The bad news from the last week is after playing a game with neighbors on Wednesday night, Ken started having chills and a fever. He went to bed at 8 pm on Wednesday, and I never heard another peep out of him until 7 am on Thursday. He was due to monitor in the rock shop, so he got up and went over to open up, then as soon as another monitor showed up, he came back home and immediately went back to bed and stayed there until 4:30 am Friday.
Reason we had to get up early Friday morning is we were scheduled to drive east 175 miles to the company owned town of Morenci and take a tour of the huge Phelps Dodge Morenci Copper Mine. A group of 38 left at 6 am, but we left 20 minutes earlier in order to grab breakfast and fuel. The group leader had planned several potty stops along the way and we planned to do some caching while they were stopping. Ken was weak and shaky, but said he was feeling much better after having something to eat. As we drove east, we saw this incredible sunrise.
These snowy mountains were a great view from Safford. Aren’t they gorgeous!!
During that 3 ½ hour drive (and while finding 10 caches) I started coughing and feeling kinda like Ken did on Wednesday. No chills, just having the awful feeling that I was coming down with a cold. When we arrived in Clifton, we met up with the rest of the group taking pictures of a historic train. This is most of the 40 in our group.
We got to Morenci a couple hours before our tour was to begin, so we all settled down in the Motel’s restaurant/bar for lunch. By this time, I wasn’t feeling like eating much, but decided to have some soup. Well that was a mistake because the soup was way too salty and it just made me feel worse.
After lunch and before the tour began, we had to be briefed about the tour itinerary and given an overview of copper and the high-tech mining processes used at Morenci. This orientation also covered safety while on the tour. We all had to wear hard hats and safety goggles (those with glasses were exempt) along with long sleeves and closed toed shoes. Many areas we were to visit were dealing with different acids and other dangerous chemicals.
After the briefing, we boarded two buses (20 per bus) and set out for the 3 hour tour.
The guides on the tour are retired workers from the copper mine and very knowledgeable. They kept us entertained along with providing us with tons of fascinating history of copper mining…… much of which I will never remember because as the time went on, I was feeling much worse. In fact the last two stops on the tour, I never even got off the bus.
We stopped at this spectacular lookout point where we could see the enormity of the operation. This is one of the world’s largest open pit mines.
During the tour, we found out the raw ore is placed in huge “leaching” fields and the copper is “leached” out of the rock ore in a style similar to how we brew coffee. I won’t/can’t go into more detail because I have forgotten most of it, but it is quite a process.
This is leached copper going through the process. Note how blue it is! And boy does it ever stink...lots of sulpheric acid!
On the last stop of our tour, everyone got to see the finalization of the process (by this time, I wasn’t even moving from the bus). The following shots show the stainless steel plates that the copper adheres to. Once the copper is fully attracted to the steel (one plate on each side of the stainless steel) the plate is shaken and the copper slides off in sheets. Once the sheets are piled to a weight of approx 6,000 pounds, they bundle them up.
Copper is worth about $3.29 a pound, and there are approximately 6,000 pounds in each of these bundles. There is a lot of money in this shot.
These interesting facts are taken from their brochure.
1. The Phelps Dodge Morenci Mine is North America’s leading producer of copper.
2. Arizona produces more copper than any other state in the nation.
3. Morenci is one of the technological marvels of the Western Hemisphere.
4. Morenci moves more than 700,000 tons of rock each day.
5. Their equipment in mammoth.
One $2 million haul truck can carry 270 tons of ore on tires almost 12 feet in diameter.
6. More than 2000 employees work around the clock producing about 840 million pounds of copper each year.
7. The town of Morenci is one of the last “company towns” in the United States.
8. The average single-family home contains about 440 pounds of copper.
9. Morenci is a “zero-discharge” operation. Virtually all of the water used at Morenci is recycled, some of it many times over.
We finished the tour at 4 pm and both Ken and I were ready to head straight back to the coach. The 3 plus hour trip back was agonizing because all I wanted to do was lay down and go to sleep. Once we did get home, I just threw all my stuff on the couch and headed straight for bed and didn’t wake up until 9:30 Saturday morning. I did get up long enough to wash my face and brush my teeth, then promptly went right back to bed. I didn’t get up again until 6 am on Sunday morning.
While we both felt better on Sunday, we decided to check out a grand opening of a spectacular new wine store in Glendale. It is called total wine and is huge. After running around that shop for the better part of an hour, I was totally wiped out and didn’t want to do anything else. Ken had some errands to do, but I sat in the Jeep while he did his business. Once home, I crashed for the rest of the evening.
Today, I feel better and think I will live, but I still have an awful cough and am pretty weak. I didn’t go to this morning's coffee social because I think I might still be contagious, but Ken went and even went to the rock shop this afternoon.
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