered though the sluice; the concentrate was small but almost pure black sand.<\/p>\n

\"Feeding<\/p>\n

Shoveling gravel in 95 degree heat while redigesting a Spam and bean lunch is probably not what a lot of people call relaxing, but I have not been known to be too rational at times.<\/p>\n

After a few hours of digging, with the sun starting to set, I had a few cups of black sand concentrate for my efforts; yes, I did see a few flakes of Gold, but I knew I wasn’t rich.<\/p>\n

\"Camping<\/p>\n

I made it back to camp and was amazed that nobody was around; usually, I meet someone… a neighboring fellow camper, bikers crashing for the night, the Swedish bikini team… but nobody was around.<\/p>\n

I brought my radio out, but was pissed that I didn’t bring the correct batteries; I would be forced to listen to my wind up lantern\/radio.<\/p>\n

\"Camping<\/p>\n

So that’s how I spent the night – completely alone with not even another camp in sight, drinking beer, feeding the camp fire and listening to tunes on the lantern\/radio in five minute increments, before I needed to wind it back up for another charge.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

I made a few short video clips of my camp and how I entertained myself for the night; to see the video on Youtube, click here.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Going<\/p>\n

I could act as fucking weird as I wanted to – yelling at the top of my lungs as I tried to juggle a hatchet and machete; I didn’t even have to worry about finding bushes to use as a toilet, I could just pee on the road while trying to write my name.<\/p>\n

Instead of the evening clearing my mind, I dwelled on a lot of things that I wish I hadn’t.<\/p>\n

I was trying my best not to turn into an ax murderer or pychotic unabomber; my fire was never bright enough to write a manifesto though.<\/p>\n

In the morning, I woke up hung over and dehydrated, in 97 degree heat with every muscle in my body sore from yesterday’s digging.<\/p>\n

I thought, “This sort of sucks, I’ll go insane if I spend one more day and night like this, assuming I don’t die of heat exhaustion or stroke.”<\/p>\n

\"Downtown<\/p>\n

I packed up camp and headed to a friend’s place in Tehachapi, where I spent Saturday evening in air conditioned comfort, watching several movies, drinking beer and eating a fine meal of meatloaf and mashed potatoes and gravy.<\/p>\n

The movie list included Legends of the Fall,<\/a> The Shawshank Redemption,<\/a> Secondhand Lions,<\/a> and Selina<\/a><\/em> – I watched more movies this evening than I have seen all year long combined.<\/p>\n

After seeing the film Selina<\/em>, I am now a fan of her music, I just wonder how psychotic she was in real life – great music, great person and a horrifically tragic death.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

If you are in the Tehachapi area and want a great meal, stop by The Apple Shed<\/a> at 333 East Tehachapi Blvd.<\/p>\n

A huge meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy dinner, served with salad and cheese bread set us back less than $15 each; they also have a gift shop and live entertainment, but the food was absolutely great and the cashier was really hot.<\/p>\n

I headed back to the Long Beach ghetto Sunday morning.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The fires up in Angeles National Forest could be seen from the 14 Freeway.<\/p>\n

Apparently, the fire is doomed to knock out all the radio and television transmission towers on Mount Wilson – I think it’s God punishing the governemt for getting rid of analog television; an interesting set of pictures from the fire can be found here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Traffic was great until the 405 came to a halt at Mulholland due to an accident; I detoured through downtown Los Angeles to finally make it home to the Long Beach ghetto.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prospecting & Camping The Lower Kern River August 28 – 30, 2009 With a forced day off without pay due to the sucky economy, I decided to try and supplement my income with a little Gold from the lower Kern River. Nobody I invited could make it, so I had the choice of either going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,64,9,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1646"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5335,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1646\/revisions\/5335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}