Wednesday, July 23, 2003

Greetings,

We awoke to another cool windy drizzly day which later on turned to light rain around 4:00 in the afternoon.

Tim and Holly Smith spent the night at Burnbrae and we had a light breakfast and all went up to The Drift where Kerith, Holly and Jonina were going to Barnard Castle and Tim and I would repair to the mine.

Dave spent the time mucking the face and he and Byron did the timbering there. In the pass through between the West Crosscuts part of the ceiling had given way overnight dropping a large boulder partially covered on one side with nice lustrous gem/gemmy twins to about 3/4". Luckily, even though the crystals were pointed down, they had done a backflip and landed face up. Next to it was the single largest block of our famous mud I have ever seen. With Tim's help we rolled it out to the rails where we did a slippery heave-ho and barely got it into a wheelbarrow, it had to weigh over 200 pounds. We deposited this mass just outside the entrance where I asked Byron to sit on it and leave his imprint for posterity. I am sure that not wind nor rain nor snow or sleet will have much effect on it and by this time next year it will be a sort of air-dried natural stoneware forever preserving Byron's imprint. Tim and I then proceeded to spend a few pleasant hours working a small area for more gem twins and the odd white aragonite covered fluorite - one very nice piece of that in the palm sized region which we should be proud to display in Tucson.

Tim and I broke loose about 1:00 p.m. to drive to Killhope and meet the girls for lunch; they were late but arrived with the director Ian Forbes and we had a pleasant chat and very nice lunch. Tim and Holly went on the mine tour and Kerith and I took the wood walk to see the physical history of mining in the Dale and a brief stop at the endangered red squirrel blind. Saw two of the cute chestnut colored critters feeding. We all met back about 5:00 p.m. and called it a day.

Tomorrow, Ralph Sutcliffe is due by with our finished corner cabinet and the cleaning crew is coming to give the house a once-over before we take off on Friday to see the Greenbanks in Kendal for the weekend.

That's it from this place way north of Lake Woebegone.

Cal & Kerith

Go Back