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Gerlach Nevada  Opal mining is fun and I do it whenever I can, here is the experience we had "mining" for opals this month. The Royal Rainbow Mine is temporarily closed at this time however we were granted access to look the property over and assess whether or not we would be interested in purchasing the claims held by the current owner. The property is located in the Black Rock Desert area near the small town of Gerlach. We took Soldier meadow road 12 miles out of town and headed out along the edge of the playa. We drove for approx. 38 miles towing our 5'er at about 6 miles per hour. What a long trip this was but through a beautiful desert landscape. We met our dear friends and mining buddies there and spent 20 minutes setting up our rig and then it was time to go check out the nearby rocks. We took a road that was too narrow for our truck and precariously rocky and in places quite moist from the creek running along it. We ended up at the side of a hill with lava rocks strewn across its face. I climbed the hill and looked at rocks, some of wich you could see the opal forming in the volcanic vugs. Across the way and up on the hill a white wild mustang looked down on us as we broke rocks and searched.  It soon got toward dark so we once again traversed the wicked road back down to camp. The rock at the collecting area was extremely hard to break and not too friendly. Earlier I had found a tailing pile near camp and found some colorful pieces with fire. The next day we spent digging at the tailing pile and found quite a few nice specimens. The weather was turning bad and we decided to pack it out of there early so as not to be stranded; possibly for quite awhile. We hurried out of there and made it back to pavement in about 3 hours before the raindrops started to fall.  |