Life On Hege Hill: Gold Fever!

Now here's a small photo tour of what we did on Thursday. First thing was visiting an old gold mine. Imagine, two men working together for more than 30 years, drilling the holes by hand, for a total profit of about $50 each after all that time! I didn't realize that mining was such incredibly dangerous work--the average miner who worked with a pneumatic drill, before they were water cooled, worked in the mine for about 6 months before dying of miner's lung from all the dust they breathed. The men who worked in the mill, actually getting the gold from the ore, would use their bare hands in the mercury solution, and would get real "gold fever"--a fever of up to 110!--from mercury poisoning. The men who worked in the part of the mill that actually melted down the gold breathed mercury fumes all day, and would only live on average 4-5 months. Wow. An incredible price paid for gold! I think I learned more than the children did today!

Heading down the mine shaft.

In the mine.

After the mine tour we panned for gold in their sluice troughs. We ended up with more garnets (a gem) than gold, but it was fun! Here's my VERY handsome husband trying his hand at panning for the first time. I was surprised at how addicting it was.

Eliott loved playing in the water!

Here's a lovely picture of our lovely girlie! Couldn't resist throwing this one in...

After the gold mine, we took a hike to the base of the Cathedral Towers, a fantastic rock formation. We had gold fever--after crossing a wee little mountain stream we decided we should have bought a pan so we could see if there was any gold hiding in the gravel! Not that we really care about the tiny dots of gold we might have found, but we thought it would have been fun to really try it like they used to do it so many years ago...