The drive there is on some back roads that were pretty deserted....no development in this area of Utah!
The we came to a cross road - our choices were to head to the Copper Mine or the landfill...we choose the Copper Mine.
Tah dah! We made it! They charge $5 per car to enter and the money is donated to charity. So basically we just paid for a little tax write off for 2010 ;)
Once you pay your $5 at the security gate and drive up the big hill to the visitors center - you are on the top of the mine. You get to look down and see the massive excavation process they have going on. They have these HUGE dump trucks driving around hauling all the material around. Of course the boys were in heaven....Zach kept saying DUMP DUMP DUMP all day long!
To give you a good idea on how big these dump trucks really were - here is a picture of the tires they use. They had a sign out in front of the tire saying they cost $25,000 each. Each dump truck uses six tires and they get replaced ONCE A YEAR! $150,000 in tires per truck every year. They had at least 50 trucks running around that we could see with our eyes, I am sure they had a bunch more elsewhere too!
They had a visitors center that showed a movie about the processing facility. We had no idea how huge an operation they really had going on out there. They do everything from the excavating all the way down to the copper sheet formation. This particular mine has been in production for almost 100 years! Inside the visitors center Zach was quick to find the dump truck stuff...
They even do blasting at the mine - we had hoped to see that going on but we weren't lucky enough to be at the facility during the 2-4 times a day they blast. Maybe next time! On our drive out of the facility we had a family of deer jump out and cross the road in front of us. FIVE OF THEM! Only one actually made it across the road - the rest were smart and decided to wait until AFTER we passed. That one deer that did cross was lucky Dustin was the driver....he stops in time ;)
1 comment:
Very cool!! When I worked at CAT all through college we worked on components of those huge trucks. One of the summers we got to tour the proving grounds and climb around the trucks / excavators / bulldozers etc. They ARE huge.
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