Garnets & CLeaning

Robert, Tuesday, June 10
One of the things that Wrangell is known for are the garnets. There is a ledge along the coast where garnets are mined. Early in the 20th century a corporation was formed to own the ledge. The garnets are not gem quality and mining of them never made enough money to support a commercial operation. Later the ledge was deeded to local, native children with the provision that only they could mine for garnets. According to one of the brochures, the children selling the garnets today are the second and third generation of those who have mined and sold garnets. So we got up early (for us) and went to town today. There was a cruise ship due in at 9:00 a.m. and that is when the local children show up to sell garnets. There were five or six booths set along the town dock with kids selling the garnets they had mined. Some of the garnets are the size of an acorn. We bought two. Then we walked the main street and stopped for breakfast at a little café. After cleaning the outside of the trailer yesterday, we decided to clean the inside today. Not very exciting but just one of those things that needed doing. While Leslie did most of the inside cleaning, I did a number of chores outside. Before we set out on this trip, we got water filters and a water softener. Many campgrounds have water that is both very hard and "off" tasting. I replaced the particle filter and it just reaffirmed why we have the water filter. The new filters are a bright white and the old one was gray-brown. Yuck! Then I recharged the water softener. Basically that means putting salt in it and flushing it with lots of water. I also took care of a number of outside projects that I had been putting off. Now we are ready to hit the road tomorrow.