Gangs, bullets, skulls and smoking 'J's behind the public school

It's Friday again and you know what that means... we survived another work week. And this was a hard one to get though... but you must already know that yourself.

We ordered in Thai food which cut down on our cooking and cleaning time so we were able to get out to do some metal detecting before it got dark. We loaded the equipment into the car and drove to a public school in which had some luck last year.

When we arrived, there was a gang of teenagers hanging out in the playground equipment. Mary was concerned about their presence but I knew I was bigger than them. We started detecting in the soccer field and Mary picked up two coins embedding in the surface of ground between the goal posts. It wasn't long before the teens creeped over to see what we were doing. I told them stories of pull tabs, bottle caps and balls of foil. They were quite impressed that our metal detector could pick-up foil. (I've never been impressed about how much foil our detecter discovers). They left the schoolyard and we moved to the playground equipment. We found mainly pennies and zippers amongst the climbing equipment and under the swing set we found a metal bullet caseing.

We moved over to the baseball diamond when another group of kids approached us. Again I told them stories of pull tabs, bottle caps and balls of foil. But they had no idea what foil was. I showed them a piece. This confused them and they left. Shortly after we pulled out the letter 'J" and a silver coloured skull charm. The sun had set and we started to walk back to the car since a baseball game had started up. On the way back I spotted a shiny toonie in the grass. In all we found $3.98

Bob and Mary get schooled

It was another beautiful day and Mary wanted to go for a hat-trick (metal detect three
days in a row). She wanted to go back to our toboggan hill to scan it one more
time, but I wanted to go somewhere different. I decided we should go to Charles Daily Park. I thought it would be great location with it's own toboggan hill and it is frequented by visitors year round.

We parked and started to scan at the bottom of the hill, then the side finishing off at the top to discover that we had found not one single thing. no garbage, no iron nails... nothing!!!!

It started to rain for some weird reason though it didn't rain anywhere else in the Niagara Region. We scrambled back to the car and came up with a plan 'B'... which was to go to Tim Hortons. I had definitely learned my lesson, that if people frequently go to a spot that you are thinking of going to... chances are someone has already been there with a metal detector.

After picking up coffees we decided to detect a local school. We decided to concentrate on the soccer field since there were children in the playground and we always try to stay away from children. A runner on the track stopped beside us and was interested in our progress. At the time, we had only found two bottle caps and some foil. I showed them to her and she no longer took interest in what we were doing for the rest of the day.

It was another beautiful day in the sun instead of cleaning house eventually netting us another $1.53.

Anyone for tennis?

Today we were very busy doing chores around the house. We had a couple of hours before I had to get ready for my violin concert tonight. Again it was a beautiful sunny day outside and Mary really wanted to metal detect. It was decided that we could go across the street to scan around the tennis courts in the park.

Leaving the big shovel at home we wandered over with a couple of Tim Horton's (coffees) to do some light scanning. I dialed down the sensitive of the detector to only to pick-up valuable metals a couple of inches down. The park was littered with broken beer bottles and jimmie hatz and realized we had to be carefull what we touched.

As we finished our coffees with used the cups for trash containers and cleaned up the park while we were there. The prospect of finding money in less than 2 hours in this filthy park was beginning to look grim but we persisted.

Cutting the smallest holes necessary, we made our way around the tennis courts replacing our divots to hide our intrusive digging. As we finished our circle we had exactly $2 in our pockets (and two overflowing coffee cups of garbage)

What's that Lassie? 23cent Timmy fell down? Oh well.

It was Friday night and we had just come home from work. It was such a beautiful day and it was a shame that we had to be locked inside for most of it. Mary was itching to metal detect so we had a quick dinner and set out again to toboggan hill to finish our scans from before.

We picked up Mary's mom Pat who brought her camera (because I forgot ours). Mom preferred to sit in the grass and enjoying the sunset while we detected. We started were we left off before and instantly began receiving multiple hits. After digging for over an hour in the exact spot we we started to move down the hill. We tried to approximate where the kids would have finished their toboggan runs.

We did poorly at the bottom of the big hill though the ground was damp and easy digging. We swooped around to checkout a small side hill and had a big hit a third of the way up. Using mainly the hand shovel and pin pointer we pulled over a two dozen coins out of a one foot square hole.

I kid you not!

Each little scoop revealed multiple coins. I think I found where the 'exploding Deathstar kid" finally ended up.

We ended up with 46 pieces of clad totalling $3.87.

Give us a new MASON JAR TOTAL of $11.54

Nadine's 8cent hole

saturday, april 12, 2008

Last week - when we left our fearless heroes, Bob & Mary, they were excited about
detecting the site of an old homestead where The Butler's Rangers and Native Americans use to stopped for the night.

But trouble was brewing!!!! The weather forecast for Friday to Monday was rain with the chance of snow. It looked like young Bob and Mary would never get to detect there before it was attacked by bulldozers and turned into a condominium. But the snow and rain never came.

Let us re-join our heroes as a desperate call is placed and a massive search party was formed...

