Amelia Jane goes to Kennecott Copper Mine

Another day with nothing to do...that is until we looked towards the mountains and saw the Kennecott Bingham Canyon Copper Mine looming in the distance. Neither of us had been there since elementary school, so Brad went online to check and see if the visitors center was still open for the season, and boy did we luck out. Normally they close on 31 October, but because the weather has been exceptionally good this year they extended it to Sunday.

So we put our jackets on, and off we drove up the side of the mine for 4mi/6.4kms!


Brad trying to get Amelia to be a little more excited about open pit mining.


Lil' Amelia sitting next to a tire from one of the Caterpillar 797 trucks that works in the mine. And yes, if that's the size of the tire, you can only imagine how big the truck is that goes with it.


Brad stands 6.25'/1.9m tall to give you an idea of size...


Amelia takes a ride in one of the old mine cars.


And a view down into the mine. This is the world's largest open pit mine. I think they said it is 3/4 of a mile deep. It's just massive!


And we also lucked out as we got there in time to see an explosion! It was so cool. The ground just started bubbling and then dirt went flying. The weird thing is it looked so close and yet it took a good 3-5 seconds for the sound of the explosion to get to us. Amelia found it very exciting!