Anyone who has been reading my blog of late knows I’ve been doing the local touristy thing this year. My latest conquest? Coal Mines.
I knew Pennsylvania was a big coal state, but didn’t really think about the fact that there would be retired coal mines open for tours to the public, and was only clued into their existence by a Radio Times broadcast on July 2nd about fun things to do on less than one tank of gas in eastern Pennsylvania.
The drive up to Pioneer Tunnel took a little under 2 hours, and was a pleasant drive the whole way. We arrived to the surprise of an entire Pioneer Tunnel Coal Mine Pioneer Day festival being in full swing! Parking was a bit tricky, but once we found some we walked up toward the festival, got our combo tickets for train and coal rides, and hopped on a train.
If not for the completeness of experience factor I’d say skip the train ride. It’s a very short ride, was crowded (ok, maybe that was partially due to the festival!) and probably the least exciting part of the day. But it was nice seeing the top of what the strip mining operation did, and learning about the history of the area and nearby Centralia, where a coal fire has been burning for over 40 years under the town, that was pretty fascinating.
…the view was nothing to sneeze at either, and the weather was amazing. Oh and Michael snapped a photo of me on the train that I not only don’t loathe – I actually Like! Score!
After the outdoor train ride, it was onto the carts for a trip down into the coal mine! Once inside we were in for quite a treat, a fantastic tour where, among other things we got to see a portion of a petrified tree – most of which was removed for display in the Smithsonian.
And what coal mine tour is complete without some explosives and a canary?
A shot of Michael standing in front of the huge pile of equipment the miners were expected to haul up the shafts with them each day, and a photo of one of the still-working escape shafts – yikes!
In all, the tour was well worth the ticket price and the drive all the way up to Ashland – even if there isn’t much else up there.
Back up topside the festival was winding down by around 5PM. I snagged some of the last Funnel Cake of the day, yum yum!
..but what is that down the hill? Michael spotted them before I did…
LLAMAS!!! Aaaah :) I love llamas, they were available for petting!
Also, some cute goats :)
The last stop on our adventure for the weekend? Yuengling Brewery. It was unplanned, there is no brewpub (boo!), we knew they would be closed for tours by that time of the day, but we were in the area and decided to swing by to snap a photo before heading home. To be honest, Yuengling is sorta my slumming beer, I’ll go for a Black and Tan if nothing else reasonable is on the menu, or their Lager in a real social pinch, but it is a famous brewery with all kinds of history, so it’s worth a real visit at some point.
That weekend I also finally got to meet Nick and Karen over at Sly Fox in Phoenixville. It was cool to finally meet up – hurrah for more friends in the area!
What are my grand plans for the long Labor Day weekend? Well, I’m on call and have to work for a couple hours on Sunday(!). But our friend Ian is in town for the weekend! So we’ll be hanging out, probably have a fire outside. Shooting for a pretty mellow holiday weekend. Michael took a few days off of work this week too, so I think talked him into taking some of recipes I marked in Eating Well and giving them a go. Yum. Oh and I think I’ll get some sleep too, haven’t been doing that enough lately.
Thursday, Aug 28th, 2008 at 3:46
Heh, I love that picture of you sat on the train with the vanilla ice wannabe in the back with the white hat. Made me chuckle.
Friday, Aug 27th, 2010 at 22:24
Hi Elizabeth-
I am wondering if I could use the image of the canary in the coal mine…probably sometime in the future on a site I am contemplating building. If you can send it to me, my email is above.
Thanks much….Mary M – nice job on your site.