Well I finally found a weekend where I could take the family to Dahlonega and last weekend we bought the little pass you can pick up in town for around $26 bucks per adult and stopped in at the Gold Museum and then visited both the Crisson Gold Mine and the Consolidated Gold Mine.  We had a second family and a three year old with us.  We definitely had some fun.

The tour down into a part of the old Consolidated Mine was worth the price alone.  However the price included a visit to the museum where they have a great historical movie on the gold rush here, panning and a bucket of seeded gems at the Crisson Mine, and another pan at the Consolidated Mine.

For five adults we really had a great time and it was nice to be shown the panning technique.  I'm not sure what all I got in terms of gems so if you brainiacs can help me figure out what some of it is maybe you can help me decide what to do with it.  They told us what some of it was, but I couldn't remember it all.  I tried to group them according to color and appearance.  Maybe it is too much to ask but I would really love to use this as an opportunity to begin learning how to ID cool stuff.  I heard most of this stuff comes from tailings from around the world. 

FYI I asked the lady at the Consolidated Mine how much it would cost to cut the large ruby I got from the Crisson bucket.  She told me it would be around $850 and, once cut, should be worth about 3 to 4 times that.

Also we paid an extra 30 bucks at Consolidated for a gem bucket and 11 bucks for another gold pan and the gold pan was almost worth it, but in my opinion the extra bucket at Consolidated was not worth it.  However, the included bucket at Crisson (the one that came with the package deal from the town visitors center) was full of garnets, rubies, and even a few emeralds.

We finished up the evening drinking beer and eating German food for Octoberfest in Helen...highly recommended this time of year.  The weather was magnificent!

Here are the pics (sorry if some of them are too big and in hindsight I should have numbered them  If you like I will post them individually so that you can respond to each image:

Don't everyone chime in at once!  LOL

Anyway I ended up just throwing all the seeded stones in the tumbler and it turned out to be a learning experience.  If anyone wants pics of the results let me know.  I am thinking one or two of them may be worth faceting!

I have more rocks sitting around than I have time to: 1) finish restoring all my old bargain lapidary equipment, and 2) continue learning to slab and cab.  Good luck!