By John Waggoner, USA TODAY   Ashley Michalak and Nate Neitz are dipping pans of dirt into a long wooden trough on a hot summer day. But these aren't ordinary pans, and it's not ordinary dirt. They're gold pans, and the dirt — they hope — is pay dirt. The two cousins are panning for gold at the Cotton Patch Gold Mine in the heart of the nation's oldest gold-mining country. "It's cool. You never know what you're going to find," says Nate, 12.

Ashley, 11, has found two small pieces of gold, about the size of a pencil tip. By the end of the day, the two will bring home 10 small flakes of gold in tiny plastic bottles.

177 ounce gold nugget found January 2013

Every gold prospecting forum in the world has endless discussions of the unbelievable 177 ounce nugget found in Ballarat Australia. The nugget was found by an anonymous prospector using a "high end" metal detector. This is the kind of find that motivates all of us with gold fever to keep searching.