Riding the ATV.

Or the "AVTV" as Skyler calls it.  Since the 4th landed on a Friday, Mommy got to have Thursday off from work.  We loaded up and headed up to Butterfield Canyon to ride the ATV.

"Ready!"

He's such a ham for the camera.

Midway up, looking East toward the valley.  Utah lake is to the right of the photo.

At the top! Panoramic shot including what appears to be my finger.

Looking down into the mine.

Salt Lake City is at the top.

Remarkably, the slide from a year ago is cleaned up!

The massive 450 ton trucks look like ants crawling up the hill.

Waving to Daddy.

Looking North to Farnsworth peak.

The Oquirrh mountains are still quite green too.

Zooming in we can see a shovel being assembled.  I think the mine lost something like 4 shovels and 10 trucks in the slide.

Zooming into the slide area.  The new shops are the tan buildings.

Zoomed in to see 10 trucks waiting to dump into the crusher.  Each truck burns 2,000 gallons of Diesel fuel a day.  Just these 10 consume 20,000 gallons.  Every day!  No wonder there's an air pollution problem here.

The crusher feeds the crushed rock into a 3 mile long conveyer.

Picnic time.

There's a new, shiny catch fence to keep you from plummeting to your death!

Looking Southwest to more green mountains.

The Tooele valley.

We then rode all the way down to the Tooele side to show Skyler this old mine shaft.  You can hear the water draining inside the tunnel.

At the saddle getting ready to load up.  

Almost loaded.  Mommy is trying to get the toddler loaded here.