Marks wife and kids drove out to meet up with him for a few days and they arrived last night. We decided to take an impromptu rest day. I was secretly glad as there were a bunch of things I wanted to catch up on. The post office was closed when we got here yesterday so I have to go and mail somethings home. Mark and Jolee spent the night with their family and weren’t around when we got up. We laid around until someone suggested we go find coffee. There was a shop down the street. I don’t really drink coffee so I ordered a hot chocolate. Brent got a blueberry scone and it looked so good everyone else ordered one too. While eating we looked up things to do in Farmington. A local caught some of our conversation and made a few suggestions. One of them was to visit the Bonne Terre mine. We asked how far away it was as and he said only 15 miles like it wasn’t that far. We told him we were biking and didn’t want to have to bike that far. To our surprise he offered to let us borrow his car! We didn’t think he was serious until he insisted that his wife bikes a lot and would love to help us out. He gave us his phone number so we could call him if we decided we wanted to use it. We walked back to the hostel and asked Mark what his plans were. We decided to go to to Bonne Terre mine. Mark’s wife had a camper she is planning to follow us in so the 11 of us piled in. We stopped at Walmart again for snacks and ended up getting stuff for lunch as well. As we headed to the Bonne Terre mine we grooved to some pumped upped music. I was excited to get there as it was a tourist attraction that was sure to have postcards. When we rolled up to the building we were slightly concerned about this place as the entrance looked like a run downed shack. Inside was a gift shop and a place to purchase tickets. We learned that the next tour left at 2 and it was a little after 1. Since we had nothing else to we signed up for the one at 2 and explored the gift shop. I hate to say but it was the worse gift shop I’ve ever been in. It was the first time I’ve been in a gift shop and not wanted anything. The postcard selection was awful. The pictures on them were burry or smeared. And they were expensive. I put a statues on my Facebook saying I would send people a postcard if they messaged me their address. Unfortunately I didn’t have any postcards and this selection was too bad to send out. So I’m currently postcard-less. Everyone that messaged we will have to wait until I find better ones. 

Soon it was our turn for the tour. We were lead down a sloping hallway. Soon the walls started to turn slimy and I could see the calcite deposits on them. The walking/boat tour consisted of:

a one hour guided walking tour through the first and second levels of the mine along the “Old Mule Trail”, showing where miners dug with a pick and shovel in the 1800’s. The earliest shaft was dug in 1864. Along this tour amazing sites included huge pillar rooms, the Grand Canyon, the Billion Gallon Lake, a trout pond, underground flower gardens, beautiful calcite falls, and ancient abandoned mining tools and rail systems. The boating tour included the world’s largest subterranean lake a billion gallon lake with its crystal clear water, and a spectacular view of the largest parts of the mine.
Even though it wasn’t a natural cave it was really cool to do something kinda geology related. The Boone Terre Mines (which means good earth in French) were at one point the world’s largest producer of lead ore. Digging began in 1870 and miners created huge underground chamber to collect ore. However in 1962 water flooded the underground caverns and it’s now the world’s largest freshwater dive resort. 
Our tour guide wasn’t very good in my opinion. He didn’t speak very loud and got impatient when our group wanted to stop and take pictures. The boat part of the tour was by far my favorite. I got a seat in the front so I could look down into the cavern. Some places were 150 feet deep! It was truly amazing think this was an active mine with over 5000 workers at one point. I was only disappointed when the tour didn’t do a lights off section. Everytime I’ve gone into a cave I turn out all the lights possible. It’s really the only time you can truly be in total darkness. 

After the tour was done we decided to rent a movie and found a redbox outside a McDonald’s. The movie we rented was zootopia. I heard it was good but the puns oh the puns. Puns are one of my favorite things so I highly enjoyed the movie. Afterward we headed to diner at a local Mexican place where I ate okay nachos. Tomorrow is going to be a big day. I think we are going to bike 90-100 miles to make up for today. Plus we want to get to a big town for the 4th of July on Monday. Since we are still in the Ozarks I can’t say I’m looking forward to tomorrow. The rest of the evening is going to be spent watching YouTube on the hostels wifi.