Mary's mom, Pat, cousin Steve and Nadine met us at Uncle Junior and Aunt Barb's house.
Mary and I were first to arrive and went inside to visit.

We started off with 4 detectors but divided into two groups. Mom went with Mary and me using her underwater detector. Mary dug while we both scanned but we kept finding only square barn nails and beer caps.

Steve and Nadine had a cooler of beverages and went off detecting in their own direction. We lent them our orange golf tees so they could mark where they got hits. They soon uncovered a penny and I knew we had to find some clad in order to catch up.

We cut across the field to a large tree hoping it might be an old sitting area. We found an old lock
and soon after a new house key (never did find the new house). Meanwhile Steve and Nadine found another penny.

After about an hour Mom had to leave to go look after Dawson. Mary and I decide to go behind where the barn was to be to some flat grass. We got a loud hit and I started digging a big hole to go after it. I initially thought it was an old license plate but after much more digging pulled up and white metal bowl. We continued up the hill but didn't have any luck finding anything good.

Nadine and Steve went straight to where the old house used to sit and they found a sweet
spot. Nadine pulled up three more pennies and a nickel . As they dipped into their cooler grabbing more beverages I had the feeling that we were getting out-done. (Not that we were competing... but the score was 10-0 against us).

We decide the forget about the back-lot and detect over to where they were. We started to scan the other side of the lane way but we only found foil and garbage.
As they were scanning under some pine trees we started to scan the old driveway and started finding penny after penny totalling 13 cents from various spots. (10-13 for those keeping track (YAAA!!!)) Soon after, on the boulevard I found the front of a toy truck.

By this time Steve and Nadine we tied up digging a massive hole to uncover a metal ring attached to a 3ft x 3ft concrete slab. Steve went to his dad's shed to get 2 bigger
shovels to unearth the vault.

It was getting cold and dark as hunger set in so we headed back to the car. On the way we saw an orange golf tees in the ground. Mary gave it a quick scan and
it was good metal (not iron). I dug a little hole and we pulled a toonie!!!

Steve and Nadine eventually unearthed the vault after breaking one of his dad's shovels. It turned out to be a old septic tank with no treasures they wanted to take home with them.

Chocolate cake!!!!

Last time I wrote it was a hot dry summer. The ground was baked as hard as rock and it crumbled in our hands like crackers over a bowl of hot french pea soup. The hot summer turned to cold winter and there was no metal detecting to be done. Even if I found a penny in the Walmart parking lot I was tempted to write a blog entry. But I wanted to keep my entries pure.

About a week ago Mary and I started to notice that the long winter was finally over. The temperature was starting to warm up and the ground was starting to dry out. She remembered a hill that has been used for tobogganing even before her parents were kids. I had visions of kids with snowsuits bulging with spare change cartwheeling off their sled scattering coins across the hill like an exploding Deathstar.

Today was a beautiful day. The ground was like rich chocolate cake under my shovel. If Mary told me the metal was 2 inches down and my shovel sunk 6 inches pulling up divots the size of soccer balls. I had brought my GPS along to track where we had been so we didn't neglect any part of the hill.

We started at the bottom but had little luck. We wandered over to some old trees hoping that someone might had rested there dumping their pockets, but we didn't find very much. We went back to the top and found one sweet-spot that contained 3 loonies. Other locations at the top revealed quarters and nickels.

We had another metal hit and I poked my pin-pointer into the hole to find the exact location. I extracted the muddy tip and dug further in the spot. When I went to re-check the hole, the pinpointed went off in midair. I figured I must have bumped the sensitivity and I started turning the knob down to recalibrate it. But it kept going off in midair. At this point I thought that last years batteries must have died. I brushed off the mud in order to take the unit apart and there stuck to the end of the sensor was a dime!

We went to a nearby hill and didn't even receive one hit. Our arms were tired and my back was sore from bending and digging. We started to make our way back to the car and Mary got a hit. Inches away she got another and then another! But it didn't stop there, she got almost two dozen hits within a 4ft circle! We both sat in the grass, her with the big detector and the hand shovel and me with the pin-pointer and the big shovel. We worked independently pulling out penny after penny. I became exhausted and I discovered how amazing it is to lay on a grassy hill in the sun while staring at the blue sky.

A car pulled off the road and stopped beside ours. I became concerned that the public land we were on might actually have an owner after all. But it was Mary's cousin Steve, his wife Nadine and daughter Sherry who recognized our car while driving past. Steve was excited to see our equipment and said we want to get out detecting with his own gear. He told us about family lands that might hold treasures from back to the 1800's!!! He wants to take us there next week and help us scan it. We are extremely excited!

After and good talk they left and we replaced the divots, deciding to come back another day to re-scan the same spot.

Here is a picture of the metal that we found today. I had no idea what it some of it was as I put the balls of mud into the plastic bag inside my jacket.
It cleaned up very nice in our laundry sink. There is $5.54 in change as well as beer caps and beer openers. I hope the muddy knees of my pants clean up just as nice.