An Extraction..Of Valuable Minerals!

Wednesday night, Jamie and I took a couple of the Young Men from church out to where Jamie works- OCI, for a mine tour.Our Wyoming operation has been among the world's leading producers of high quality soda ash.Soda ash is the trade name for sodium carbonate, a chemical refined from the mineral trona or sodium-carbonate-bearing brine's (both referred to as "natural soda ash") or manufactured from one of several chemical processes (referred to as "synthetic soda ash"). It is an essential raw material in glass, chemicals, detergents, and other important industrial products...ANYWAYS.........it was a great experience for all of us! When we first got there, we had a little training session with Dennis Brady. I have always been a bit nervous of the thought of having my most loved one go underground...in such a "potentially" dangerous environment. Having this training made it a bit worse..as we neared the time for us to go underground, my nerves calmed.I asked how Daniel, and Cody were feeling about going 850 feet underground, and beneath the Green River..they said they were calm... Jamie and Dennis brought us our equipment. Hard hat, ear plugs, miner light, belt, carbon monoxide converter. We were good to go. Down the shaft we went....We could see our destination 850 feet below us.Once we got down...I wasn't nervous at all! I felt like I was just in a tunnel. The thought of being that far underground had no effect on me. We walked around until we came upon one of the work trucks. We all hopped in the back, and Dennis drove us around. He first showed us a barricade room. The miners use this as a last resort if there is an incident and there is absolutely no way out. We went in...and he shut the door. The rooms are pretty big, they can hold quite a bit of people. In the room there was a big long dining table..a bunch of bottled water, a place to go to the bathroom. And two telephones. He had us turn off our miner lights- we were able to see what PITCH BLACK really looked like....it was insane! You can only imagine what it would be like..It was so dark it through off my equilibrium! After that we drove around some more,until we came across a few miners. They took us to the "face" where the actual digging was happening..I knew they would take us to the actual place of digging...but I had no idea what was about to happen. They actually MINED right there in front of us!! 30 feet away they were digging into the face...it was amazing! They have this machine..its called a "miner' it can be operated my remote control as well as a human. It is a 2 million dollar piece of equipment. And OCI has six! That is a mad amount of money! One of the men got on the miner, and started it up...There are these absolutely HUGE drills on the front. He raised it up to the top, and pushed it about two feet into the wall of Trona, and pulled it down. It sucks in the Trona, and spits it out the back into a loader, which once is full goes and dumps the Trona and returns for repeated loads. OCI digs about 300 feet a day.OCI takes pride in their safety. They are the safest mine to work in. That is the only thing that has kept me sane about the thought of Jamie working underground. As I was walking the halls in OCI I saw alot of trophies and plaques saying "FIRST PLACE" for safety...it really made me happy! I now feel comfortable and confident if my hubby were to ever go underground. I am glad that we had such an awesome opportunity to be able to see first hand-what goes into mining Trona,I totally recommend everyone to take a tour if ever possible! It's definitely a fun, and exciting time!