It was pretty nice out this morning so we decided to walk to the nearby Gillette Golf Course. Well, not really nearby when walking, but nearby if driving. We walked almost 6 miles and the nice morning turned really hot, really fast! I tried drinking out of a city water hydrant but spit it out when it didn't taste very good.
After the ice cream social at 1:30 we made a beeline to the visitor center where we caught the bus for the Eagle Butte Coal Mine tour. While on the tour, the rally had their closing business meeting and pulled a name for a $1000 door prize. Good thing our name wasn't drawn! The tour was given by a young lady who is a teacher during the school and a former coal mine truck driver. She was very animated and, of course since she had worked at the mine, she really knew her stuff!
35% of the nation's coal comes from Wyoming and 99.99% of that coal is used to produce electricity. There are 13 mines around Gillette. The one we saw is one of two owned by the same company and employed 650 people. Coal is dug from the pit mine 24 hours a day 365 days a year. All the land mined is reclaimed by putting the soil back, planting trees, sagebrush and native grasses; creeks are put back in the same place and animal habitat is created. There is enough coal in the Powder River Basin to last us another 200-300 years.
They blast the coal out of the pit, then haul it to a silo where it is then put on trains that take it to 36 states in the US. The trucks used to haul the coal out of the pit will carry up to 240 TONS of coal. There are 115 - 140 coal cars on one train (1.5 miles long). There are 5-6 trains out of the Eagle Butte Mine and there are 85 coal trains out of the Powder River Basin, each one carrying 15,000 - 20,000 tons of coal every day.
That's probably more information than you wanted to know.
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