April 14, 2010

Wednesday.....After going to the canyon we decided to go across the river to a old mining area. We ran into a couple guys in a jeep and we asked where the mines were? He looked us over and said, " just down the road a ways"; "Yap you can make it up that wash in your 4 wheel drive truck". Off we went up this gorge on a old mining road, every time we thought about turning around one of us would say lets just look around the next bend up there. Well after going about 5 miles in we finally decided it was time to turn around. I made the mistake of stopping to get an interesting Quartz rock, Sharon jumped out of the truck and proceeded to start collecting all kinds of interesting rocks to put in the back of the truck to take home. After about 30 minutes and 100 Lbs of rocks later I told Sharon she was going to have to start walking if she didn't stop picking up the rocks and get in the truck. As always she finally conceded and got in the truck with about 50 additional pounds of what she calls valuable rocks to take back to Salem. I was starting to have flash backs of a movie we have watched together where Lucy got carried away gathering rocks. With the additional weight of these rocks I hope I don't have the same experience Desi Arnez had in the movie, "The Long Long Trailer." It was a interesting excursion seeing a number of old mines on both sides of the road. After seeing the mines you wonder why the miners started digging in that spot and how long they dug before they quit and moved on to another area.