Ever since my wife, Rita and I started metal detecting back in 2020, we’ve tried to research places where we could take a short vacation and bring along our detecting equipment.

That’s one way to continue detecting when the cold and snow in Minnesota makes it difficult, if not impossible, to detect.

A few years back we took a trip to Arizona in March. We enjoyed the warm weather and managed to come home with a few coins and pieces of jewelry. It was snowing when we got back, so chances were pretty good our trip was the only way we could have detected back then.

This year has been different. We didn’t plan a trip to a warm weather place. And the cold and snow started earlier than usual. Temperatures dipped below freezing before Thanksgiving. We’ve had a few sub-zero evenings, and the ground has been frozen and covered with snow since then, too.

Just before Christmas I was looking through the log book we use to record our detecting information. It lists the date, location and the things we found.

As I paged back to the beginning of 2024, I noticed that I was able to do at least some detecting during every month of that year. That’s a pretty good accomplishment, considering Minnesota weather conditions.  

This year (2025), I was able to detect in the winter months of January, February and March, even with the cold and frozen ground.

As I continued looking through the book, I noticed that the last log entry was November 25, two days before Thanksgiving, but nothing for December.    

I didn’t want to ruin my streak of detecting (and finding something) in every month of the year, so with just a few days left in the December, I started going through the log book.

Every park would be covered in snow. The only places that would be plowed were parking lots. Then I saw it - Quarry Park in St. Cloud. The parking lot there was dirt and gravel, and lots of people use the ski trails there when it snows. So there was a chance someone might have dropped something in the parking lot.

The temperature the day after Christmas reached 35 degrees, so I drove to the park, took out my detector and hoped for the best. About 20 minutes later I had a signal. I chiseled through about a half-inch of frozen slush and found my target - a penny. I went home a few hours later with 10 pennies, a nickel, a dime and an earring.

My streak remains intact!