Most students on a Saturday morning would be asleep. Warm, cozy, tucked in their beds recovering from whatever they did the night before. We however are not most students, in fact we aren't even think that we are normal students. On this particular Saturday morning (9:00 am) on November 21, 1998 three girls from the University of Arizona met up with three boys from the same school and set of on a grand adventure of risk, and high stake high jinks. We went to...ASARCO Mineral Discovery Center for a fun filled morning of copper watching.

We three girls stepped into the center with three very loud Arab guys and you can imagine that heads turned. We proceeded to wander around the building glancing here and there looking for some indication of where we were to go for the infamous "tour" that would hopefully bolster our grade in our terrific Nats 101 class. A voice behind us called out "can I help you?". We were then greeted by a sweet looking lady behind a counter who smiled softly at us. This was the kind of lady that you would picture inside of a kitchen cooking apple pie or gingerbread cookies.

We asked where did we sign up for the tour and a evil grin spread across her gentle face. The Arabs smiled but to us girls it appeared that horns protruded from the top of her head as we opened up our wallets and purses and reluctantly withdrew the six dollars each (thirty six total!) that would take us on our way. We were then asked to sign the guest book, which of course we did. Tish refused to sign so her name was submitted by the hand of someone else.

An old man with a real sourpuss looked at us with distaste; he probably was a bit miffed at having to chauffeur six rowdy college students around on an early Saturday morning. No doubt he wished he was at home in bed as well. Our group was joined by four elderly people who refused to acknowledge that we were there. This was probably a good thing when thinking back on it.

Once on the bus, seated comfortably in plush blue seats the driver popped in a video which contained interviews from various ASARCO employees who described what their jobs were about. It discussed a little about the mining process and stressed strongly that they were environmentally "safe". The video started talking about cows! This undoubtedly got the attention of those who had previously been snoozing in their seats. ASARCO used cows to fertilize the plains and return minerals to the soil. While we searched for the "asarcows" alas none could be spotted much to the disappointment of us tree-huggers.

The first stop was the open-pit viewpoint. This thing is absolutely huge, one could imagine seeing it from the atmosphere. From the deck you could see what looked like mini-trucks hauling material. This is not the case, these trucks are gigantic, the tires alone were bigger than the six of us fitting inside it. They were eleven feet in diameter used on a 240-ton haul truck. That's a lot of hauling machine if you ask us.

At stop two we were able to see some of the machinery at the mine. The south mill observation deck. While the guys wen off about offering us to be their third and fourth and fifth wives we (being the responsible students we are) went across a bridge into the south mill. A rotten stench filled our nostril as we walked through a short corridor into the observation deck. We made it in and took our first real breath of decent air. To the right was a machine that mixed ore with milk of lime to raise the pH and other chemicals to create a froth of golden bubbles. We were mesmerized by the motion of the liquid. Your first assumption would be that it must be terribly hot to cause it to boil but then you find out that it's not boiling at all.

To the left of the deck is a grinder. It uses various size steel balls to grind the ore into powder. When the ore is broken down into smaller pieces it is fed even smaller balls and so forth and so on. At least that's how it was explained to us small minded college students:) Well back on the bus we go! We got a good look at a big circular tank; the guy called it something like a tailings sifter. It really just looked like a bunch of cr@p being dumped into a pool. The tour guild actually referred to it as "the executive swimming pool".

We were actually expecting the tour to last a lot longer but when we got back on the bus it was back to the center to be "dumped" so to speak. We got off the bus and wandered around for a bit looking at the trucks that were around. One of the tallest members of our band of jolly heroes only came to be a little taller than the bumper of the haul truck. We milled around the gift shop for a time, purchasing minor knick-knacks, before heading back to our cars. All in all it was not a bad trip. And that was our day at the mine, now don't you just want to jump up and go out for your own tour? Hmmm, we thought so....