Ed Steinhoff
Active member
Got back today from the thanksgiving week business/pleasure trip to sunny so. cal. been detecting since the second week of oct. with a tracker IV and a 505. took them both on the trip (good thing too ) hunted Manhattan and redondo beaches first. yes there is a learning curve for this too. its a little different than dirt hunting in Colorado. wasn't doing so hot for the first couple of hours then it dawned on me that they were using a beach cleaning machine, saw its pattern and that narrowed done my search area, a lot! then I saw the dreaded machine coming and when he got down to where I was he turned around a went back for the next pass. I noticed that when he turned, he lifted the machine up on the turn and put it down again after he straighted out. where he lifted it up he left a deeper pile of sand that he had been dragging behind him. not being completely devoid of common sense I walked over and swung on the piles he was leaving. Cha ching! coin banging time! I did that on five turns of the machine and got 3 to 4 coins in each pile! as the week went on I was able slip away to the beaches 3 more times. first to Newport beach then to Laguna. by the time I got to laguna I was getting the line figured out, and started really having fun hitting good targets on a regular basis. At Laguna I hit a hot spot at the base of the cliff that just kept producing coin after coin in about a ten square foot spot. after an hour of cleaning out that little gift from the local depositors, I asked myself "where are these all coming from"? Again drawing on good sense and a little bit of deductive reasoning, I theorized that this stuff was coming down the cliff from the walkways a parking lots up on top! so picking out a goat trail route I began to work the bushes and rocks on the hillside (steep but do-able). I was instantly rewarded with lots of targets behind every boulder and flat spot anywhere on the hill I swung! as I neared the top I was hailed from above by a local policeman and invited to join him at the top. He politely but firmly informed me that a local ordinance in acted since July made it illegal to walk in the bushes! first offence $100 fine! this ordnance it seems is aimed at keep the homeless from camping in the bushes. When I told him it must be working since i only saw two freshly occupied caves dug in the hillside, He changed the subject to the the seashells he saw in my pouch. Seems another newly passed law at laguna beach makes it illegal to pick up seashells on the beach! and you guessed it, $100 fine! after i protested my lack of knowledge of the local customs, he kindly wrote me a formal warning ticket and escorted me back down to the beach ( on the designed walkways of course ) where he watched while I put all the seashells back on the sand.! It was still a great trip and my total for the beach hunts was 233 coins, clad and large assortment of hot wheels cars, junk rings and brackets and several pouches of trash. on the way back to Colo. however was the biggest surprise. I had plan to hit as many tot lots on the way back as possible. Indio ca. was a dud, Blythe however was better, Parker AZ. produced a little ( saw an old drive in theater there I would like to go back to ) king man AZ was pretty good, but snow and cold kept me driving through flagstaff. stayed overnight in Gallup new Mexico with plans of hitting two city parks the next morning.just the tot lot part as the ground was froze. The first park was amazing, it was a coin machine! I spent 7 hrs between 1 and a half tot lots and hit a personal record of 246 coins, all clad. stayed in farmington that night and before leaving town the next morning, i picked up 40 more coins in one tot lot, including another personal first, a 1993 Kennedy half! man that was awesome seeing that baby come out of the ground! by the way my 505 broke completely down in calf. so most of the hunting was done with the tracker IV. score for the trip 552 coins clad 1 50 cent piece 68 quarters, 85 dimes, 49 nickels, 349 mem penny's, 1 wheat, 1 50 centavos, two tokens, 1 20 centimes (french) and assorted knick knacks. that puts my total since Oct 10Th at 1151 coins, no silver nor gold yet but its coming! by the way nugget the tracker IV handled the beach better than the 505. keep swinging! Ed in co.
You would think they would have sign stating keep out of the bushes and don't pick up sea shells. Down here at the beach we have signs stating don't pick the sea oats. $ 1,000.00 fine.. Glad you made it back home safe.