Date 1-7-07 Location Type Modern Park Detecting Time 3 hours Detecting Distance .35 miles Detector Whites DFX

Aerial View of Park

Ahhh, this is great, I thought as I rambled around the park as the sun came up. There were a few boaters and some early joggers but, otherwise, I had the park to myself. I hit the wood chips, sand play areas and the volleyball court first. I found a few coins, a bullet and a game token. I hunt this park a lot, so I do not expect to find much when I go. Once I made a circuit through the play areas I started hunting the grass. Pulltabs seemed to be the order of the day. I dig them because I know there are still gold rings to be found. I took a break, drank a Red Bull and picked my next target area.

I decided to hunt the grass in front of the play areas. This is where the parent-kid separation and the parent-kid merge occur. It is also where I had found two gold rings previously. Within a minute I got a good signal...fairly solid in the VDI 60 range (using the DFX this time out). I cut a flap, flipped it over and saw a silver-looking cross at the bottom of the hole. I was hoping it was silver, but it is aluminum. The writing on it says "Jesus Christ is Lord". Oh well, cool find anyway.

I was hunting along and, since I do look around every few minutes, I saw a cop cruising through the parking lot. No big deal...they come through quite often. I look again a few minutes later and the cop is sitting in his car kind of pulled up at an angle in the parking lot. He was scoping me out. I determined that I should pay him no mind. I have permission from the park rangers and nothing to worry about. I got a signal and hunkered down on my kneepad to excavate the target. I was engrossed in the process and completely forgot about the cop. As I was finishing the retrieval I saw two black shiny shoes very close to my left side (we are sitting ducks with our headphones on, are we not?). I said "Oh!, hello officer" as I stood up. He said "Have you found anything?" He was nice and we talked about what I had found in the park and the hobby in general. He never asked about permission or anything legal. After about three minutes of conversation we said our goodbyes and he took off.

Now that I had my adrenalin rush for the day, I continued to hunt. I found a jewelry bead, a lead sinker, a steel ball which I think is a slingshot projectile and a twisted heart bracelet. The fact that I found no quarters whatsoever (except a surface find in the wood chips) is an indication that the cherry picking phase of hunting this park is officially over. After about three hours I called it a day.

HH! The Beep Goes On

Aluminum cross