See what we saw!

Yesterday Sari and I took a drive in the country.  Here is what we found.....

We came across this old coal mine.....

 Talking to the old guys at church today, I found out that this is a rebuilt mine entrance... it is not original and there was even some debate as to whether there was ever a coal mine in that spot (three said yes another said that he was not sure).... but they all agreed that it is a good representation of what the old mines looked like around here..... and there used to be hundreds of them.  Funny thing is, I have driven the valley a lot and I have never seen that before.

We found several old abandoned farm yards.  Lots of stone foundation barns.  We even found one beautiful old, huge, two story house in the valley bottom right by the river.  Would have been very impressive when it was occupied, but for some reason we did not get a picture of it.  Here are a few that Sari did take.....

Then we kept coming across old cars and stuff in people's yards.   Here is a good project for someone (I am sure a little buffing would make it look good again)......

 These will take a little more effort.....

We did not see many people on our tour. In fact, this guy is about the only living thing that paid much attention to us (it was getting to be near supper time for him I think as he was really interested in what we were up to)......

And the photographer out snooping around (When you see her next, ask her about getting lost in North Portal)  :)

 As I said, there was a lot more cool stuff that we did not stop and take pictures of just for time's sake as we gone for about three hours as it was.... but there were lots of picture worthy things like old houses, the river snaking across the valley, interesting looking old trees, hawks flying around, former town sites, kids sledding down a hill, etc etc).

There are cool and interesting things everywhere.... you just have to look for them.