More Coal Mining Remnants

***Editor's note - this adventure took place before Navy Beanie! (And Cocoa was in England)

Hullo! Our tour of the old coal mine continues. We went on the other side of the power lines to see what we could find there.

So far not much!

Oh, some old bit of metal... 

Might be from coal mining or might just be junk!

Hmmm... interesting...

If the boot doesn't fit... don't wear it!

This looks more like an old bit of car...

More car... maybe people dumped their garbage here. Back in the day, people would just drive their old cars into the woods and leave them to die...

That doesn't look like cars... but might be coal mining related.

Something that got crushed down so people wouldn't go into it and get hurt!

More cars!

Oooh... and there's some water shining through the trees...

But it's hard to get down there...

But you can see the black soil showing through...

A slab of concrete!! That's definitely something coal mining related...

Still no way down to the lake!

But don't worry.. .this little bear is persistent!

Yep, a lot of coal detritus here...

Don't sit on the ground... you'll get a black bum!

Ah... finally!!! A way down to the lake!

And an old rail... 

Wow! This is beary pretty!

Don't you think?

These old stumps tell me that this is a man-made lake - so there's probably a dam at the other end. The old coal mining era made a lot of dammed lakes here...

Alright... well... we didn't find a lot of exciting stuff... although online resource said there was something over by those trees but the brush is too thick... maybe we'll check in the spring when the brush is low!

Maybe...

And as we were heading back under the powerlines... we saw this!!!

It's bear poopies!!! And it wasn't meeeeeee!!!

***A short while later***

OK... no bears. Whew! We went to the far side of the lake just to check out the dam...

Yep... there it is...

Oh... well... that's a really effective barrier but I guess it's more... "you were warned!"...

No fence or anything!

I wonder when this was built? Probably in the early 1900s...

A little sluiceway... beary pretty

There's lots of cool old stuff like this around... if you start looking for it.

We were waaaayyy over on the other side before!

And just to show I am an intrepid bear... I'm going to sit on the dam!!! 

But I'm not intrepid enough to walk all the way across...