VISITING IN FRANKLIN, NC

My DH and I went to visit with our oldest daughter and her family at their cabin in Franklin, NC.  It's such a pretty, quaint town with loads of antique stores and intersting things to do.  On Saturday night we went to listen to country music on the town squary - sort of a tradition.  Today we went ruby mining at the Sheffield Mine just outside of Franklin.  Let me tell you, mining is a dirty business!  I had one of my favorite casual outfits on, and I got brown clay mud all over my top.  Yuk!!  I hadn't really packed my suitcase for ruby mining, so I just went with what I had on - my bad!!  Cade got 2 "Rainbow Buckets" and found a lot of great and shiny geods and an arrowhead, while Laura and I sifted and strained and sl0pped all over looking for rubies and/or sapphires.  Both of us had two buckets of dirt each, and neither of us knew what we were looking for in all that mud.  Thankfully, there were a number of "helpers" who walked along a let you know if you had anything worth keeping.  We were thrilled to find a few tiny little rubies.  I even got one that is big enough to make a piece of jewelry out of!  While we were there the same man, Bob, got two "Honkers", which were large rubies - over 50 carats or so.  Apparently Bob mines all the time, because he showed us his loot from years past.  I must admit,  it was lots of fun, but it isn't going to make either one of us wealthy.  LOL!