Riverside CA... First Annual Route 66 Treasure Hunt


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Well... I'm sorta a "planted" hunt guy... I've been going to these seeded events since about 1974. I like 'em... There are a number of those who attend them year after year. Notice I have posted about them on this forum over the past years.

It was held in the primitive area at Rancho Jurupa Regional Park in Riverside on Saturday June 5th. The hunt was a continious two hours long. The ground was covered with sticker weeds and and a thick blanket of dry grass.

All sorts of coins galoore were seeded willy-nilly, some were visible and stuck in the dry thick blanket of grass above the ground surface. But the primary targets sought were buried numbered tokens. By buried they were pushed edgewise into the ground without makeing any visible disturbance of the overcover of dry weeds.

The tokens were numbered... I estimate about 34 of us in the hunt. The tokens were about a ratio of 2.5 for each participant... The coins varied from every day pocket change and foreign coins. This "mishmash" varied from "iron" to low and high conductive "targets" I recovered a few buffalos, wheaties, mercury dimes, and a real nice 1902 indian head penny

that I now treasure as the highlite of the hunt...

As it turned out the tokens were about the size of a silver round or silver dollar... But they were a magnetic alloy... As for me, I have learned to hunt in all metal and ignore the ubiquitous wire, and other rusted metal, but concentrate on the conductive targets. About halfway into the hunt, I decided to dig one of the solid-iron targets. I pushed the grass away and checked with my detector... "Iron," but I saw the top radious of the token...

Dumb 'ol me... I knew now that my paricular choice of detector in the all-metal mode

read the tokens as "iron" and I went after the iron readings and recovered another token, giving me two, number 24 and 127; plus a single hand-full of everyday pocket change and the afore mentioned out of circulation older coins.

All in all; after the tokens were redeemed, there was still enough unclaimed by tokens-found hunt prizes for all of us to get a prize plus there still were eleven unclaimed over which were drawn by ticket, but I was not one of them.

However; I'm one happy participant. There were still participants digging at the end of the hunt and I lasted the full two hours; with over 80 plus years of wear and tear on my knees.

The lunch was great. The continious companionship and good fellowship of those who

follow and particpate in in the various seeded events over the past years has filled me with memories. The FMDAC, AMDA, Westcoasters and many others such as the Route 66 chapter of the GPAA are keeping this facet of "treaure hunting" alive.

Sorry about the spelling and typos... I hope to see you there at the second annual Route 66 event... and if possible at Laughlin...

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