Extended Stay America

Treasure Hunting Vacations

Treasure Hunting Vacations

Did you know that there are places where you can really take treasure hunting vacations?  Did you dream of finding treasure when you were a child?  

Did you love the Indiana Jones movies and long to search for treasure and adventure like that?  Well, maybe you wouldn't have wanted quite that much adventure.  The bad guys were always making it difficult for him... but it doesn't have to be difficult for you to go treasure hunting on vacation.

Treasure hunting can be searching for gold or jewels.  It can also be prowling through antique stores and flea markets for something you will treasure.... or a rare find that could bring you a fortune.  We all hope for that with the "Antiques Roadshow" television show don't we?

You could volunteer to spend some time with a scientific expedition looking for lost ships and sunken treasure, or archeological finds and buried treasure.

You don't have to make a whole vacation of it.  You can just take a day or two on a trip to spend time poking or digging around with someone to guide and help you find treasure.  Some of these places are rural and a bit out of the way, so do your research... hunt for your treasure spot before you go treasure hunting so to speak.

You can go panning for gold in California.  There are groups and companies that offer whole trips and mining expeditions.  There are some companies that invite you to bring the whole family.  Be careful about just going out to pan gold for yourself anywhere... people really are serious about this, and you don't want to accused of being a claim jumper!  That sounds like something right out of the Old West, but it's still true today.

You can dig for stones... if not precious ones, at least semi-precious ones at state parks and private lands around the U.S.  Things like diamonds and rubies and sapphires.  And if it's just pretty stones you're looking for, there are private mines where you can pay to find your own fluorite samples and quartz geodes.  

There are kid friendly places where the whole family can look for things like quartz and pyrite crystals.  Many of these are on private lands.   Search the internet for mines or ranches or treasure hunting.

Is digging for fossils your idea of treasure hunting?  There are places you can do that too.  Look for trilobites in Utah.  In Idaho you can look for fossil fish.  Washington state has places to look for fossil fish too, or you could search for petrified wood.... trees are fossils too.

Some people even think metal detecting on a beach is a great vacation treasure hunt.  There are lots of places you could do that, and the rest of the family could just relax and play if they don't agree with you about treasure hunting vacations!

A Treasure hunting vacation could be almost anything you want it to be.  Go hunting for something that is really interesting to you.

Use your imagination.

Think you might have found an old pirate map?  Well, maybe you could really go on a treasure hunting vacation.  OK, maybe that's a little too much imagination, but it's your vacation, have fun!