Day 6- The Mile High City with a Heart of Gold

Today we woke up near our usual time of 630 and headed over to Lead (pronounced as in you lead the way) South Dakota to visit the Homestake Gold Mine. This mine was the largest producer of gold in the state. It was started in 1875 and ran all the way until it's closing in 2002. The gold business was a difficult one in one early 2000s, and the Homestake Mine sold itself to the global Mining monopoly Barak. Gold is now a profitable business again, and there is still plenty to be found at Homestake. However, Barak donated Homestake to South Dakota with a stipulation that it would never open as a mine again. Now, interested tourists can get a surface tour of the mine- but only surface. Mysterious right?? Deep deep underground of the abandoned mine were even Rod would probably not roam, is a giant laboratory uncovering the secrets of the universe. There, scientists now study neutrinos and dark matter. The depths of the mine are perfect for this laboratory becuase neutrinos are easier to study away from surface cosmic radiation. After our tour, Geologist Todd Duex (pronounced Dicks) gave us a closer look at the geology and history of the mine. 

Our tour guide this time was named Donnie. He was a really young guy, maybe just out of college? Anyways, I think that we all freaked him out becuase he was pretty cute and we had not have not had very much contact with anyone outside of our group for a while. It is a dangerous thing when you pin up a bunch of girls like that- we start getting creepy. 

On the drive home we took the scenic route and entered what is called the Needles Eye of the Balck Hills. The formations here were very tall and needle like in shape. We explored around and tried our best at rock climbing. Unlike my future roomie Pheebs, I am not a mountain goat and I continually sturggle with any form of balance on rocks. Most of my time was spent taking pictures of Kelly attempting and humorously failing at parkour. 

Strugglin