We walked through the remains of the Old Victoria copper mine site. The trail passes through the mine hoist building.
There are quite a few ruins of various old buildings. At one time there were 80 houses here, all owned by the company, where miners and their families lived. A few have been restored for historical purposes. When I was here before, we actually, seredipitously, arrived on the day of their festival with all sorts of reinactment stuff and food. That was really cool.
There is also a trail shelter on the property. It's a really nice one with bunks. There is also a screened front, a wonderful feature added to several shelters in the Upper Peninsula.
The big project of the day was driving around so that we could still hike all the trail (instead of a long roadwalk bypass). They are releasing water from the dam (see picture yesterday) on the West Branch of the Ontanogan River for the fish, and we were told we would not be able to ford the river. This only meant an extra half mile on the west side. But the closest we could drive on the east side was 2.2 miles from the river. So we walked down and back anyway. It sure looked like we could have gone across, but we had the cars staged by then, so we didn't.
There were thousands of polliwogs getting a good start on life in the edges.
At the other end of the size spectrum for wildlife, we found this bear track.
Miles today that counted: 9.9, but add 2.8 or so to that. Total miles so far: 4750.7.
 | See Finishing the Trap Hills |
2 comments:
That copper mine site would be interesting to see. I bet that trail shelter is a welcome site sometimes.
That is a pretty big looking bear track.
Ann- the year we were at the festival was really, really cool
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