My wife and I watched a movie a while back called "The Decent," and my wife was crawling up the couch when we were watching it. Being the good husband I am, I thought to myself, "Self, it would be a great idea to tour a copper mine!" So I made sure to plan that as one of our stops. The Delaware Mine was a self-guided tour, and they made sure to keep the lighting the way it was when it was open, so it was sufficiently creepy, although there were no cannibal monsters that we saw...
Inside the tour center
Inside the main tour building, you are required to watch a video before you start the tour. You are also required to wear a hard hat to go down in the mine. The tour center had a gift shop, a small museum, and this super cool train set!
Getting ready to go down...
In this video, you can see what it was like down in the mine itself.
Why are my thumbnails always upside down?!?
After being down in the mine for an hour or so, it was time to climb the stairs to the top. It was like one hundred and thirty steps, and although my wife has a cute butt to watch going up the stairs, my wheezing like an old man that smoked for thirty years is pretty obvious. Between the lighthouse and the copper mine, I was about staired out! You can watch the cute butt and wheezing old man here...
Ok enough of that! Outside!
Real life miner!
My wife made sure to get a photo with a guy that was there who had actually worked in a copper mine in his younger days. He was full of stories and it was super cool to meet the man. The rest of the tour was outside. There were numerous buildings and machinery laying around the grounds, but the most interesting thing to me was the ancient copper mine that was on-site...
Sorry for the fuzzy picture...
This sign spoke about the ancient copper mining pit that was on the premises. Mankind has been mining at this spot for thousands of years. There is a theory that the ancient Minoans came to Michigan and mined the Copper that was used throughout the old world, Egypt, and Middle Age Europe. Very interesting stuff!
Here you can see the ancient copper mining trench.
The people mining here in ancient times would use fire and water to heat and cool the rocks in order to extract the copper. To me, this was amazing to see.
QueenBee1977 doing her posing for pictures thing...
For the rest of these photos, I will refrain from making too many comments. Most of them are self-explaining and just photos I took trying to be artistic.
The sign for the pump house...
The pump house...
How cool is that?
Machinery!
There were all kinds of old machines at the mine. Some of it was left in place where it sat, and it made for some great photos...
I have no idea what this did...
Again, no idea...
Hey that is a cart!
My wife being herself...
Just gorgeous!
Of course we looked for some copper in the "tailings" but didn't find any...
The Hoist House...
There was not much left of the Hoist House building, but they did have the machinery that they used for it...
It was very impressive to see what people were capable of doing over a hundred years ago. And last but not least...
I found this little guy on a fencepost and thought he deserved a photo too!
I hope you enjoyed this post about our visit to the Delaware Copper Mine in Mohawk Michigan, and...
