Fun in Boone-Part 3

We spent a day hiking to Linville Falls and also visiting Linville Caverns. It was a very full day and the boys were very tired afterwards! We hiked to the falls two different ways to get two different views of the falls. I wouldn't say the boys were too happy about that part but they did enjoy the views from each of them.
Linville Caverns was really a cool cave. I wasn't expecting it to have as many formations as it did. Right at the beginning there is a stream that heads into the cave. Well out of the cave. We went in where it comes out. There are some HUGE fish in there.
One really neat part of the cave was where it was super narrow between two walls of rock and there is a grate below your feet where there is water underneath. They sent two divers down there a few years back and they never found the bottom. I think they said they stopped at 250 feet deep!

Aricin in the cave:



These next couple are a few of the formations. They have lots of colors in them from all the minerals:


One view of Linville Falls

The rest of these are the view from the top and hiking around the falls.

Fun in Boone-Part 2

So our second day in Boone we drove about 45 minutes to go to the North Carolina Mining Museum. It is an old mine, where they mined Feldspar for a cleaner called Bon-Ami. I guess they still sell it, but I had never heard of it.
It told all about the mining industry, how miners lived, etc. Can you believe they worked 10 hours a day for .10/hr? WOW! And the working conditions. WOW! They even had a reproduction of a general store, and all the real mining equipment used for that mine. The actual mine is underwater now. They had diverted a river to mine it and when the mine shut down they let it fill with water again.
We went gem mining with the huge $35 bucket. Ok so it wasn't that huge considering that they sell a $1000/barrel. Huge barrel like a 55 gallon size barrel or bigger full of rocks! We even asked the clerk if they ever sell any of those, and he says they sell all the time! He said mostly to people that will cut their own gems to sell them. But seriously? Mining all that rock just to get the gems. Wouldn't it be easier just to buy the uncut stones? I guess not as much fun.
The boys of course loved it and would have been happy as larks with the $1000 bucket. I think our $35 bucket took us a couple of hours to do. The gem mining was the highlight of the trip for the boys. Even after we were done they kept asking if we could go gem mining again!

Below: Niels and the boys around some of the old mining equipment


This is the actual mine itself, full of water now.

Enjoying the gem mining in these next few pictures



These two pictures are also at the mining museum