Edgar's Adventures

A big friendly dog's adventures in a RV.

The FMCA Rally in Gillette, WY

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The FMCA Rally is a destination in itself and this year it was well worth the trip. Having volunteered to help at the rally we had to arrive a few days early for orientation and training. With the Fourth of July falling on the weekend it gave us a few extra days to tour the area. Unfortunately due to the draught that is wrecking havoc on the area all firework displays were cancelled:(

The best tour that we took was to one of the coal mines that is operating around Gillette. I never know that there was such an enormous deposit of coal in the area. I forget how many miles long or wide they said the vein of coal was I do remember that it is a little over 100 feet high. According to our tour guide they conservatively believe that there is over 100 years of coal left. Currently they ship five trains a day from the mine with each train consisting of 115 to 135 cars with each loaded with about 116 tons that is a lot of coal to dig. Since this is all done with open pit mines it was really impressive to hear all that went into insuring that once all of the coal is removed the land will be restored to its pre-existing condition Each area is surveyed then all of the animals that live on that land are identified and even all of the plants including weeds are identified. One thing that our guide pointed out was that even though the sage brush had to be replanted it didn’t really flourish until cows had grazed on the new plants. It has something to do with the seed passing through the cows digestive system that promoted growth. The best way to know that you were looking at reclaimed land was the the reclaimed land had piles of stone on it trying to encourage the small wild life to return.

This is a close as we could get to the actual coal seam.
The mine is way off in the back and the start of land reclamation in front.

A lot of coal headed for the crusher before loading onto railroad cars.

About 115 tons in each car. They call this method of loading the cars the “bread pan” method which insures that the most coal stays in the car
This is a tire off of a loader each one costs about $38,000.00 and I don’t know many trucks they were running.

Our tour guide was a former employee of the mine and said that she started as a driver of one of the big trucks. The coal trucks were a little bigger than the trucks that were being used to haul the earth away to expose the actual coal seam. The reason she gave was that the dirt was usually used to back fill the exposed land and the coal had to be trucked to the crusher. The mine operates 24/7/365. once she was trained on the big truck she was then moved up to the big shovels and any other equipment that was there to operate. I think that she said the entry level wage was about $25.00 per hour and then up as you acquired more skills.

This was just the start of our experiences at the FMCA rally but enough for now.

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