Minor Miner

Today's field trip was a lot of fun for Madison, the kids in her class - and Mommy and Daddy too!  We got to tag along for a nice little trip up to Dahlonega, and as you can see above, we all got to do a little sifting for gems and shiny little rocks.  Madison found a small chunk of pyrite, which pretty much made her day - although all the kids walked away with colorful polished rocks and other assorted minerals.

Here she is with a treasure just found - all the kids started out with buckets of sand.  They shoveled the sand into the sifter there, and put into the running water.  The sand filtered out, and the larger rocks stayed in the trays.  It's quite a little operation they have going up there, with room enough for about three classrooms to be sifting for gems all at the same time.  And yes, Mommy and Daddy got to do some sifting themselves.  We went home with a few bags of rocks.  Poor Mrs. Loftus, the teacher, had to carry those rocks the rest of the tour!

Speaking of which, take a look where we went!  Down, down, down.  It was about 200 feet down, or at least that's what the advertisement says.  Madison is seen here descending the stairs to a lower area, one where the dwarves mine for all sorts of gems and gold.  As you can see, there was plenty of light down there - and running water too.  Check out that little stream down there to the right.  There is in fact a Wal-Mart directly above this mine, and the joke is that this is right about where the bathrooms are...

It did sprinkle on everyone a bit, but that was part of the adventure.  Our tour guide continued on, and did really well with the kids.  You can see how much Madison was paying attention here.

She looks like she's ready to invest heavily in the next mining operation, possibly managing it all herself!  Seriously, she had a great time and paid attention to quartz veins and the occasional hanging bat in the rocks above.  We spotted a few of those, especially along this stretch of cave here below.

This was where they filmed that one part of "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom."  Or not.  Still, it made for a nice little walk, as our guide told us about how far back in time the story of Dahlonega gold goes, and all the different ways the miners went after it.

It was a nice day, and something new for all of us to see.  Above, he's pointing out where there's a big area of quartz, where there could be gold chunks inside.  Soon, they did the whole "let's turn off the lights and see how dark it gets in a cave underground" thing, and the kids were screaming.  They were screaming later on too, "Fire in the hole!"  The acoustics underground are really good.

But all good things must come to an end, and so we ascended back to the surface, and eventually back home again as well, saying goodbye to the Consolidated Gold Mine.

There was ballet today, grocery shopping and a bit of LEGO Jurassic World.  But we'll remember the day for the trip underground.  In fact, it might have been Madison's first trip into a cave anywhere.  She enjoyed it - we all did!