White Knob Mining Site (Mackay ID) - Part 2

My first impression of the second building we entered was that it was large and dark.

My second impression was that massive amounts of small Christmas lights had been strung inside the building to provide light.

It took me a few seconds to realize that what I was seeing weren't lights, but instead was an endless series of bullets holes in the walls of the structure that were letting in light from outside.

Well OK then.

The inside was an expansive open space filled with many informational signs and hundreds upon hundreds of..............things..........mining things.

Rusty and intricate mining things.

There is a saying that form follows function.

I didn't know the function of many of the things I saw (although LC did) but I did love the form of all of them.

Instead of being enamored with mining history and the inner workings of mines, I was enamored by intricate shapes and textures.

Art...................

We had been wandering through the building alone for about 15 minutes when a man and woman walked inside.

As I continued to wander and photograph, LC immediately struck up a conversation with the man.

Soon a few other people walked into the building, and another gentleman joined the two, who were now deep in conversation.

Later, after we had left the museum, I realized that LC had found out a couple of interesting things during their talks.

One of the men joked about - and wondered out loud - just how many of the bullet holes in the walls HE was responsible for in his younger years.

The second thing was about the caretaker of this museum.

I don't know his name, but he was apparently stationed in the area while in the Navy many years ago.

A submariner who received his nuclear sub training at the Secret Squirrel Lab (aka Idaho National Laboratories not far from Atomic City).

Yes.  A Navy man receiving training in the desert of land locked Idaho.

Once he retired he settled in the area, and took on this museum as a personal project.

As the man who spoke with LC informed, "he works on this place every single day".

Sounds like a labor of love to me...................

I took many pictures in this building.

Hugely interesting to me for different reasons than one would think while visiting a mining artifact museum, but there you go.....................

You never know what's around the corner. It could be everything. Or it could be nothing. You keep putting one foot in front of the other, and then one day you look back and you've climbed a mountain..............Tom Hiddleston