Sapphire mining is surprisingly entertaining

 

The morning of our first day in MT, we ventured to Gem Mountain to mine some sapphires.  This area is famous for its mining of many minerals/precious stones.  

 This outfit had a number of mines in the area and had this commercial business for folks like us to take part in a refined mining experience.

Step 1:  Purchase bucket full of rocks














 Step 2:  Transfer several scoops of rocks to a sifting tray and take the rock-filled sifting tray to the water troughs close by to sift the sediment from the solids.

Sifting is fun!

 Step 3:  Carefully--and quickly--dump the sediment-free sifting tray contents on the sorting table.  (And I'll have you all know that the employee at this place commented that I did an "excellent!" job at flipping the sifting tray.)

 Step 4:  Find sapphires among the rocks...

Tricky little guys...

This is a nice-sized sapphire...not a kidney stone Megan had just passed, despite the pained look on her face.

Sophomoric picture fun with sapphires.  I'm glad we did not visit this mine as children with little sister Erin ...a sapphire, rather than a tiny tart, may have been the object extracted from her nasal passage...I would think the sapphire would have been more difficult to extract.

 Step 5:  quickly lose interest in mining sapphires and play with toy trucks, etc.