This year for Craiger's 12th birthday I gave him the option of having a big birthday party at the house, or he could choose 2 best friends to go to the Idar Oberstein Mining Camp & Mine Tour. I knew he'd pick the 2nd choice. He has 2 amazing friends he does everything with & they like rocks & gemstones as much as Craiger does, so it was a great idea for all 3 of them.
They slept over the night before so we could wake up bright & early & drive an hour out to the mines. They were SO excited. They even had their tools: pickaxes, hammers, shovels, & more.
You have to hike into the mining area (which I didn't know) from the parking area, so we enjoyed the scenery as we hiked in. There was a really cool mine entrance along the trail that we had to take a picture of. Everything out here was beautiful.
The boys went VERY slowly, & half the time I'd turn around & they'd be gone or crouched down on the ground observing rocks. I love how into this they got.
At the place where I picked up our tickets, they had a little shop that sold geodes, rocks, jewelry, & more. I told the boys they could each pick one thing that I would buy for them so they could have a souvenir of our trip. Before our mining camp time, they looked at every single rock, bracelet, ring, & paperweight to see what they really really wanted.
The gemstone camp they do for kids there at the mine is SO MUCH FUN. They give the kids an hour to shovel, dig, hit, move, ANYTHING to find gemstones. They "plant" gemstones under the ground at the beginning of the season (which was 3 days before we got there), so there were TONS of stones to find. Everything they find, they get to keep.
They were in absolute heaven. They found agate, amethyst, quartz, danite, adventureite, & more.
They had a big tub of water in the center where you could wash the mud off your rocks to see them. That's where the magic happened. Sometimes you'd have what looked like a clump of dirt, but you'd wash it & it would become a gorgeous purple amethyst.
They had so much fun. . . & they were sweating & exhausted by the time their hour was up. At the end of the hour, the man in charge gave each of them a geode. Then he cut the geodes they chose in half so they could see what was inside.
Craiger got an incredible geode. It was beautiful.
After the mining camp, we hiked back down to the car to put away all of our tools & rocks. We didn't want to have to carry them through our mine tour. Then we hiked all the way back to the entrance of the mine.
Before we went in, we got some brotchen sandwiches & water, then we were ready to go into the mines.
The mine tour lasted about an hour & it was cute. It was COLD & the boys were FREEZING so they all piled into my furry coat to keep warm for the duration of the tour. But they loved to see all the beautiful gemstones in the rock walls as well as the beauty of the water in the mine. It was completely clear & you could see the rock bed at the bottom. It was beautiful.
Afterward, we put back our hard hats, went shopping at the gift shop for their treasures, then headed back home. It was a WONDERFUL birthday. Craiger had a blast.
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