We took a free coal mine tour today. Very interesting.
John with a 13 foot diameter tire. Big boy, big tire. Huge treads.
The little truck in this photo uses those big tires. The bigger bucket loader has the big bucket that John was riding his bike in at the campground. The bucket is big enough to drive the bus into. The coal truck in the second photo is dumping coal into the crusher. There is a little man in the big cab over the right front wheel. The truck in enormous. The coal is crushed, then loaded on a conveyer belt, sent to huge silos and loaded into train cars. 100 trains a day with 150 cars leave this area a day. The biggest pit we saw is a 400 acre moving hole following the coal seam. They take the over burden they dig out and put it at the far end where they have already dug the coal out and fill it in and restore the habitat.
One of the coal trucks getting repaired. The pick up trucks are barely the size of the tires. A view of the coal seam in one of the pits we visited. The seam is 100 feet thick in this part of Wyoming. It has 100-400 feet of overburden above it, so they say it is easy to get to here. They say that if they keep taking coal out at the rate they are today that there is enough coal to last over 100 years or more.
The prairies. I love WY when it is green as far as the eye can see. Keyhole state park. Here is where the Belle Fourche river runs into the lake. It is in the Black hills of Wyoming. I didn’t know Wyo had black hills.
Keyhole lake from the campground. I paddled my kayak around the shore in the bay we are in.
John practiced rolls until his ears filled up with water. Red rocks on the shoreline.
Swallows nests under the cliff. Canada Geese with goslings. I also saw ospreys, great blue herons, an owl. A king fisher dive bombed the lake right by my boat, and huge fish were jumping.
They rent these cabins on the lake shore. The bus in the campground. We are under severe thunderstorm watch again today.
It is a HUGE storm, with angry looking clouds and lightening. Fortunately the worst of it went just north of us. The clouds were really beautiful.
Keyhole lake. I made chocolate pudding cupcakes with chopped walnuts and vanilla dream whip on top.
Evening light from our picnic table.
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