"My wife and I stopped here with my parents en route to visit her parents in Florida. We only stayed about two hours and came away with about twenty nice specimens each including ruby, sapphire, moonstone, topaz, amethyst, rhodolite garnet, and even a couple tiny emerald shards. We didn't see anyone using the salted buckets, but we came away pretty psyched.

On the way back from Florida we decided to stop again and were glad we had the chance. We didn't find as much, but a teenage girl upstream of me on the sluice got one of the "Mega" salted buckets. There was so much stuff in that bucket of hers that I was finding stuff in the sluice. I tried giving it back but she didn't want it. I might try one of those next time for amusement.

I will say that we're already planning how to get back to Franklin, NC. We did try to find the $30 a day Mason Mine which is supposedly near Rose Creek but we couldn't find it. I want to try some of the other mines, too. That said, we'll probably at least stop by Rose Creek Mine because we had a good time and it was pretty laid back and fun."

"Glad you had a great time! :-) I'm a huge fan of the Franklin area myself, I've been going up about every other weekend or so this season. You may have seen my mining page for the area on the North Carolina page here- http://pakasdollmaker.com/gemmining.html My personal favorite is Cherokee Ruby Mine, because of the quality of the gems (totally native, too), and because the family who runs it are about the nicest folks you'll ever meet (I was actually up there working at the mine last weekend to help them out as they were shorthanded and the gem show was going on). But there are many fun mines in the area, and lots of other great stuff to do!"