Gold and silver.
I've been wondering what's been going on with the price of gold and silver. I usually don't pay much attention to it, but I do own a silver mine near Tombstone, Arizona, so I do pay a little attention to the price of silver, even though I doubt there's enough silver left in the mine to be worth digging out. The price of silver, as I write this, is $103 an ounce, which has reached a point where it might be worth mining it.
Now I have no idea what it costs to work a hard rock mine, but I'm pretty sure the government paperwork must be horrendous. I know there are cheaper ways of mining for gold, such as the heap leach process, where a mining company can make money even if there's only a tiny amount of gold per ton, but I don't know if leaching will work for silver.
I doubt that a small operation could make any money at it, but if a big, multimillion-dollar company came in, they could move mountains to get to the pay dirt and make money by sheer volume.
But I'm probably just having a case of gold fever at the moment, but you never can tell, maybe one of these days I'll go to the hardware store and buy a shovel, a pickaxe, and a donkey to carry it all up and down the hills, as I revert to my prospecting days as Tonopah Tom, last of the desert prospectors.
Theboondork
There was an interesting sunset last night, not great, just interesting.
Saguaros actually surround me, but they're on the hills, not the flat land where I am.
The last of last night's sunset.