Today we headed through the mountain pass to the south of us (more crazy switchbacks) to a small town nestled in the mountains (Georgetown). There are a number of mine tours in this area, but we chose a lesser known one that had great reviews online. It's still an active mine with no pretense of becoming a tourist trap. In other words, the tour did not lead you into a gift shop when you were done. In fact there was no gift shop! This is my kind of place :)
As luck would have it, we found the place about 10 minutes too late for the noon tour, so we checked out the historic side of their town, and returned for the 1 pm tour. This actually worked in our favour, however, as nobody else showed up for that time, and we got a private tour. Way fun!
Our tour started with finding a hard hat and learning how to make it fit so that if you turned your head to avoid a bump in the ceiling, it wouldn't fall off. What a concept. We then got to follow the cart tracks 1000 feet into the mine, while learning about the history of gold mining in the area, how they used to drill by hand, and what methods are used now. I won't bore you with all that, but you can ask Clare or Robin if you really care.
When we reached the furthest point of the tour (an area with a large gold vein running through it), Robin got to try out a pick-axe and Clare and I got to push the 700 lb cart up the track. Then came the best part - checking the rocks on the ground near where Robin had chipped to look for gold. There were little flecks in most of them, but I managed to find a pretty good one (ok, Robin and the guide helped me find it). You can't tell in the photo, but there is gold there, I promise!
This may not have been some high-end polished looking tour, but I liked it better this way. We were in a REAL mine, looking for REAL gold. Our tour guide was great, we learned a lot, AND... no gift shop to waste our precious time with when we were done. It was a great trip all around :).
Whatever!
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