Day 5: Kellogg, Idaho: There's gold in these hills.

July 7, 2015

We started our day early, with the free breakfast at the Guesthouse Suites. As with 99% of American motels, the breakfast items do not rate high for quality. On the other hand, this one is better than many. Thre kids, anyway, seemed to run fine on this fare. We took them again into our "private" pool. There are a reasonable number of people in the motel, but none seem interested in swimming.

After we adults had swum up and down with them a fair bit, gone into and out of the hot tub, and done it all again, we were ready to quit. But when we relaxed the "no diving" rule sufficiently to allow "jumping", we found that the kids had energy enough to jump in and climb out at least fifty times. We can not tell you the actual limit, because we had to drag them away when we got tired.

We set off back along the trail, to pick up the Gold Mine tour, that we had blown past yesterday. Just as with the Sierra silver mine in Wallace, the tour is conducted by people with actual mining experience, and considerable knowledge about the minerals and rock structures, as well as the mining techniques.

The gold mine at Kellogg has some unique and interesting aspects. It is a mine from about 1890 that had been covered up and forgotten. It was only in 1991 that a backhoe working nearby moved something, and released a flood of water. Exploration then revealed the formerly covered and flooded shafts. Remarkably, the unknown old miners had abandoned the place with their equipment still inside, and the furthest progress of the tunnels still in to good ore. There must be a dramatic back story of what happened.

Most striking is the extent to which dripping water has deposited mineral along the walls and even floor. This is the classic stalagtite and stalagmite type development. Some of the deposits are bright white and fluorescent blue/green.

Our guide was very informative, and attentive to the kids, but he entioned a few times that he might not be in the best humor, having been up on Facebook all night. The reason? Organizing a defence the Confederate Flag. This has been a big topic in America since the church shootings in Charleston. Of course, we did not take the fellow up with any discussion of this. Not only is it fruitless and unrelated to gold mining, but I sensed a repressed violence in the fellow. It was part of our cultural experience here, however.

A big thrill for the kids at the gold mine is the chance to pan for gold, in vats filled with gravel, semi precious stones, and a small amount of actual gold. In practice, panning for the actual teeny gold specs requires too much skill for them (and us), but finding the coloured stones is great fun. Each kid (and us) came away with a little baggy of these treasures.

Crossing the road to get back to the trail drew an adverse comment from Avi, "Hey, I thought we were not going on road". I had to establish the distinction between going on the road as opposed to cross it. Tough customer.

More photos and narrative later

There are gold flecks in the fine sediment

Original tools found in the abandoned mine.

A demonstration of hand drilling holes for dynamite

More deposits. We took many shots of formations and colours

Spent about an hour in the panning troughs

In the Kellogg Visitor Center guestbook, Violets comment was "Nice carpet"

A call came in from Mom, but who wants to talk when it's Shark Week on the TV.

The exercise opportunity in the pool is not quite enough, so here is a 30 minute warmup on the machines.

Laps in the pool are easier if you can ride on Grandpa!

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