RV Industry | Stoness Travel Blog

La Cite de L’Or

Our fascination with gold is endless and enduring. Capitalizing on this interest, the city of Val D’Or has established the site at the old Lamaque Gold Mine as an industrial mining

heritage. Funds, along with Federal Government grants are rapidly turning this abandoned gold mine into an exciting day trip into the past to see how the gold mine operated during its active years.

Here, you will have the opportunity to visit the mine, mine buildings, and the preserved home of the miners, and experience the ambiance of a real gold mine.

A visit to the Administration office shows you real samples of the gold ore, taken from the gold veins. Sometimes after viewing the samples you wonder what was it that looked so

rich that it led to one of the richest mines in the area. In here are also a few of the old tools used by the miners and the geologists.

The Winch room shows the winch that acted as an elevator to carry miners down the shaft into the mine, and to lift out the tons of ore that the miners had wrenched from the solid rock. The shaft descended 1200 metres and the hoistman was in full command of the operation. He had to follow cage with the men, and know where the tunnels on each level were so he could let men off to go to work.

The Analytical building kept statistics on the ore’s quality. Samples of ore would be pulverized and melted and analysed to find how much gold was present. A technician shows the tour group how the ore was treated and you can see a casting being prepared from an ore sample.

When it’s time to enter the mine you are taken to a clothing room and suited up.

You see how your suit is lowered from a hook, you get your hard-hat, and a lantern and battery and taken to a mine vehicle to climb aboard. This odd looking vehicle has the driver sitting sideways to his direction of travel, which looks very strange, and must be difficult to do. There isn’t much time to think about it because you soon enter the mine portal and begin to descend 91 metres to an old working level of the mine. In this old working level you see the drills that drilled the rock, and the strange power shovel that loaded the broken ore onto the ore carts. Here, too, you wander along the darkened mine wall and perhaps ponder on the profession of a miner.

Once back on the surface you can tour Bourlamque’s Mining Village using an portable tape player that tells stories about the various buildings. These are still occupied home and are painted nicely and look very well cared for.

After your tour of the mine’s facilities you will understand what goes on beneath some of the strange mining buildings you see as you travel the north country. There are a small number of electrically service RV sites so it’s a convenient place to visit, and see the town.

Happy RVing!

For more than four decades James Stoness has travelled the roads of North America, photographing and writing about what he has seen. His travel articles and beautiful pictures have been published in several magazines and newspapers. He is also the author of five western novels. Visit his website at: www.stonesstravelguides.com

The Magnificent Desert

More and more of the snowbirds who have been frequenting the coasts of Florida and Texas are spending their winters farther west. They have discovered the beauty of the desert. Low humidity, sunny skies, and long picturesque views have won them over. Of course, winter is the best time to visit the deserts. Temperatures range from cool to comfortably warm. Most crawly creatures are sleeping away their ‘winter’ and the weather is great for visitors to get out and walk among the strange desert vegetation.
One of the very scenic drives is found in eastern California passing from Death Valley NP south through the Mojave Preserve to Joshua Tree NP. It’s a drive filled with a variety of desert scenery.

The bajada is a feature not observed where there is a lot of vegetation. It is a broad apron of debris accumulated around the cliffs and the resulting view is that of a sea of small mountains surrounded by sloping oceans of sand.
This route roams across desolate flat lands and up and down numerous small mountains. There are always mountains in view and as you approach the tops of the ridges you never know when you will be entranced by a wonderful jumble of blue mountains and hidden valleys where you can see wave upon wave of purple ridges rolling to the horizon.
Normally, we would take this trip south from Furnace Creek, in Death Valley NP but the summer of 2004 arrived with deadly floods that have closed many of the roads in the south of the park. Instead I suggest going west from Las Vegas to Shoshone and heading south from there.
Many highways do not have installed culverts. Instead there is a dip in the road where the water crosses. Most have warning signs that tell you not to enter when water is flowing. You might wonder if water ever flows there but a careful look at the erosion at the end of the dip, or at the sand and stones strewn across the pavement might change your mind. Cars do get carried right off the highway from the force of the water in these flooded dips.

