Exploring the Mines

The other week, after we roasted hotdogs over a campfire, we stopped at an old mine on the way home. This was a hole in the side of the mountain that Aaron had seen many times during his commute and something he'd been wanting to check out. So we did.

My boys at the mouth of the mine.

Inside. We didn't get much further than this though, since we had no flashlights and the mine went in pretty deep. Morgan was afraid of the dark tunnels too. So we said we would come back later with flashlights.

And we did. The next day in fact. We also brought friends. First we checked out the mine pictured above. It had a few different tunnels to explore and was fun. The other mine was real near by but you had to hike up the steep mountain side to get to it. On the way up we encountered tons of old pull-top beer bottles, and a spot where there must have once been a small cabin/building. Also on the way up we found an amazingly mellow lizard. The five in our group all took turns holding it. And we continued our trek up the mountain. The lizard hitched a ride.
So did Morgan. This is Chris, Aaron's work buddy. His wife Analee was the 5th member of the party.Note the flashlight that Morgan is carrying. Since he got to hold a flashlight he was okay going into the caves. In fact, he had a lot of fun. Occassionally he would suddenly stop and get scared and request that we turn around, but it wasn't difficult to help him change his mind.

Here is Morgan in front of the second mine. This one didn't go very far at all, but it was weird in that it seemed new. There were tools from Home Depot laying around, a wheelbarrow was there for hauling out rocks, and there was even a working LED light. Clearly this one wasn't as old as the first. It makes us wonder what they are looking for.
After hiking back down the mountain, and releasing our lizard friend, we drove a little ways down the road to the third mine. This one wasn't visible from the road like the first two. Aaron found it online. So we hiked about a quarter mile till we got to the mine. This final one was by far the coolest. It was really long, had old rails for the mining carts and stuff. Very interesting stuff. There was a lot of quartz in this mine, which might signify that it was a gold mine. Here's the entrance to the final mine.


Aww, so cute. And apparently Gary was there at one point...

In other news...stay tuned for Battle of the Bulge! In order to lose weight, a friend and I are starting this little competition. It will be officially kicked off on Saturday, so if there are any of you who want to participate, please do! The more the merrier. You don't have to live anywhere near us, (we live a state apart) you just need to have motivation to lose weight!