There are several buildings on the grounds to walk around and explore but the main feature involves riding a trolley style car into the mines and walking along the dimly lit caves on uneven dirt. If you have limited mobility, I'd recommend staying above ground and enjoying the exhibits.
The price of admission gets you a 45 minute total guided tour. The undergound portion runs ever 30 minutes so you can head over and grab the next one whenever you're ready. It's also easy to walk back over afterwards and spend more time looking at the exhibits if you want more time. The tour concludes with a guided explanation of the main building featuring all the original ramps and machinery. While seeing a mine, though a national historic site, isn't at the top of my to do list, I enjoyed hearing our guide point out all of the TV shows and movies that have used the site to film. If you're a fan of Hallmark Channel movies, you've seen this place on your TV screens. I remember watching Candance Cameron Bure in one of her Aurora Teagarden themed Hallmark Movies & Mysteries where she is being chased throughout the building with all of the ramps, machines, and catwalks several years later wondering why it seemed so familiar. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to climb those same rickety ramps and stairs.
If you're traveling with kids, they'd enjoy such on site experiences as a play area and posing for pictures in front of giant trucks. Those cardboard cutouts are life size.
Price of admission does include the chance to do some gold panning. We opted to skip that but it was quite the hot spot for the kids visiting today.
With some time to kill before the next tour started, we checked out two of the buildings dedicated to exhibits. One was called the Machine Shop and featured the machines used back when the mine was operational.
Thank you sir for stopping on the other side of the glass display right when I was taking a picture of the signs. Makes for a fun photo bomb:
Another building showcased items the miners discovered featuring gems as well as random household objects.
Oh that's where that old bike and toilet went!
You've heard the phrase - "Everything but the kitchen sink"- well they found one of those too:
 |
How do you showcase that the mining helped create many things that would never have been possible in scientific advancements? By creating the Starship Enterprise out of Lego of course:
The crew on the bridge doesn't seem too happy about this idea though:
We next made our way over to the mine itself and got outfitted with hard hats before boarding the yellow trolley car. We stayed on the trolley car for the first few minutes of our arrival into the mine. Our Britannia guide hopped off to walk next to the trolley and give information about how the mining was done.
After her talk, we all were directed to hop off the trolley and she led us on a walk through the mine including to darker places as we went deeper underground. There was several lights and lanterns along the way for safety but at one point, she warned us before shutting off all the lights to momentarily show how dark it really was for the miners. We stayed on foot for the rest of our time exploring the mine eventually coming back out into the sunlight where we started. After everyone returned their hard hats, she led us to the main building with the ramps and larger machines.
What do you mean it's not safe to climb this centuries old wooden stairs and cart ramp combo? This is looking up at the access to the catwalk system from the floor level.
After the tour was over, we took some time looking around the grounds before returning to the SUV.
Having been running around the city of Vancouver all day after getting up early for debarkation, the rain that started pouring buckets for our drive to the airport didn't help me stay awake. We arrived at the airport with about 90 minutes to kill before they'd even let us check in for our flight much less actually board a few hours later. To this day I remember the look on the customs/security agent's face when she saw our tickets for the flight from Vancouver to Baltimore had us connecting in Atlanta. Pretty much the same confusing look we had when we were forced into booking a flight that physically took us past our home to head south and then fly back up to our home.
Even though I completed my 17th and 18th cruises last fall, if you ask me what my favorite itinerary was, this Alaska trip will be my answer every time! Would I go back to Alaska again? Absolutely. Would I recommend doing the land and cruise combo? 100% Would I recommend doing this classic cruise itinerary with Princess? You betcha! They really do make the experience above and beyond while you're under their wing. Thank you for reading this report to the end even though I started writing it just before the Alaska cruise season and cruising in general was cancelled. May we all stay healthy and happy and return to safely seeing the world once again one cruise itinerary at a time in the not too distant future!
No comments:
Post a Comment