Treasure Map

I used the prilivages of work to access aerial photography of the Niagara Region from the 1930's to discover where old homesteads used to exist. I overlayed this with a GPS co-ordinate grid to give us exact locations (within 3metres) of where these ruins are located. I printed the whole map off so it would easily fit in my pocket.

I would love to upload a picture of this map but then everyone would know where we plan to search for treasure.
Rest assured, the map does exist.
It is very nice and we used it for the first time today.

We had stopped at Canadian Tire and picked up a mini shovel. It in the same as a regular shovel but 1/4 scale. It fits nicely in our back pack and it is now our main digging tool.

We decided to find ruins deep in the middle of forest where no one goes. And it payed off very nicely.
The first picture is of the dozens different sized square barn nails we found.

The second picture is of some railway spikes, a metal stove damper, and electrical box and a squished lantern burner deck. I left these pieces in the woods since they were quite heavy.

We also found old rock foundation, collapsed wells, ditch channels, walkways, laneways, steps as well as old trees that young lovers might have spent time under.

The last picture contains an axe head, decorative iron work, a big hook, part of a hinge, abelt hook, a spoon and the metal houseing of an old watch.

We were sweating alot and our backs were aching when we noticed that the time was past 5pm It was time to call it a day and get home for dinner.

In the near future I'm going to try to polish the spoon and watch houseing to discover what metal they are made of.

We're going to need a bigger boat

We had no other plans for the evening. No meeting with Window Installation Contractors nor coffee with Geocaching friends (using a Global Positioning Device to find pieces of tupperware someone else hide in the forest and posted their co-ordinates on-line).

Tonight was dedicated to METAL DETECTING!!!

I had my choice of where to search. I wanted to try something different then the beach. (bottle caps only generate limited excitement). There is a spot in the woods where we suspected cool things might be buried. We loaded up the car and off we went to explore.

To our equipment we added some knives for cutting holes in sod and a sturdy backpack with plastic bags for placing our items in (The fanny pack got sandy and rusty from the previous night)

The mosquitos were out and I choose a short sleeve shirt which cost me a bit of spilled blood. During our walk in we discovered that the ground was hard and baked from the summer's dryness. Once at the site our beautiful handheld weed rake became a broken smile of twisted teeth.

I scanned and Mary dug but it proved to be hard work so we switched. I pulled up a railway spike, 6"bolts and a 14" long 'T' shaped item (pictured right) .

While I dug Mary explored and found a 'sweet' spot. More like a whole area that the Metal Detector went crazy!!! So I became to dig finding a fancy decorative piece of iron, then another and another. Digging down 2 inches in a 5ft radius I uncovered bits of a rod iron fence laying in the middle of nowhere. My hands became blistered with the frantic digging with the tiny hand shovel. I was glad we had the backpack as it quickly filled up and I began to think, " We're going to need a bigger boat!"

Mary had to take over until the sun was beginning the set and the forest became dark. Not having my GPS I'm not too sure where we were. I refilled all our holes and we made our way back to find the car.

We difineately need a collasping shovel if we come back to the woods. I think a sifter would also be usefull if we go out to the beach again. Perhaps we can pick-up some of these things this weekend. This whole thing has become a learning experience. I also want to get some cleaner to fix up these decorative pieces .

I'm so happy that we found them!!!

Here are some sunset pictures Mary took on our drive home.

June 26th

Hi.
My name is Bob.
I'm 37 (I'm not that old)
I'm engaged to Mary and we live together in St.Catharines Ontario Canada.

The point of this blog is to document our new hobby of Metal Detecting.

We are using Mary's underwater Fisher 1280x metal detector. She has had it for quite awhile and it has been only been gathering dust up until last night....

Yesterday we decided to go down to the beach to watch the sunset with the metal detector. Mary asked me if I had any change in my pocket to calibrate the device. I dropped a penny and a dime and Mary got it beeping loud and clear for me.

I began to sweep the sand and instantly began to pick up metal in the sand. We brought and hand shovel and a hand weed rake (also pictured above). At first we found a rusty nail. I didn't think much of it so I threw it back. Then we found a bottle cap which I also discarded.
It wasn't until we found a micro electronic switch with shape prongs that I realized what our purpose was: We were to remove all sharp objects from the sand where children might be playing .

We uncovered 9 rusty nails, 8 bottle caps, 26cents and several other assorted pieces of metal. One of the rusty nails stabbed me in the leg through my shorts pocket which we were scanning the playground. We stopped to threw all the metal into the garbage before I re-injured myself. The sun had set and we called it a night.

Tonight we went out again to the same beach. We were stopped by 4 year old girl who wanted to know what we were doing. I replied that we are cleaning the beach so people don't get hurt. She thought this was cool and wanted to help us hunt for treasure. She took Mary's hand shovel and started digging ramdomly asking me to check were she dug for metal. Her mother watched over all of us until it was time for them to leave.

I was worried because we had a slow start that we weren't going to do as well as the previous night. But as the sun finished setting and my fanny-pack was overflowing with debris I was proven wrong.

Tonight we found 12 bottle caps, 9 rusty nails, 2 lighters, a bolt, a sparkler, 10 cents, a railway ties and several assosted chunks of metal (all pictured above) But I didn't mention the best find of all.

MY FIRST RING!!!!

Even though it dosen't have a diamond I coudn't be more excited.

It's late now and I have to get to bed. I'll write more the next time we go out.