Tour of Quarry

Well here is a good one for you!!

First off, you have to know --- I organized this field trip to a quarry. (This piece of info has a huge bearing on what follows!)

When we got there, the plant manager came up to me and said, "so are you all ready? You will all follow me down into the quarry. I will take the lead and we will have one of our other guys bringing up the rear so none of you get lost."

EXCUSE ME!

We are following you INTO the quarry! Driving our cars, down into the quarry! Really. Who set this up?!

Then he said - we normally go all the way down but due to the size of the group we are going to stop about 100 feet before the bottom.

My heart fluttered all the way up to my throat and seemed like it was ready to leap out! I don't mind heights as long as they are solid. I simply don't like cliffs and straight downs with no edges. And taking my kids to edges just makes my knees weak! My first thought was 'drive down' into a quarry - seriously are you joking?! Who organized this? I was not told this. I am going to give that that that person! who organized this a piece of my mind for not giving better info!

Then I thought I suppose it would not look good for said organizer to keep her butt on high ground! Crap! Okay, how bad could it be? Big huge trucks go down --- it has to be a large, big road for them - I will just hug the side without the cliff! I do suppose shutting my eyes is not an option!

Yes all this flashed through my head!

Looking back on my conversations with them, I am sure that it was implied that we would be driving in because she asked about whether we had a bus or would be taking our cars. I just didn't get it (I assumed she meant how we were arriving not how we would be doing the tour) --- which is most likely good as I would clearly have opted out and not set up the field trip. And it turned out to be fantastic.

But I have to confess to white knuckling it all the way down. I prayed my brakes would not fail me! I think I even prayed not to pass out!

This is the group listening to instructions (up top in safety!)
This is the line of cars as we headed out! Doesn't look too bad yet! You won't get pictures of the real road because I had two hands on the wheel and was too busy praying (and maybe saying a few words about that that organizer of the event)

This is part of the road leading down - but you can't really 'see' the down part! I think the scary part was all the gravel that honestly caused some slipping and sliding. They do have a large water truck that wets down the road to keep it safer.

This is where we stopped (about 100 feet from the bottom). You can kind of see the cliff / edge but not how far down it is.
This picture shows trucks up on the road - that is the road we came down on.

At the end of the tour, we got to dig through a pile of the rocks. There were quite a few fossils found. It was very cool.

The information was wonderful. We learned alot and I am so glad we went. It was just a bit of a 'surprise' to know we were actually heading into the quarry. I thought we would be up in the main building and maybe looking at the quarry from a vantage point on top. I really never dreamed we would be so totally part of the action. It wasn't as bad as I thought the drive would be. The roads are large for the trucks and by law they have to have berms that are as high as some part - I think the top of the large wheels on the big, huge trucks. So you couldn't see over the berms to look straight down. You could look across and out and know --- wow that is so far down! So it turned out to not be as frightening as I thought it would be.

My sons loved it and would have been really disappointed to have missed this one. My middle son told me that it was heaven - he loves rocks and big trucks. To see all the rocks and trucks was a slice of heaven for him. Plus, he got to pick out rocks to take home - what could be better!