Consolidated Gold Mine - Dahlonega, GA

The girls and I took a field trip to Consolidated Gold Mine in Dahlonega, Ga.

If you have the chance to be in North Georgia I recommend this as a fun family adventure.

You can spend an afternoon there for less than $20 per person and in today's economy that is a rare find.

Each person is given a pan filled with sand and minerals and a quick lesson on how to get the sand out but keep the minerals in.

You spend you time over this trough  of water getting the sand out  until you get to the bottom and can see some flecks of gold,

REAL GOLD

the girls thought they were rich.

Here Faithful is working hard to find gold

Graceful worked hard for her gold also.

The excitment builds as the kids can look through this door into the dark hiden mine below.

You should have heard the theories these kids came up with for what they thought it would be like down there,  lets just say I did not trip over a huge gold rock.

The view going down into the mine.

You have to walk down these stairs into the mine and there is a fair amount of walking, so keep that in mind if you are traveling with little ones

Anywhere water is running it turns to rust because the iron content is so high.

 Tour guides are with you while in the mine, they are great at telling the story of the mine and also good with answering kids questions.

And this,

this big ,

huge,

hole

is the

GLORY HOLE.

This is were one of the largest veins  quartz containing gold in the world was discovered. 

Here our tour guide telling us how the rock was moved around in the mine.

This is one of the drills they used, becuse of this drill the miners would go deaf after the first month of work, frightening.

One of the holes dilled into the rock.

We had a day filled with learning and fun.