Weds & Thurs August 7 & 8, 2013 – Butte to Ogden and Salt Lake
On Tuesday we left beautiful mountains and forests of Northern Montana and traveled south stopping at Anoconda, MT where I played golf. Rather than drive at night, we decided to stay overnight in Butte, MT. We picked up a gourmet meal at Kentucky Fried Chicken so that we wouldn’t have to do any cooking. An interesting thing we learned about Butte is that it is home to the Berkeley Pit – a large copper mine that was ripped into the earth when they could no longer extract copper, gold and silver through conventional mining, the miners decided to rip the top of the hill off. What resulted was a pit mine that today is 1780 feet deep. In the mid 1980s the mine was tapped out. So they hauled out all the equipment and turned the pumps off that keep the water out of the mine. Since that time, the ground water, which sits at about 250 below the surface and rain water have begun filling the pit mine. Today, the resulting lake is about 900 feet deep. The water has leached out a lot of harmful heavy metals from the walls of the mine. Today, the water is highly acidic – equal to lemon juice. It is alleged that a flock of geese once landed on the lake and they all (380 geese) died. The concern is that if the water keeps rising, it will eventually get to the level of the ground water and the contaminated water will then begin to flow back into the ground water – big problem. It is estimated that it will reach than level by 2020 – so they have a little bit of time to solve the problem. I saw another interesting article that even though this water is highly caustic, a rare type of algae has begun to grow in the water. This algae may yield a way to get more minerals out of the mine, but it doesn’t solve the environmental problem. In spite of this unsettling information we actually slept fairly well.
The trip from Butte to Ogden is about 381 miles straight down I-15 and took us about 6.5 hours with a couple of stops along the way. This route took us through parts of Idaho. The change in the landscape was interesting. As you approach southern Montana the mountains and forests give way to rolling hills and buttes. Eventually, it begins to look like plains with lakes here and there but not a whole lot of farming. As you get into Idaho, you begin to see more farming. We saw wheat fields, corn and of course – potatoes. As we entered Utah the landscape was pretty barren until we hit the Wasatch range. Ogden is located up against these mountains. We rolled into our friends house around 4:30 pm.
We stayed with Doug and Pat. Also visiting, was Pat’s son Jason, his wife Liz and their 2 darling kids Eva and Ruby. Pat made a nice dinner with some great appetizers of salami and prosciutto that were wrapped around cheese we also had some fruit, crackers and cheese. It was great and I could have made a meal of the snacks. Then came some boneless ribs with a great and zesty barbecue sauce. We spent most of the night catching up. In the morning we got a better view of the great setting for their home. It is nestled on a rise near the foot of the Wasatch range. Salt Lake City sits to the south and Park City to the East. The cities of Provo, Orem, Layton and Brigham City all line these same ranges. The state has a population of just under 3 million people and the majority of them live in this relatively short stretch along the Wasatch. We can attest to that because when we drove through southern Utah, we didn’t see many people there.
Today, we drive from Ogden slowly making our way to the West and towards home. We stopped for the night in Elko, NV. Along the way, something interesting happened. About 10 miles outside of Elko in I-80 there was a police road block manned by several Highway Patrol vehicles. They were stopping every vehicle and asking to inspect each vehicle. It was part of an Amber Alert. They were searching for 2 kidnap victims. It was all a bit scary, because the police were heavily armed with assault weapons and the request to inspect vehicles weren’t really in the form of a request. We didn’t have much choice in the matter. I certainly hope they catch the kidnapper, but I did feel a little like my rights were trampled upon. Fortunately, we made it through the road block without incident.
More later
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