Annual Father Daughter Week! Day Two

We had planned to visit the De Young and see the King Tutankhamen exhibit before it left California for another 30 years, but after spending a whole day in S.F. just to see the Academy of Sciences… we thought it better to reschedule that for later in the week and try something different.

Tag board to track who is below in the mine

So, we packed our cameras and flashlights and headed for the hills looking for the Mother Load.  First we went to the Sutter Gold Mine, a real working mine still producing lots of gold.  There we took an open mining car down into the mine.  Anna was a bit scared as the car drove down the tight road to the mine entrance but she seemed fine once we were in the mine zipping down the tunnel in the dark.  Kind of the opposite of what I would have expected.

Entrance to the Mine

Once we got about 1200 feet into the mine there is a safety room dug out of solid “green rock” which is very dense hard rock.  Then they reinforce the room with steel bars drilled deep into the rock and a mesh anchored to the walls.  This is the room they go to if there are problems in the mine.

Zipping down into the mine!

Further down we got out and walked into a narrow side tunnel where they were following a vain of quartz.  Here the miner showed us the difference in appearance between pyrite and gold.  He then showed us several pieces of powered equipment the miners used to drill into the rock.  We learned about problems with dynamite and what the modern safer explosives are that they use now.

600ft or more below the surface

Then a quick ride back to the surface!  Anna had a blast and since the tour didn’t take much time, we headed out for lunch and then drove on to California Caverns.
The caverns were so dark that I don’t have many photos that turned out for that trip.  When I tried using a flash the dust particles in the air (though unnoticeable otherwise) nearly obscured the subject of the photo.  Here are the few photos worth anything.  These turned out because of some marginal lighting the had installed.

It was a long drive home on the winding roads, I didn’t use a map I just relied on my GPS to get us home, hopefully in the quickest way possible.  Next, it's back to S.F. …