Almaden Quiksilver Mines

This past Saturday we woke up and decided to go for a hike at the Almaden quiksilver mines just south of us in San Jose.  I packed a lunch of sliced ham, string cheese, apple sauce pouches and crackers for the three of us.  The baby carrier backpack was actually my Mother's Day present from Paul, but I was more than happy to let Paul heft our little Clara-girl up the mountain.

Clara was cracking us up because she kept patting Paul on the back as if to say "you can do it Dad!" or "mush! mush!"

Look at this mischievous toothy little grin.  She has really been showing off her hilarious personality lately.  She is like this little girl instead of my little baby! 

We didn't really prepare or research this hike in advance and there were a number of trails that we could have chosen from and unfortunately we chose the wrong one for the upward portion of the hike (it was too wide and dusty with no shade).  But we did get to see some of the cool abandoned mine shafts that have all sorts of warning signs around them that you can see in the upper right corner of this photo of Paul and Clara.

There is a display of all sorts of old mining equipment that you could read about to learn how quiksilver was mined.  In case anyone is wondering, quiksilver is mercury which is used in thermometers and bombs and in the process of mining for gold.

It was a really fun morning and Clara did really well even though it was a long, long hike so we will definitely be going back here again and trying some of the other trails.