Staying active during COVID...

I moved from California to Idaho just a little more than a year ago mainly due to family and partly to get away from the politics. By the time our home was completed and we barely moved in, the COVID crisis hit. In less than a month my son and his wife were out of work due to the lock-down, and it didn't take long for them to lose their home. Now they moved it with us which mean that I was never really able to set up my woodworking shop (it's now a storage space). So much for my main form of entertainment during the lock down. I moved on to my coin collecting hobby, but that gets old and boring when you spend all day at it for weeks on end.

After a couple of months of being cooped up with family, I had enough. I decided that I'd go into the backwoods for a few days of fishing alone in the wilderness. It was great, and I really didn't want to come back. It was such a fine trip, that I decided to do it again less than a month later. This time, I was barely a day into the trip when traipsing in comes a forest ranger on horseback. And what does he do??? He cites me for not wearing a mask out in the middle of a forest where there was not one other person within miles of me. I donned a mask to make him happy, but then he would not go away. He stuck around for hours, and although he left the area I could tell he was still watching me as I could see the sun glinting off his binoculars throughout the afternoon. Fed up with the B.S., I removed the mask and within minutes he was back. This time I was ordered to leave. So much for getting away from people!

After a couple of months when the lock-down was eased, I decided that I would check out the parks and other areas I'd been researching for possible metal detecting. One thing I noticed about Idaho, I never see anybody metal detecting, and I thought this was great. The first time out, within a couple of hours I was surrounded by nearly a dozen people with metal detectors around me. No matter where I went, they all seemed to follow. Sorry guys, that irritates me to no end. I eventually found one particularly great place where I was getting so really great finds, and what with every time I went out I had a crowd develop. This is where I found a great use for my coin collecting hobby. Many years ago I purchased a bulk (10 pound bag) of world coins. Unfortunately for me, it consisted mostly of the big 5 Euro countries (U.K., Ireland, Spain, France and Germany) demonetized coins. With so many duplicates which I used to give the neighborhood kids, I decided to seed the non-productive areas I was searching. After detecting for awhile, everybody started staying in the seeded areas, and left me totally alone in the "non-productive" area. Since then, I've been seeding all the areas I'm not interested in with all my garbage coins.

So, this is how I've been coping with all this COVID craziness. But now winter is here, the ground is freezing and now I have to move on to something else. How have all of you been coping? Any ideas to add?

Dam man that crazy, but would the other people catch on that there all on the top and that maby some one is throwing them ?

What amazes me is how nobody seems to question the shininess of the coins they dig up. I say dig, because I took a 3 foot x 1 inch dowel, cut a slot and tapered the end. I jam the coins between 1 and 3 inches into the sod. I leave very few laying on top, and the ones I do just toss on the ground are usually in and near the play areas where bark and/or sand is located. So far it doesn't seem like anyone has caught on to what I'm doing.