Independence Mine

Weekend getaway continued. Part 2 of our two day adventure takes place on the evening of our arrival. After dinner, we headed a quarter mile up to the end of the road to see the Independence Mine State Historical Park. Since it was already almost 8pm, nobody was around. We had the place to ourselves but unfortunately that meant the visitor center wasn't open. So we didn't get to find out much about the place but from what I've read on the signs around and at their website, it was a gold mining community set up in the early 1900s before finally being shut down in 1951. I still don't know how it got to be in the shape it is today. The weather is pretty extreme up there so maybe it was all weather that destroyed the structures...whatever it was, it's magnificant to see.

We hiked to the top of the hill with the girls. It's definitely the longest and most difficult trail the girls have done. That doesn't say much because I don't think we've taken them on many hikes. But they were anxious and adventuresome so most of the time we had to hold them back a bit.

Like I said before, we were embarrassed that we've never been up here before and even worse...that we've never taken any of our out of town family and friends up here.








At the top of our climb. We started in the parking lot near the buildings in this picture. It was a loooong hike up but the girls did AWESOME! We had to carry them for part of the way because it was just too steep or the drop-off was too close to the trail but otherwise, they scurried all the way up themselves.




My first attempt at an artistic photo. Not bad for not having the tripod with me.

This is the first time I've caught a ptarmigan (pronounced tarm-again) on film. We have a great video of one when we went to Brooks Falls several years ago but this is the first picture. You'll have to click on it to really see it. What was great is that it changes colors during the seasons. It was in the middle of transitioning from the camouglage tan to all white for the winter. It looked like it had big white hairy boots on its legs. It was pretty funny to see.