It was a Golden Day!

We are a day behind, so my mission (should I choose to accept it) is to writing about yesterday.  And - as a side note - we are fairly internet challenged (pictures seem to be near impossible to add - we'll add them later and let you know when it's happened).

So we followed the entire gold process from mine to jewelry yesterday.  It was pretty interesting!

We 'toured' an 1890 Gold Mine operation - I forget what they called it, but the end result is: one-way-in, one-way-out.  A blasted tunnel looking for a gold vein in the side of a mountain.  So hard to imagine being underground like that for 30 years (not continuously, obviously!) with only candles as your light.  The process did include dynamite, but also a chisel and a sledgehammer.  Here's how it worked:  one guy held the chisel and pressed his thumb against the end until the nail turned white (easier to see in the candlelight), the other guy then swings the sledgehammer...did you get that?  In the dark, 13 lb hammer...next to your face!  Ummmm...no thanks....  Lest you think, well, "I'd do it for a few years - get rich, and then be off!"  These guys did hit gold (twice!) and made a total of $200 over the 30 years between them.  Clearly the people running it today are doing MUCH better!!!

We learned to pan for gold (much harder then you'd think).  It's all in the wrist as they say.  Both boys got some gold, some fools gold and some really cool rocks (in case your wondering).

We also swung by the headquarters of the Riddle Jewelry store chain - they make their own jewelry and give free tours (no free samples though).  It was super interesting to see!  And they are maniacs about reclaiming every bit of gold, or gold dust they can.  Employees have to wash several times a day (all is reclaimed somehow); workstations are vacuumed daily (reclaimed); when they moved to their new location they even put the carpet and padding through a reclaimer - they had enough gold in the old carpet to carpet the new place (10,000 square feet).

It was a great day.  There's lots to do in the Black Hills - and they are beautiful!!!  We found a reasonably priced Mexican place: yum!, **love** our secluded camp site and even survived 2 thunderstorms!  All in all we'll be sad to see this area in our rear view mirror - so it was worth enduring Iowa to get here!