A drive through copper mining country

We decided it was time for a little road trip. We have been so busy doing I am not sure what, that we figured it was about time we did a little road tour. We left our RV park about 1030 in the morning. Doug had to wait for me as I have water aerobics from 0900 - 1000 hours! It was a gorgeous sunny, warm morning. We headed out on East HWY 60 towards Superior and then took the hwy just as you enter Superior that veers off to the south. It took us up into the White Mountains and down towards the town of Kearny. One of the largest open pit Copper mines is just a few miles north of Kearny. It was a beautiful scenic drive over the mountains. A windy, curvy road much like you find in the BC mountains but the vegetation is very different - high desert. We came around the corner and there was this massive copper mine right in front of us. I am going to post many pictures but it was so awesome it was hard to stop taking pictures!

I had to take a picture so I would remember the name of the mine!

 This is what we initially saw as we came around a corner in the road

 A big slag pile

 The hole in the ground just got larger as we drove further around the corner!

 We couldn't believe just how big the hole in the ground was

 The different colors in the rock were amazing

 It is hard to imagine just looking at this picture, just how large the mine really is!

 Everywhere you looked, it just went on forever it seemed

 I just loved all the colors, it reminded me of a quilt

 Another view of all the colors

 I just couldn't stop taking pictures!

 We are looking over the edge at the Visitor's Lookout

 Of course Doug thinks it's funny taking a picture of me leaving the "loo"

 We are driving away from the mine heading for the town of Kearny

 Every where you look there are slag piles

 We are coming down the hill to the town

I never did take any pictures of the town. It was a very poor looking tiny village. It had a great little thrift store we spent some time looking through and the ladies volunteering at it were very friendly. We also went to a garage sale and were able to find a microwave tray for Catherine's microwave. We paid a whooping $1 for it. Cath just had a small accident and broke her tray so this was a great find. Now to just get it to Yellowknife........

 After leaving Kearny, we headed up the mountain and over it heading top the town of Winkleman. The small town of Hayden was 2 miles before it and was another copper mine town. You can just see the green colour of the slag pile through the chollo cactus.

 As we get closer, the green of the slag pile gets more vivid

 Imagine looking out your living room window looking at this all day! Many of the houses did

 It was quite the site being such a vivid turquoise color

 The sign identifying the town of Hayden was so lovely, I expected the town to be the same.

Of course Doug loved the picture because it had a train in it! The train is called the Copper Basin Railway Company. When we went up the hill into the town, it was shocking to see all the old closed down buildings just falling into disrepair. Two large smelting plants were no longer in production and just rotting away. It really was a sad little town that looked like the people were just scraping by.

 Beautiful butterfly on the road where we puuled over to take some pictures of the wild flowers

 I just couldn't get over the colors

 beautiful wild flowers all along the road

 Not the clearest picture but these little flowers were so pretty

 We are now up at the 5000 ft level in the Dripping Springs Mountains going over El Capitane Pass heading towards the town of Globe

We could see for miles but the wind was howling and I was actually cold!

We had lunch in Globe, then toured this mining town, visiting a couple of thrift stores and a really neat little tourist trap and a turquoise wholesaler. The nearby town of Miami has a large turquoise mine and the mine offices and wholesale and general public stores are in Globe. We bought a bag of small turquoise chips and have them in the rock tumbler as I type, I want to use the chips as the numbers on clock faces. Doug is making clocks out of slices of cut stone he and his group have mined. I'll post a picture once we get one finished