Since we all had the day off on Monday for Labor Day, we decided to ride over to Apache Junction (about 30 miles northeast of our house) and check out a Ghost Town called Goldfield. It was the area where a big gold mine was in operation over 100 years ago. They took the equivalent of $66 million dollars from it. There are still two working gold mines in Arizona, and lots of people search on their own as hobbies panning for gold.
At this ghost town, there is a "mine" that you can tour. There is a very unstable "elevator" that seems to take you down to the depths of the earth, but I quickly realized it was just bumping us around and wasn't really going anywhere. The other side of the door opens and you feel like your in an old gold mine. The miner in this picture could easily have lived a 100 years ago....except for the bottled water bottle that he kept in his hand! Anyone want to guess what this is pictured? It's a toilet for the miners. They would use it underground rather than having to come back to the surface. The tour guide side sometimes they would smuggle gold nuggets into it because the mine officials wouldn't search the toilet! The worker that cleaned the toilet out above ground would then get half of the money from the nuggets.
There was a lot of old tools and machinery lying around, as you would expect in a deserted town. This one caught my eye, having made it to the Arizona desert from Cincinnati, Ohio.
One of the highlights was the small reptile room that they had at the ghost town. They had about 75 poisonous snakes and lizards found in the Arizona dessert. These two are rattler snakes. I'd never seen a live rattler before.
It was a gorgeous day. It's still hot, in the low 100's, during the day, but that temperature is tolerable here if there is some shade to rest in.
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