As I sit here at the computer writing my column, I’m making final preparations for a week-long vacation in Arizona.

It’s been a long time since me and my wife Rita went on a vacation for more than a day or two. Over the past two years with COVID restrictions, our trips have been limited to not much more than some sight-seeing and an overnight hotel stay in Duluth or Stillwater. Now that the pandemic seems to be slowing, we feel more confident about flying again.

And the fact that the weather here has been so cold makes a trip south all the more inviting.

We’ve been to Arizona before. The first time was a four-day trip back in 2013 when we went on a day-long tour through Sedona and on to the Grand Canyon. The views were breathtaking, and I know we’ll be going back some day.

We liked the atmosphere and the downtown area in Sedona so much that we took another short vacation and stayed there a few years later.

But this trip will be different. There is no one specific place on our list. In fact, we hope to see multiple sites this time. This will be an “adventure” vacation.

Sure, we’ll spend some leisure time soaking up the sun and taking in all the scenery. We may eat at some restaurants and take in some live music or comedy entertainment. But we expect our big focus to be treasure hunting.

Back in 2020 when the pandemic was going full force, we couldn’t attend any shows or go out to eat. Most places were closed. So we decided to take up a hobby where we could spend time outdoors without being part of a big crowd. We chose metal detecting.

I’d always wanted to try metal detecting when I was younger and living in New Jersey. I remember getting a really cheap detector for Christmas one year. It worked. But because I lived in a city with lots of pavement, there really weren’t many places to search where I could dig up anything good. And since the detectors back then didn’t discriminate between different types of metal, every signal sounded the same. So my “treasure” was usually a nail, a bottle cap or a soda can.

Today’s technology makes detecting a much more rewarding experience. The detectors have lots of features - different tones for different types of metal; settings for depth, volume and sensitivity. Many have digital numerical readouts that can narrow down what might be giving off a signal.

I didn’t know any of that until I borrowed a friend’s detector. Me and Rita tried it in the yard around our old farmhouse. Once we got used to the unit, we could skip anything that was likely a nail. On our second day of detecting about 20 feet from the porch, just before dark, we got a signal that was in the range of a coin. We used a trowel to dig a hole about four inches deep. Without much light left in the day, we couldn’t really see what was in the hole, so we kept scooping out dirt.

And there it was, a 1920 Mercury silver dime! But that wasn’t all. We swung the detector over the hole again and got another signal. A few seconds later up came a 1929 Buffalo nickel. And then two more coins - a 1910 cent and 1919 cent.

That was all we needed to decide to get our own detector.  Rita ordered one online, and after a few weeks we bought another one so we could detect together. We’ve been detecting ever since and have found plenty of coins, some rings and lots of cool stuff.

So when we finally decided to plan a vacation this spring, we wanted to go somewhere where the ground wasn’t frozen and covered with snow.

Since we already liked Arizona, we did some research about places to detect down there.  We checked online and watched some videos and discovered there’s a long history of lost treasure in Arizona. Or at least that’s what people are claiming.

We saw a documentary about different people searching for the Lost Dutchman’s Mine, a place in the Superstition Mountains that is supposed to be filled with gold. 

There are also countless videos of people detecting gold nuggets in the desert. And Rita read about the trail in Arizona and New Mexico 16th-century Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado followed in his search for treasure in the Seven Golden Cities of Cíbola. So far, no one has claimed to have found it.

With all those people searching for the treasure over the past few hundred years, it’s not likely we can hit the jackpot in a few days. But I’m hoping we bring home more than just a tan.