July 13 - Chichagof Mine

July 13 – Chichagof Mine

 

Woke up to rain, then it stopped, but by afternoon it was raining again.  Basically a gray damp to wet day.  Prawn pots were checked, and yippee we have prawn again.  Magic got about 30 big ones … who counts anymore.  All pots got about the same number but some had big and some had small ones.  

The Miners and Nelsons split off from the group. They need to start moving a bit faster as they need to be in Hoonah on the 17^th while the rest of us need to be in Pelican that day.  Miners to pick up guests Chris’s sister JJ and her husband James.  Steve and Michelle to send off their guests (John, Elise, Robin, and Jane – who have all been lots of fun) and fly south their selves for a few days.  They are headed to Cooperstown to the Hall of Fame induction for Ken Griffith Jr.   When they got the invite from a friend (one of the team owners) they could not say No to that experience, so a few days out of Alaska sounded just fine.  They likely will stop in to see how their son’s new restaurant S’Wich is doing in Maple Valley. 

Jim and Steve Driscoll went fishing in the rain.  They brought fish back.  Gary and Lenore were not so lucky.

 

Pete, Linda, Glen and I went exploring around the mine.  We found lots of ‘yard art’ and other treasures from long ago on the beach and in the uplands.  There are remains of a couple houses (ruin that is), and one building that was a workshop complete with a ‘mucker’ and another mining type rail car base.   We hiked up the hill a bit and found an entrance to the mine, with rails coming out of it.  There was large equipment out in front and pieces of other machinery around.   Back down on the beach we found about 300 2-inch iron balls.  Glen said that they were likely used for a ball mill; where they put the ore from the mine and tumbled it with these balls, breaking it into small pieces looking for the precious metal.  There were pieces of at least 6-8 different patterns of plates.  I guess either no one had a complete set of matching dishes or over the years there were many different households each with their own pattern.   The closest to finding gold at this former Gold and Silver mine site was on piece of china that had a gold edge on it.  That amount of gold surely won’t take us into retirement.