Gold, Lobsters & Brothels Anyone?

I bet you didn't know I was a Gold Miner did you? Well here is proof!

Okay okay I'm not a real gold miner, I'm just an accountant-wanna-be-miner. But I do work for a gold mine and this week I was able to take a little business trip to Nevada to go on a mine tour. It was fricken awesome, I really want to be an underground miner now.

Forget about crunching numbers, I want to crunch rocks!

Before entering an underground mine, everyone has to have their brass. Why you ask? To identify your burned remains when the mine catches on fire and you are left there to be burned alive! Brass does not melt in fire so you always have 2 identifying brass pieces, one to keep on your body and one to put on the brass board so that they can keep track of every person who has dared to enter the mine.


So here is our group of nerdy accountants trying to squish into this tiny elevator shaft to travel 1000 feet underground. Good thing I didn't forget my deodorant that day, too bad I couldn't say the same for the others!



First place we visited was Fragal Rock! Yes it does exist!


See?


This picture isn't easy to see but I guess it is an example of how dark and scary it is underground!



Especially if you turn the corner and one of these is coming right at you!




The underground is full of extremes, in some areas you are freezing your tail off then a couple seconds later you are sweating to death! In some places it was pitch black and you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, but in other places it was as bright as day.

After the underground, we went to see the open pit. Wow, it was huge!



I couldn't believe the size of the equipment they use! Pretty amazing huh?



Before I could take one for a test drive I had to make sure it lived up to my standards.





This is when we were down in the pit, I thought the shovel on the right was big until I saw it next to the red one! This is probably something you have to see in person, the pictures don't do justice to the size of these monsters!

They had to kick us out of the pit for the daily blast. Everyday they blow up another level of the mine to access more ore. See those perfect looking ridges in the pit? Those are created by strategically placing the explosives so that when the blast is over, you are left with a perfect ridge. All this is done in the computer first so they can analyse the area and make sure the blast will do exactly what they need it to.

So here we are waiting for the blast.



I am so mad that I didn't get a good picture of the blast because it was huge! All I have is this wussy picture of a little bit of smoke long after the blast.

I was so tired and worn out by the time we left the mine and all I did was walk around, I can't imagine how the miners feel after they've worked all day! After we got back to our hotel, we had just enough time to shower and clean up to go to dinner.

In Elko Nevada, the only place you need to eat is here:

I've never heard of basque food until I took my first trip to Nevada. I'm not too familiar with the background of these restaurants but I know it is where the sheep herders live which is why most of the food is prepared family style.

If you like lobster then you have to eat at The Star! Best lobster ever, even better than the lobster I had in Boston! Crazy, I know but I think it's the way they cook it. Delish!

And what else is Elko known for? Well the brothel houses of course! Just next to the Star are these two brothel houses that we absolutely had to get pictures of. Me from Utah, and the others from Toronto have never seen anything like it. We couldn't help but be curious!




There was this guy standing outside Sue's Fantasy Club and when he found out that most of us were from Toronto and had never seen brothels houses, he invited us in for a tour. Yes, I took a tour of a Brothel house! It was so weird because they were giving us a tour of the place like it was no big deal, just like giving a tour of their house or something.




Well we stayed just long enough to snap a couple of pics to prove to the folks back home that we actually stepped inside, then we ran like hell away from there!

Funny there was an article in the newspaper about the brothel houses in Nevada because they are the only ones in the US that aren't suffering from rising gas prices. Most brothel houses rely on travelers for their business so the higher the gas prices get, the lower their clientele gets. But this is not the case for the Elko brothels, why? Because most their business comes from the miners.

Go figure!