Day 10 Preview

Zion National Park = Amazingness

It had rained the night before so the virgin river was pumping pretty good. 

Followed up by a decadent grilled cheese (Havarti, braised short ribs, arugula, and pickled onions.) at the Grand Lux Cafe at The Venetian. Yummy. 

Geocaches: 4

Sate Fair

Not our state fair (its a great state fair) but the Utah state fair. It started up the other day so I took an oppertunity to experinece it all whilst in UT. I think I'm spoiled -- it just wasn't nearly so big and awesome as the IL and WI state fairs. Maybe this year I'll go to the MS state fair for comparison purposes.

I saw lots of animals, including my favorites, the Jersey cows and the rabbits. The sheep did their baa thing and the goats were adoreable. There was crazy produce too. The evening ended with my first rodeo.

Big Dig? Utah not Boston

Stopped by the Bingham Canyon Copper Mine, the largest Open pit mine in the world. Crazy big. Absolutely. In.Sane. It actually started out as a mountain -- now its a huge excavation. You can actually fit more than 2 Sears Towers in there and not reach the original surface.

Fun fact for the day: they actually mine copper, silver, and gold here. Thus the 2002 Olympic medals were made from Bingham Canyon products. Thats the only time the medals have been made using local maerials.

Mining equipment is also huge -- see the awesome tire. I don't want to know what happens when one of those goes flat.

The process. We actually drive by the smelter every day on our way to work.

It was REALLY windy, as demonstrated by this self-portrait.

The Final Product: A copper panel produced using an electrolysis process with an anode and a cathode. Sadly, I understood far too much of the explanation of how they produce these panels. Grrr over-educmacation. I guess I did learn something in H.S. after all.

I leave with this thought: Mountains are pretty.