Mike Moutray - St.Louis MO
Member
Cabin fever finally drove me stark raving mad! Mad enough to want to go out in the 31 degree temperature with 15 mph winds and see how long I would last at my favorite park. I had my eye on some construction work a couple months ago and I went to check up on their progress.
I had to park about 1/4 mile away from where I wanted to start and the walk in there had me thinking twice.... it was COLD with that wind whipping by me. My knees and back started aching already, and I hadn't even begun to hunt yet!
When I got there, I was even more elated to find that I was on top of high exposed ground next to a freeway, so the wind was twice as bad and twice as cold. They had dozed up some old bike paths and dozed off some ground to make new ones, so I decided to give it a try. After 20 minutes of slogging through impossibly sticky mud and losing feeling in my hands, I moved out of the area, downhill to seek shelter from the wind. I got a signal on the way down a steep hill, bent to dig it, and realized the ground consisted of 2 inches of semi-liquid muck on top of frozen tundra. When I tried to push the digger in, I started to slide backwards down the hill... the layer of wet leaves on top of everything made this hillside a virtual skislope without the snow.
After a couple minutes of struggling to maintain a foothold and chop out what eventually was a wasted wheatie, my knees were soaking wet and going numb.. I stood up and my knees refused to obey, so I had to push off the hillside with my hand to gain an upright position.... My push has hard enough to send me sliding backwards all the way down the hill... flailing around trying to keep from falling over! I reached the bottom of my slide and to my amazement, stayed on my feet. There was 2 long ruts down the hill ending at my mud covered, soaking wet feet. The wind felt 10 times colder now that I was covered in mud... I decided " enough is enough "
. I scurried for cover to dig the mud out of my shoes (incidentally, old sneakers with the soles worn smooth are NOT the best things to wear on your feet when detecting in mud). As I started back to the car, I noticed that a section of old fencing along the road had all the overgrowth around it trimmed down recently to bare ground. I had hunted along this fence in the past, finding a few wheaties, but the undergrowth kept me from hunting within 8 feet of the fence. I decided to swing a coil through it on my way out.
Within 5 steps I got a screwcap hit, deep. I decided against my better judgement to chop my way down to what was most likely..... a screwcap. I was relieved to find this ground was thawed out and soft and pretty soon an indian head cent popped up! This was a surprise as this ground didn't date past the 1950's. As I made my way along about 50 yards of fence line wheaties started popping up everywhere. pretty soon I got a loud surface quarter hit. I kicked aside the debris on the ground and saw a muddy quarter sized disc on the ground. I picked it up and went to stuff it in my pocket when something didn't look right about it. I could swear I saw what looked liked Standing Liberty, and when I looked at it closer, sure enough my surface clad quarter WAS a Standing Liberty! What a surprise! It actually had a date too!!!
This is the first dated SLQ That I've found in 7 years amazingly enough. Suddenly the day seemed a little more bearable.
I hunted some more and added a couple more wheaties and a silver Roosie to the mix. Now the ride home will be spent being happy instead of mumbling and cussing. The sneakers went into the trash and I cleaned up the finds for the pic below. Take care and HH, Mike.
[attachment 150364 17jan10finds.JPG]
I had to park about 1/4 mile away from where I wanted to start and the walk in there had me thinking twice.... it was COLD with that wind whipping by me. My knees and back started aching already, and I hadn't even begun to hunt yet!
When I got there, I was even more elated to find that I was on top of high exposed ground next to a freeway, so the wind was twice as bad and twice as cold. They had dozed up some old bike paths and dozed off some ground to make new ones, so I decided to give it a try. After 20 minutes of slogging through impossibly sticky mud and losing feeling in my hands, I moved out of the area, downhill to seek shelter from the wind. I got a signal on the way down a steep hill, bent to dig it, and realized the ground consisted of 2 inches of semi-liquid muck on top of frozen tundra. When I tried to push the digger in, I started to slide backwards down the hill... the layer of wet leaves on top of everything made this hillside a virtual skislope without the snow.After a couple minutes of struggling to maintain a foothold and chop out what eventually was a wasted wheatie, my knees were soaking wet and going numb.. I stood up and my knees refused to obey, so I had to push off the hillside with my hand to gain an upright position.... My push has hard enough to send me sliding backwards all the way down the hill... flailing around trying to keep from falling over! I reached the bottom of my slide and to my amazement, stayed on my feet. There was 2 long ruts down the hill ending at my mud covered, soaking wet feet. The wind felt 10 times colder now that I was covered in mud... I decided " enough is enough "
. I scurried for cover to dig the mud out of my shoes (incidentally, old sneakers with the soles worn smooth are NOT the best things to wear on your feet when detecting in mud). As I started back to the car, I noticed that a section of old fencing along the road had all the overgrowth around it trimmed down recently to bare ground. I had hunted along this fence in the past, finding a few wheaties, but the undergrowth kept me from hunting within 8 feet of the fence. I decided to swing a coil through it on my way out.Within 5 steps I got a screwcap hit, deep. I decided against my better judgement to chop my way down to what was most likely..... a screwcap. I was relieved to find this ground was thawed out and soft and pretty soon an indian head cent popped up! This was a surprise as this ground didn't date past the 1950's. As I made my way along about 50 yards of fence line wheaties started popping up everywhere. pretty soon I got a loud surface quarter hit. I kicked aside the debris on the ground and saw a muddy quarter sized disc on the ground. I picked it up and went to stuff it in my pocket when something didn't look right about it. I could swear I saw what looked liked Standing Liberty, and when I looked at it closer, sure enough my surface clad quarter WAS a Standing Liberty! What a surprise! It actually had a date too!!!
This is the first dated SLQ That I've found in 7 years amazingly enough. Suddenly the day seemed a little more bearable.I hunted some more and added a couple more wheaties and a silver Roosie to the mix. Now the ride home will be spent being happy instead of mumbling and cussing. The sneakers went into the trash and I cleaned up the finds for the pic below. Take care and HH, Mike.
[attachment 150364 17jan10finds.JPG]
