Grandma, Grandpa, my son, his cousin, and myself all traveled to the Emerald Creek Garnet area yesterday.  This is an area set up by the Forest Service for those interested in digging for garnets.  In the past, apparently people would go down to the creek and dig there for garnets.  However, due to environmental concerns, the Forest Service set up a special situation.

They truck the garnets to a site about 1/2 mile from the "main road" (a gravel road the locals call 'Highway 3'), where people grab buckets and shovels provided by the FS, and start digging.  There is this huge pile of dirt.  You pick up a shovel and fill up one of your buckets.  Then you take the buckets to some screen boxes, where you sift the dirt out from one bucket, and pour the leftover rocks in the second bucket.  Then you take those buckets to the sluice area.  They have two sluices set up where you can wash your rocks and try to find the garnets.  They range in size anywhere from pebbles to marbles or larger.  You can keep whatever you like, as long as you separate the garnets from the rest of the rocks.  What you don't keep gets dumped on another pile across from the sluice area.  Then the process starts all over again.

This is usually a half-day to day-long trip, so thank God we brought food.  After we decided it was time to go, we went to the FS tent, where they weighed the garnets.  We didn't have to pay for the garnets, just the permits.  The FS people said last year they had over 4,000 people visit, and this year they were well over 5,000.  It rained pretty much the whole time we were there, and it was wonderful.  I can't imagine digging for garnets in the 100+ degree heat we had during the weekend!

Now my brief description of how things are done leave out a few important details.  I'm a desk jockey.  I have soft hands.  So imagine lugging around heavy buckets of clay, dirt, and rock.  Imagine sifting the material, using your arms in a side to side motion, swinging a heavy box filled with clay, dirt, and rocks back and forth to sift it all.  Imagine taking that next bucket to the sluice area, and bending over, washing the rocks and then bending over closer to try to pick out whatever catches your eye.  Hands stained from dirty water, roughed up by the screen boxes and just putting your hands in them to move rocks around and see what you can see.  Then add about 70-80 people all doing the same things at the same time.

Despite the physical discomfort I'm feeling today, it was a good time.  The boys had a blast.  My son was picking out anything that looked like a garnet, whether it really was or not!  And Grandma got a rock tumbler, and offered to polish the rocks for the boys.  The people there were nice, and the FS employees were very helpful, and really tried to focus on the kids with the geological information.

Another plus to the day:  I was so busy, I forgot to be nauseous!

So if you are ever in North Idaho and want a family friendly adventure, this trip is highly recommended!