Snowbirding Magnus Style, Day 11

Friday, November 14
 

We ate a quick breakfast and then headed over to Bisbee to take the Queen Mine Tour. I’d reserved tickets in advance and that was a good thing—our tour was full.

It was great!  We put on hard hats and brightly colored vests and we all were issued miner’s lights that we hung around our necks. And then we climbed on an actual mine train, straddled the bar down the middle, and zoomed away!

  

Okay, we didn’t exactly zoom. (Just exacttly NOT like in the 3-D movies!) But we did chunk and clank our way down the tracks into the mine. The ride was mostly level, or so it felt.  I think we went down a little bit. But we were underneath a mountain (aka big hill) and so we were most definitely way underground.  We stayed level; the ground above us went up.

The tour guide was a former mine worker; he’d worked for about five years in the 1970s. He’d been laid off, along with everyone else, when the price of copper plunged after the Vietnam War ended.  But he knew all about mining from his time and also had memorized a whole lot of history, so he was able to speak from experience and it was fascinating. He even showed us how they dynamited off a big chunk of the wall (called the “face” in miner’s lingo).  First they drilled out a pattern of holes—a ring of five, then a rectangle around them—then inserted dynamite charges in each and arrayed all the fuses of varying lengths in a holder. The charges needed to go off one at a time in a predetermined order. One person would go to the level above the blast site and one person to the level below, to watch/listen for weaknesses; the one in the middle would light the fuses and walk, not run, away; then they’d count the “bangs” to make sure that all of the charges fired.

When they’d all fired (or should have fired), the guys would return and record the results. If any charges were left unfired, they’d have to dig through the rubble until they found it and then use water to wash all the leftover explosive away.

Q: was it dynamite or gunpowder?  Apparently dynamite is a mixture of nitroglycerin, sorbents and stabilizers. Gunpowder is less powerful and predictable. It was dynamite.

Explaining the charges

The fuses

Return trip!

In the afternoon we went to Whitewater draw to see the Sandhill Cranes.  I also thought I saw a lone snow goose way off in the distance, plus some dowichers and ducks and stuff. Nothing I could identify.  The sight of so many cranes was awesome.

We neglected to understand that when there are extensive marshy areas in the middle of a warm desert, mosquitos abound. Very thirsty mosquitos. We got a little ways out along the trail—not an official “trail”, just a footworn walk out to the overlooks—and we were discovered by the mosquitoes. I had a small bottle of bug spray in my backpack and we availed ourselves of it, so we were able to survive an hour out there.

It was already getting to be sundown when we arrived, so we didn’t stay too long. Just until 5:30. We resolved to come again next day—and soak ourselves down with the big bottle of mosquito spray before we walked away from the Jeep. Molly, too—she has her special “Vet Chem” spray. It seems to work on her and even on me, too, in a pinch.

Always remember: where the birds are, the mosquitoes will gather.