Social Distancing: Desert Edition

Yesterday, in an attempt to get out of the house but not be around other people, we drove to the west desert to check out some mines. We didn't make it very far down the dirt road before we couldn't go any farther in the van. Scotty pulled off the road and convinced everyone to try walking to the mines. 

Spoiler alert: we made it. 

But it wasn't easy. It ended up being miles, and while the "walk" wasn't overly strenuous, it was definitely more of a "hike." 

And taking Daisy anywhere ends up like this:

But that's all I will say about Daisy's misery. Just know that it was quite the triumph for our whole family to make it to the mines with Daisy in tow. 

These particular mines go straight down into the mountain, and they are covered with grates. 

The first one we stumbled upon was the trippiest. There was no sign of a bottom. We dropped rocks in it and never heard them land. 

I stuck my phone through the grate to take a photo - only because I have a finger loop on the back of my phone. 

My camera is going out. While we were on our little journey it kept blacking out and getting white lines across the screen while in camera mode. The same thing happened to my last phone. It's because I drop them a lot. Hence my investment in the finger loop. 

We had to go an additional mile to get to more mines. This is the pile mountain of dirt from when the mines were excavated:

We followed the path to the top:

There are some little canyons in the mountain. It was pretty cool to explore.

At the top of the mountain there are two more mines. This one has been filled in, so you can actually see the bottom:

This is what I had to do to get the photos:

It was such a mind game to go out on those grates. Scotty wouldn't do it. I forced myself out there, but it took a lot of self-talk to do it. After I accomplished this great mental feat, some people in Jeeps stopped by the mines and walked right out on them without even batting an eye. Figures. 

On the way home, we drove through Ophir, a small mining town (population: 23). We'll definitely head back there sometime to have a better look, but we just passed through quickly this time because we needed to get home. 

Now it's Monday, and Day 5 of Pandemic Palooza. We are trying to take the directives from the CDC seriously and not go around other people. It's going to be really hard, but we'll do our best because we don't want to contribute to the problem. We are very likely canceling a National Parks trip that we've been looking forward to. It absolutely kills me, but I feel like it's the responsible thing to do for our community.