Hi Bagherra,
I took my 8 year-old daughter to the Emerald Hollow mine the second week of June. We had a blast. The sluicing is nice and you get what you pay for. Basically the 'free' bucket has very little, and the $50 and up buckets are loaded with large pieces. It was crowded so we did have to wait briefly for a seat at the sluice. We were told that the walk from the digging field back to the sluice was about 300 yards. I felt sure the girl misspoke and she meant 300 feet, but others told me she was correct. I chose to not haul heavy buckets that far and we stayed down by the creek. The employees do go down and salt the creek every so often so that the kids will find stuff, so that was nice. I reccommend that you to try to find a comfortable place to sit (you will get soaked) and dig deep as you can downstream of big rocks. We only found one emerald, but plenty other small things. I will also caution you that very close to where you first enter the stream were several baby snakes. One person said the snakes were poisonous and another said they were harmless. We played it safe and stayed away from the snake area (much to my daughter's dismay) Also they close the creek much earlier than the other areas. Another family that we met had dug both in the field and down in the stream and a nice haul with several emeralds (none gem quality) two saphires and one ruby (all very small). Since a few minerals are harder to identify just hold on to everything that looks a little different. There will be a helpful person there to go through your haul and seperate the keepers from the leavorites. Have a wonderful time. I am looking forward to going there again in the next couple of years.

From Mel - June 27, 2008 at 00:58:32
Email: melcaruso[ ]yahoo.com

Message: 66670