Say, can anyone tell me how one gets to become a guide at Lee Creek.  I'm not necessarily interested in becoming one, but when I went into the mine collecting on day two a couple weeks ago and I had someone ask me this question, and since I had never really thought about before, I told them that maybe you had to be picked by the AFM board or something.  But afterwards I realized that the guides are probably employees of the mine?  In any event, I'm just curious to know how one gets to be a guide.  It would be neat if a "guide" position was awarded each year to someone either by means of a raffle (like the 6" tooth raffle during the festival), or as a reward to the biggest contributor (time, donations, projects, etc...). 

Daryl.

I will search out Yoda or Obi-Wan to start my training immediately.  Perhaps on Tatooine I can learn how to search the surface similar to that of the PCS mine.  I have heard others say that the mine looks like the surface of the moon, so training on a remote planet seems essential....you got me started with Star Wars!

Now that you mention it I remember George Powell talking about some sort of training, not sure if it included light saber training or not though.  I'd like to know how to use the force to just bring the teeth right out of the ground and into my pocket!  Perhaps the next time I bump into someone in the mine who has found a huge tooth, I'll try a jedi mind trick on them like "here, take this large tooth, it's too heavy for me to carry".

Daryl.

DW, your water spraying brought back an idea I had a few years ago...but first, let me say that I'm surprised that no one out there, inlcuding the guides that read this forum, have commented on my original question.   Hmm, must be a secret society, more secret than the Jedi training.  I saw a young gal that looked new to me with a white hat on in the mine a few weeks ago, I should have asked her.

About the water spraying...A few years ago I asked the Friends club president if it was ok to bring a manual water pump with some hose so I could draw out some water and use it to sift through some dirt.  The obvious answer was no but I thought it never hurts to ask.  It would be awesome if we had access to a little water for this reason.  I do a lot of sifting at the beach and in cricks around here.  Of course to have a little water pressure to actual hose down a Yorktown hill would be even better, but I knew not to ask for that.

Congrats to all you folks that found some prety awesome stuff so far!

Daryl.