9/6-9/8 2022

9/6

Slow day. Errand day.

9/7 

Stayed home and got work done around the trailer.

9/8

Went to Copper Harbor today. What a gorgeous little place. I wish we would have spent the night somewhere and woke up to have another day there. A lot to do. But we wanted to see the copper mine, Estivant Pines Nature Sanctuary, and High Rock Bay.

Went to Delaware Copper Mine Tours first. Kind of hard to get to but easy if you have a truck. The place is surrounded by hills and beautiful trees. All the leaves are already changing colors up here, so it's beautiful. There was a sweet little man working that day. We didn't have cash (the one day we didn't bring any) and of course the tours were cash only. They didn't have an ATM and getting back into town would have been a trip. So he gave us their business card and wrote the amount on the back. Told us to mail the money to him at any time. That's how nice people are around here!

The mine itself is one of the oldest underground copper mines. Shutdown in the mid/late 1800's. The mine produced millions of tons of pure native copper for more than 5,000 years. It was first opened by civilized people by following the Indians old shallow dig spots. This particular mine was actually a massive money pit because the exploratory holes showed far more than it really ended up producing. 

The tour is self-guided, even better. You take the stairs down to the mine. About 300 feet and over 1,500 feet laterally. We saw many stopes and pits going deeper, which are now filled with water (you can scuba dive here) Divers explored the underground and put the video up on YouTube. You can see the old tracks the mine carts rode on. Some are covered in rocks and such. I can't believe humans really did all of this. 

Also included was a very short trail to the old Indian site where they dug very shallow, but produced millions of pounds of pure native copper thousands and thousands of years ago. The last part of the tour was a trail walking through the old ruins and crumbling buildings of the two large processing buildings built in the 1800's. They looked like something out of a video game. 

Afterwards we made the short drive to Estivant Pines. The drive there was absolutely beautiful. Almost worth it just for the drive alone. Estivant has many old pines, some of them more than 500 years old. We saw probably 50 of the pines that must be close to that age. These ancient pines mixed with the changing colors of the deciduous trees was gorgeous. We did the loop trail so it was about 2 miles long.

I messed this picture up but I like it lol.

Then we decided to start the drive to High Rock. The only way there is an extremely rough dirt road. With many hills and pits and rough terrain. We made it half way there but the sky looked like it was about to downpour. We would have been stuck in the middle of nowhere with no service if it rained. Joe's truck could have done this without rain, but we didn't want to risk it. Because I don't think the truck would have made it through the rain lol. Plus the road was about to start getting even worse. We would have walked the rest of the road. But it was also getting dark. Next time!

The dirt road was also pretty itself. 

On the way back we stopped at a small park to lookout at the harbor and the lighthouse. 

Three hour drive and we were back at camp.