The Amargosa River drains a vast area to the east and eventually the highway crosses the several branches of the river. It’s strange to see so many culverts in a row under the highway with not a drop of water in sight. After the river rounds the southern end of a mountain range it then swings north to drain into Death Valley where it forms a lake for a while, and eventually evaporates leaving the white salt pans that are first to catch the eye of the visitor to the park.
In the Mojave Preserve, a long descent through cacti and creosote bushes takes you to Kelso Station, an old railway station of beautiful Spanish architecture that is the new park

visitor centre for the vast Mojave National Preserve. The nearby Kelso Sand Dunes rise to over 600 feet above the desert floor in a profusion of shapely curves that extend far down the valley. Although difficult to climb it might be worth the effort just to slide down one of the steeper faces, or to listen to the music of the sliding sand.
Eventually, you make another winding climb before rolling down another long slope to Amboy where the flow from an ancient volcanic cinder cone left a streak of black lava across the dry sands toward dry Bristol Lake. On the lake, sand dikes surround evaporation ponds used to collect salt.
For miles the vegetation changes from lowland desert plants to highland varieties and back again as the roller coaster ride continues, taking you to the top of the Granite Mountains where erosion is creating strangely sculptured pillars and scattered piles of massive boulders.

In the town of Twentynine Palms artists have painted beautiful murals with western themes onto the sides of buildings. In nearby Yucca Valley, Hollywood has captured the beauty of the surrounding area on film in ‘It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World’.
For more desert scenery head south into Joshua Tree NP which has a fantastic variety of eroded mountains, huge boulders, and a couple of cactus patches.

Happy RVing!

Saskatachewan’s T.Rex Discovery Center

The picturesque Frenchman River twists like a scalded snake through a deep valley across southern Saskatchewan. In places, high, dry bluffs edge the valley, and green vegetation stands stark against the grey cliffs. We discovered this place while on a picture and fact collecting tour for my scenic travel guide Canada: Beyond the Far Horizons.

Nestled along the shore, hemmed in on one side by the bluffs, is the quiet community of Eastend. This site had been the approximate location of an 1870’s Hudson Bay Trading Post. After the Sioux had dealt out appropriate justice to George Custer’s troops at the Battle of the Little Big Horn River by wiping them off the map for their intrusions upon Indian traditional land, they decided to strategically slip away into Canada.
Once in Canada they were not allowed to do whatever they wanted. The North West Mounted Police (NWMP) had already built Fort Walsh in the Cypress Hills to try and stop whisky traders from south of the border and to keep the peace. The Mounted Police sent a small detachment of the force east to monitor and control the visiting Sioux Indians. Later they moved their post to the area of the old Trading Post which was the east end of the NWMP’s area and the name became “Eastend”.
The Frenchman River carved deeply into the rolling plains. But hidden deep in the soil and rock below the surface are the fossilized bones of the dinosaurs. Over the years people had picked up large numbers of bones and fossils and the citizens of Eastend determined there was a growing need for a home to bring these fossil finds together where they could be identified and viewed.

The project received a tremendous boost with the finding of the bones of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. This dinosaur is the star of the show and its name is Scotty. The economic fortunes of Eastend also received a boost with an increase in tourism. Lots of people wanted to see the 65 million year old Scotty, but the rest of the exhibits are well worth making a trip to the T.Rex Discovery Centre. Scotty is one of only about two dozen mostly intact tyrannosaurus Rex skeletons in the world.
It’s fitting that the building is built into the hill, with the glassed in front overlooking the Frenchman River valley and Eastend. Fossils are usually well buried in the ground, with a few being exposed by the river.
An enjoyable display is a full sized diorama that shows the animals and their environment of 65 million years ago. It’s fascinating to view the landscape as it was back then and compare it to the countryside you drive through to get to the centre. Children find this display exciting, as they stand almost nose to nose with these massive fossil creatures, except the dinosaur’s nose is a lot bigger, and a lot farther off the ground.
The T.Rex Centre is a hive of activity and there are areas for activities where it is ‘hands on’, and others for demonstrations, such as how fossils are removed from the ground, protected, and finally separated from the rock and set up on display.
For those who crave exercise, they can join a programme for fossil digging at a nearby fossil site where they are exposed to the difficulties of working outside in the heat, and the painstaking care that needs to be taken when revealing fossils.
An added bonus for those visiting Eastend is the opportunity to drive in a very sparsely populated part of southern Saskatchewan. It’s a great contrast if all you’ve seen are the views from the Trans-Canada highway. There is less traffic and there is time to see the small ranches and enjoy the atmosphere of the uncrowded plains.

If you have time, drive to the Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park that crosses the borders of Alberta, and Saskatchewan. There you will find relaxing campsites, and a chance to visit Fort Walsh. All in all, this is a nice place to visit.

Happy RVing!