Old Parks in Longmont

I met up with Troy again at 7am this morning and we shoved off to Longmont, CO. We know of a fellow hobbyist, new to the game, who lives up there, and though he couldn't join us, we took it upon ourselves to raid his territory.

After taking the "long way" and getting a nice oral history of how much things have changed over the last 30 years, we finally arrived at our first destination, Thompson Park. A little research had shown that this was a turn of the century park, and well, how could you not want to hunt something like that!?

After about half an hour of fending off mosquitoes I came across a solid "gold range" hit near the base of a large tree. It was shallow, and oddly enough didn't give a VDI. It only took a second to pry it from the roots and I had what looked like a gold colored earring backing. Troy wasn't far away so I walked over to show him, hoping it was gold. As it would turn out later on back at home, and with a little cleaning, it's marked "14TK", woohoo, GOLD!

As Troy made his rounds of the tot lot, I kept hunting the grass, not far from a small shelter when I got a nice strong quarter hit. I love quarter hits, and I'll dig 'em all day. About 2" down I found my target, a $2.50 token for my hometown metal detecting shop, Gold-N-Detectors in Golden. Two things ran through my mind: 1) Bill (the owner) had either just randomly seeded parks around the area (which I hear he did), or 2) the Eureka Treasure club had hit this park and it could have been a leftover seeded item for a club hunt. Either way, still a neat find :)

For the next hour or so, I just made it across the large open green area. Troy made it over to the gazebo where he read some history about the park, one being that military troops had camped there way back in the day before marching down main street. If only we were 30 years sooner at this location and in the hobby. My meandering stumbled me across two $0.60+ coin spills as well as a spill involving about twelve pennies that I just rubbed my VibraProbe across the surface to round up.

I also happened across a flattened disc that showed in the low to mid 70s on my VDI, I'm thinking copper penny when I dig it. It goes in my stash apron and when I get home, and take a sponge to it, I find out what it was... a smashed wheatie! You can vaguely tell the side with Lincoln's head, and the other side you can see one of the wheat ears and even see the "ON C" from the words ONE CENT. Pretty cool.

Growing tired of not really finding much, we took a break at Wal*Mart to get some mosquito repellent, and then headed over to location number two, Alta Park. This park wasn't much bigger than a lot a small house might be on, but it was also late 1800s and it just had to be hit. This park was a big bust though, neither of us found much as we covered the whole place; though I did find on old folding knife in the roots of a tree.

But the day wasn't over yet, it was just hitting lunch time and I had a place in mind... Duffy's Cherry Cricket in the Cherry Creek area of Denver. It's a cool little burger joint / bar that I found out about via my Captain, Wolfgang, on the Geco Searcher. He was watching The Travel Channel one day and the restaurant was featured on the show, Man v. Food. He told me I had to go and get pics and have a great burger... so I did.

We had a great time. We munched some killer food, and even spied the President of the Colorado Avalanche, Pierre Lacroix, just a few tables away (yellow arrow pointing at him).

Hope you enjoyed the pics, and here's the last two with our totals for the day (which includes a neat Denver Bass pro Shop pressed penny from Troy). Myself with 52 coins @ 2.73.