Ghent and Taylor Elem

I found myself just waking up a little past noon today. I had gotten a pretty good night's rest, so I finally rolled out of bed and cleaned the kitchen. When I came to the computer I saw a message from my buddy Hollis on FMDF shaming me for not being out metal detecting every day I'm home, since I have nothing better to do. I took his advice and loaded up.

I did some quick research and made a list of 7 places in Norfolk to hit up when I have some free time, and decided to head out to one. My location was the small neighborhood park at the corner of Leigh and Westover in Ghent. On the way I texted "dfxing virginia" to see if he could meet there when he got out of work... which he would.

After about 30 minutes of hunting, and scoring a little bit of clad I found my first wheat. I proceeded to text my buddy the play by play, as I pulled 2 more wheats in the next few minutes. Then in the grassy area between the sidewalk and street I scored a 3" +81 I would have sworn was a clad dime, but nope... saw the glint in the hole... a '47 rosie! Sent him a pic to gloat :) One note about the wheats, one of them was a 1919, which is now my oldest dug US coin, beating out my '20 wheatie last year.

It was a very overcast day and there was a slight drizzle when my hunting partner showed up. We chatted for a min and got back to the task at hand. As I was covering the middle of the park, an older woman and her dog came by. She asked if we were filling the holes, as lots of children play here. We were of course. She then told me that a lady had been here a week or so and had not found much... that confirmed my assumption the place had been hit before. It was nearing dark and we decided to head a few blocks down the street to a school.

Here we found ourselves at what I learned was Taylor Elementary School. Surely been hunted, but it has lots of play areas for kids and a decent field that goodies would surely show up in, old or not. We hunted for maybe just under an hour before it got too dark to be efficient without a flashlight (both mine were dead). But for my last signal of the night I swept over a target that bounced from a +89 to +91 and only read about 1.5" deep. Figuring it was either a soda can, or maybe a couple quarters, I dug. I couldn't find the target at first, but eventually wrestled it out of the ground and was shocked to in my hand my first half-dollar coin. I walked over towards my buddy with a smile on my face and said, "Guess what I found?" He had that look on his face that said, "If it's a Walker I'm taking it and running!" I plopped it down in his hand and said, "It's a half, a Kennedy."

And so ended the evenings hunt. Headed back to his place to chill over coffee and chat about MD'ing, met his wife. Great time. Total pull for the few hours was 24 coins @ $2.02 and lots of trash... as usual.