In Seattle, Bellevue is the city across Lake Washington from Seattle that has the fancy mall and where the richer type live. In Alberta, Bellevue is a hamlet left over the mining days and here you can go on the Bellevue Underground Mine Tour. Everyone needs to do this tour! It is only $12 for an hour tour and it is such a unique and educational experience.
When they first get you geared up they ask if you want a poncho. Even if you’re dressed fairly warm, get one! It is freezing in those mines.
What’s amazing is how extensive this underground work is. We were shown a map of all the underground tunnels and if you lined them all up you would have over 200km if tunnel! The tour itself is only the first 300m which is a drop in the bucket compared to the rest.
We had a great tour guide Zoey who was fun and encouraged us to ask questions. I asked her if there were ghosts in the mine and she said that paranormal experts have been there and say that the ghost of the mine all line up at the entrance and people walk through them. They like that there stories are being told so they aren’t the haunting kind.
It was really funny when Zoey said our next stop was “the room” and when we stopped she had us look to our right and this is what we saw:
Not going to lie, I screamed. Ha ha ha! And Ben saw them and jumped back in fright too. It was pretty funny. We learned that these “rooms” would run up from the tunnel for hundreds of metres and guys would break off the coal and gravity would bring it down to where the carts were.
Really, I learned so much about mining and it’s not interesting if I tell you the stories in this blog you really have to go and experience it for yourself. The tours are only in the summer and cheap so make sure you go an experience this adventure!!
Looks fun but mines are such scary places!