Sapphire at the Gem Mountain

On our visit to Montana one of the things we did this time is stopped by at the Gem Mountain looking for some sapphires. We didn't stopped on the 1st trip although we knew about it from aunt Shirley and uncle Bob and they seems not too impress about it but my husband's daughter Jessica been there and loved to go back. On that trip Jessica was with us spending the day, we stopped at Skalkaho falls for some pictures and it's nice cause there are a lot of waters this time and still had snows on the road. The Gem Mountain is more closer to Philipsburg than from the highway of Hamilton so we went to Philipsburg first for some sightseeing and lunch and to Maxville. On the way back, my husband kinda worry to went about Jessica cause she still need to work till midnight and it's almost late afternoon so he wants to be home early and Jessica had enough time to have some rest before work but... she seems to loved to go back in there so we stopped by. I am of course interested too and to try. That was our 1st time so we thought we need to pay for 3 cause we are 3 going to look for some sapphires we don't know that we can either buy 2 or 1 just for us equivalent for a bucket of dirt.That was fun though even it took us almost 3 hours to finish the buckets and my daughter is cooperating cause she's just playing and looking for some rocks around she seems having fun too. At 1st one guy demonstrating us how to do it what the sapphires looks like and wash the dirt into the water to wash the dirt from the gem and the remaining dirt will be sort out in the table. I found one little pinkish purple one but i am bragging about it to my husband so he wanted to see it and took it out from my canister and unfortunately he dropped it. Then one guy attending there saw us looking into the dirt in the ground and helped us put some of those dirt on the pan hoping to find that one my husband lost. well it's gone, couldn't find it but luckily i found a different one and even bigger and that's the biggest we found 3. It's 1.8 carat only but if you are lucky enough you can find bigger more, there are some people and they post it every week on their office and they only post and took pictures of people who found 4 plus carats. They said that there is a woman who come there often and bought 13 buckets all the time and they said that, that woman probably has a store and they heat and re shaped those sapphires and sold. That was one of the nice experience on our visit and maybe on our next visit we stops in there again.